Happy Birthday, Sophie

Today would be my mother’s 78th birthday. It’s recently dawned on me, some 14 years after her death, that I cannot remember the sound of her voice. I sometimes get a hint of it when I read the pastry recipe that my sister asked her to tell us before she got too sick: "Roll away from you, fast, and have it [the fat] cut up in nice big crumbs. Not too much water." There would have been a slight pause before the water instruction, a tilting up of the eyes, and quite possibly a slight admonition with the index finger of her right hand.

I don't remember her laugh, either, but I remember how often she used it. The smiling woman in this photograph of an RAF ball is not my mother. But she's laughing at something my mother, who has her back to the camera, has just said.

My sister once told me that this was one of her favorite pictures of Mom, because you could see that she was in her element -- having a fantastic time at a fancy party, in a dress that was tailored just for her.

She loved a good time. The gold lamé purse and gloves in this picture were one of many sets, and on Saturday evenings when she dressed to go out, I would try them on.

But a good time was just as easily had in a camper trailer.

Or fooling around with your children. Here she is with my sister:

And with me, and a family friend. What is she doing? Who knows. But I clearly think she’s the bee’s knees.

She had a million funny phrases. One day after grocery shopping and before going out for the evening she asked us to "throw the groceries in the cupboard while I pop in the tub" --- we complied with her wishes exactly, and while she made us clean it all up, she also had a good laugh. I still regret that we did not get "I've just popped up to heaven" carved on her gravestone.

She made bread every Monday, enough to last a family of four children a week. Every Sunday was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Her gravy was a work of art. One cousin came over after Sunday lunch for the leftover gravy, on a Yorkshire pudding if he was lucky, or a piece of that homemade bread. Once he had it on angel food cake.

She had a temper too. Here she is with my brothers and me in a pram, waiting with pursed lips for my grandfather to take a picture.

But her laughter, her great sense of fun, the ways she fed and nourished those she loved; those are the things that I remember most about my mother. Those are the things I like to think she gave me.

It was she and I alone together at the beginning, and again at the end.

Happy Birthday Mom.