Today is my mothers birthday. She would have turned 56 today. I'm not gonna do the sad thing, but rather remember her life. It's so easy to get into remembering how a person died and everything around that, people seem to forget how their loved once lived. Shame. My mother had her flaws, she was human, not a goddess and judging by mythologies from around the world, being a goddess is really not a free pass on perfection anyway. Anywho... remembering my mothers birthdays from when i was a kid, they come with a tiiiiny bit of jealousy. Fact is, not just my mother, but THE WHOLE REST OF MY FAMILY has their birthday in August. Being a kid, this was totally unfair to me. I don't really know why....
Mothers birthday meant cray-fish party when I was a kid. My parents birthdays and the cray-fish premiere coincided quiet well back then. But just as Christmas starts almost BEFORE All Saints Day nowadays, the cray-fish seems to show up earlier and earlier. I remember the cray-fish parties at my parents house to be rather fun. A couple of families getting together in our home, having good food and, i must admit, quite a lot of alcohol. But i can't remember getting traumatized by that, even though nowadays, the opinion on the matter here in Sweden seems to be that alcohol on a part with kids = big nono, while alcohol alone at home while the kids are asleep = ok. I don't get that...
My mom was a reader. she loved reading. she worked at a library, so she read a lot for the job. She even took books home for ME to read for her job. I should have gotten a salary. She read bedtime stories for us kids till i was.... old.... waaay to old.... can one get to old for that? I mean, here, at least in my school, we had one hour a week where the teacher would read a book out loud from some book or another. All the way up to 6th grade. I don't know what moms favorite book was, i never thought to ask her. But i do know one thing: She never liked Lord of the Rings. She never got through it. She was like most of my friends in High School; she started to read it when she was a teenager, but got so bored after having read almost a hundred pages where nothing happened. And I can understand that, nothing happens in the first hundred pages.
My mother was very active. she loved dragging me along on outings and to museums and stuff. Concerts and plays and musicals. I HATED it. And i loved it at the same time. On one hand, i was a shy girl and hated crowds and loud noises and rides. OH, MY GOD, RIDES! I hated it. Which is probably why i have only gone to Gröna Lund (old amusement park) 5 times in my whole life. On the other hand, I got to spend time with my mom. Going to small quiet museums or a day out on some island, that was fun. And the theater. We weren't avid theater visitors, seeing plays in this country is and has always been expensive. My mom, of course, went more with friends than with me, to see more "adult" plays. Theater envy set in when i was 10, I think, and she went to see The Phantom of the Opera. Without me! But the she took me to London to see The Phantom of the Opera! At their 15th year of playing. When I was 15. What a coincident.
Thinking about my mother, I think of what i think everyone thinks of when they think about their mothers: food. Cooking. Weather your mother was a brilliant cook or couldn't boil an egg without burning it, we all remember our mothers cooking. My mother was a good cook. Objectively, she wasn't brilliant or anything, she was probably quite average. But I loved her cooking. Being fair, she usually involved me in it. Which is good, its another of those things i think you should team up with you kids in. My favorite meal my mom did from scratch was that divine Hungarian Gulasch. Or maybe the Hungarian pancakes. Or, Swedish meatballs. or Italian lasagna or..... hard to choose. Both my mother and her mother, my grandmother, spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Ofte enough together. They made pancakes and meatballs and stews and roasts and soups and sweets and cakes and buns and breads and..... Especially during the summer, my grandmother practically lived in our kitchen. I think it was the farm girl in her wanting to make sure the bounty of summer wasn't spoiled. Rhubarbs and apples and pears and strawberries and raspberries and currants and cherries and gooseberries and plums became saft (juice, i don't know the difference), and pies and jam and preserves and... I wish i could do that now, too...
Well, I don't know what to say about my mother. I think mostly because it gets too close to heart. I'm bad at writing about things like that. But at least I have never been ashamed of saying: Mamma, I love you!
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