I miss my mom today.
I don't know why.
My mother died - many years ago - from a seven year battle with cancer.
She was an extraordinary woman and, I am very pleased to say, I realized this before she died and told her so.
My mother did many things that made me into the woman I am.
Making me well-rounded
My mother encouraged me academically, but also taught me an appreciation for the arts and for sport.
We would to go the theatre, to film festivals and to the public library twice a week. She made sure I took part in team sports at school, but also took me to swimming lessons, dance lessons, speech and drama lessons, tennis lessons.
The tennis lessons finally stopped when the coach took my mother aside and said:
"I can't keep taking your money, Mrs ---. Your daughter will never be a tennis player."
Making me open-minded
My mother made sure that I experienced as much as possible in spite of our conservative, suburban surroundings.
When it came to the issue of age, she took me with her when she volunteered at the retirement home, so I learnt respect for the elderly. She made sure to introduce me to people there, and leave me alone to talk with them.
One year she sent me to a film festival with her friend - let's call her Sally. Sally would buy two tickets for every film she wanted to see as soon as the festival program came out, and then try to find people to go with her. She'd always ask my mom because Sally knew she loved that stuff. I don't know why, on this particular day, my mother sent me instead of going herself. Maybe she was busy. Maybe she was tired. Maybe she saw what the film was about and sent me on purpose.
The film was about gay women, and it was graphic.
Sally was mortified in the car on the way home, apologizing to me and saying she would have to apologize to my mother. I told her my mother wouldn't mind, and I was right. But I also learnt how much my mother wanted me to learn and be open that day, when I heard her tell Sally:
"It's OK, really. She has to learn about these things. It's real life."
With the then-thorny issue of race, she taught me to treat the only black people I was exposed to - the servants in our house - with respect. I was never allowed to talk down to them or order them around like I saw some other people do in South Africa back then.
My mother had me take tea and lunch out to the man who worked in the garden, and gave me a duster to work alongside the woman who, throughout my childhood and teenage years, cleaned our house.
Although we were classified as white, and lived with all the attendant privileges, my mother made me understand and be proud of our family's mixed background.
"We," she would tell me, in that excited tone of voice you might use with a child when describing Disneyland, "are a Russian salad! We are all mixed into a lovely dish! We have all sorts of backgrounds in our family. Do you know that you have a great-great-uncle who is Chinese!"
To me, it sounded like the most amazing, exotic thing in the world.
The value of friends
My mother led by example. She had old friends and new friends, Jewish friends, Christian friends, Atheist friends, elderly friends and young friends, friends nearby she could stop by and have tea with, and friends afar she regularly wrote letters to.
She would visit an old couple from our church who couldn't drive anymore, and take them to the grocery store with her. She would invite an widowed friend - who was lonely and lived far from her children - to stay at our home for weeks at a time. She held a back-to-school celebratory tea party with the local mothers when vacation was over.
Like me, she was an immigrant, and far away from her family. Following what she showed me, I have been able, in both the UK and the US, to make a family from my friends.
Teaching me independence
My mother taught me how to stand on my own two feet.
It would take a lot for my mother to come to the school and fight with a teacher or the principal on my behalf.
"You fight your own battles, my girl," she'd tell me.
But, if I really needed her - like when I hated my science teacher and asked to change classes - she and my dad always had my back.
Part of teaching me independence was to shatter the White Knight Myth for me. Perhaps not so much anymore but, back in those days, women really did think that all they had to do was be good, kind and pretty and the white knight would ride up on this big white horse and rescue them, paying for everything as they galloped, together, to their castle in Suburbia.
When I went to university, a high proportion of the female students studied non-marketable disciplines: art, speech and drama, languages, social science. They used to call it "BA Mansoek" in Afrikaans, which translates as Bachelor of Arts in Husband Hunting.
"Don't listen to your friends' mothers," she told me. "You don't need a good man. You need a good job!"
The secrets of marriage
My mother taught me two fundamental things that help me, I think, to maintain a healthy marriage.
Mantra No. 1:
"Marriage n'est pas badinage!"
It roughly translates to "Marriage is not a joke." What she meant was that marriage takes work, and any of us in a long term relationship of any kind know that to be true!
Mantra No. 2:
"Marriage is compromise!"
Well, that doesn't take a genius to figure out. But we could all do with being reminded of that sometimes.
If I want to drive half an hour out of town to go to a dance lesson, then it isn't too much for Fluffy Bear to ask me to drive him to a drinks get together some of his friends are having. And no, I don't have to go with them - they have a hobby that I don't share.
Compromise.
The only thing I didn't learn
My mother tried to teach me how to cook, but I didn't listen. She'd invite me into the kitchen to help her, to watch, to learn, but I was too lazy, or perhaps too stupid, to take her up on the invitation.
I never realized that she had an exceptional talent in the kitchen. I thought all mothers were like her.
I passed on the chance to learn how to make some of the best food I have ever had in my life.
My mother made:
- Cheese soufflé
- Prawn cocktail
- Chicken curry
- Briyani
- Creme caramel
- Macaroni cheese
- Marinated ribs
- Smoked ham
- Pepper steak
- Chinese beef with green pepper
- Venison
- Guinea fowl
- Sweet and sour pork
- Chicken with cashew nuts
- Tripe
- Chocolate cake - the best you have ever tasted.
And these are just the things I remember off the top of my head.
Even with her old recipes I am useless in the kitchen. What is written on paper doesn't include the pinch of this and the sprinkling of that which she added to make a dish superb.
The only thing I can make well is the chocolate cake, and I'll share the recipe, below.
To sum up, my mother taught me well, and I will always be grateful to her.
I hope she's up there having someone cook for her while she sits and exchanges stories and witticisms with Daphne Du Maurier, Lawrence Olivier, Grace Kelly and the other people she admired.
Ittybittycrazy's Mother's Chocolate Cake
Mix together one cup of boiling water with half a cup of pure cocoa and leave aside.
Sift together 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 cups sugar, 3.5 teaspoons baking powder.
In the middle of the dry ingredients, make a well.
Put in 4 egg yolks and set the whites aside. Add half a cup of oil and the chocolate mixture and stir it it all into the dry ingredients.
Beat the egg whites to a soft peak, then fold into the mixture with 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.
Bake in oven at 400 degrees farenheit (200 celcius) for 25-30 minutes.
Thank you, Mom.