As someone who had the great good fortune to have had a remarkable mother, a woman who embraced being my Mother by providing unconditional love and support for my various activities and decisions over the course of my life, I approach the subject of motherhood with the knowledge that this does not apply to everyone.
I have friends whose mothers were true horror stories. One wonders how they survived theirs. And, of course, I can only approach the topic from a son’s point of view. A mother’s relationship with a daughter may differ, but I cannot speak to it. Daughters, too, have benefitted or paid a price for their mothers.
What struck me as I contemplated the forthcoming Mother’s Day was the way my Mother, born in the early 1900’s, both loved being a mother and, well before the woman’s movement that demanded equality, was in the adult school workplace teaching the art of gourmet cuisine for some three decades.
Rebecca acquired a great following and her classes were always sold out. Mother, who occasionally expressed regret she had not attended college, had an encyclopedic knowledge, not only of food, but of wines. Not only would she author two cookbooks, she would become the first woman board member of the Sommelier Society of America.
Need it be said that dinner was the highlight of our days together, Mother, my Father, Robert, and myself. An older brother was largely gone out of our lives as the result of service in the Army and marriage shortly thereafter.