A Better Late than Never Tribute for Mother's Day by John Brady

LUCY BURDETTE: Last winter I convinced my hub John to take Hallie's class on narrative writing while she was in Key West. He was dubious, but he loved it! His essay about his mother turned out so well that I asked him if I could share it with you.

The Day My Mother Chose the Frying Pan by John Brady

 Mom, stirring her ersatz version of goulash, paused. In our Pennsylvania kitchen my older brother Bob was recounting what he had heard was going on behind Russia’s Iron Curtain: “Those kids have to report their parents to the police if they say something bad about the government.” Mom interrupted her cooking and looked at us: “They could put me in this frying pan before I turned in any of you.”

Dorothy Lindsay Brady - 1913-2015

The image of our mother squeezed into a pan, naked, seared into our young brains. We were stunned, and proud. Wow, she would do anything to protect us.

Both our mom and our dad were children of the Depression, with the emotional scars to prove it. Whereas Dad was a champion kidder, our mom’s personality had square corners. There wasn’t always a middle ground.

She always wanted the best for us. I think she only stopped begging me to “take a math class” after I got my first job out of graduate school. But if someone outside the family said something bad about one of her chicks, look out!

Mom was a natural teacher. “Down the ramp and you’ll be OK,” she coaxed, pushing the little blue bike we all learned on. Then, there I was, flying down Main Street on a two-wheeler!

We normally walked the mile to St. Titus School. But if it was raining, she stuffed the seven of us into our Pontiac station wagon. With her I had to be careful what I wished for. If I pretended to be sick to stay home from school, that might mean a day of licking S & H Green Stamps and pasting them into books.

Mom’s job was more mundane, and a lot harder than Dad’s. After my seventh sibling was born, she got terribly sick. A flotilla of casseroles and Jell-O concoctions arrived at our door. We were all scared; I thought she had polio. After that, Mom quit smoking those Pall Malls, and she got some household help.

Mom grew up on a large ranch in Oklahoma. She was a great horsewoman. She drove competently and fearlessly, so much more confident than most women of her time. She was also a natural athlete - good at tennis, and an amazing putter in golf. She had a hole-in-one in her 80s and came close to shooting her age.

After WWII she came back East to my father’s hometown with many important life skills. When confronted with a live chicken that was wanted on the dinner table, she promptly wrung its neck, which quickly impressed her new father-in-law.

There was only one time I remember seeing her cry. We were at her mother’s house in Oklahoma. Walking into the kitchen, I found her sobbing against her sister Tess’s shoulder. Today, I think she was overwhelmed with her responsibilities, and hated being so far away from her mother and family. At the time, it was frightening to see.

Mom tried to make time for all of us. When I was in the first grade, I complained that all the other kids’ mothers met them as they came out of school. Shortly thereafter, there she was, pushing Lewis or Lisa in a baby carriage up to the steps.

Dorothy had always wanted to have fun. She hated the idea of people just standing around at parties, so hers were memorable affairs that always featured a game, like charades. The passing of years softened her square corners, too. She became less serious… the sense of humor that had always been there emerged… she could laugh at herself as well as at others.

Her grandchildren loved her. No wonder, she knew them from their beginning. When a new grandchild was born, mom packed up her bags and arrived to “get that baby on a schedule.” Was that helpful? Yes! When mom left after getting our first child, Molly all set up, Jana wept.

One of the hardiest laughs I ever heard from her came shortly after she had a stroke at age 102. She had just heard that Donald Trump was running for President. Mom, a lifelong Democrat - she thought the idea preposterous!

Shortly thereafter, she went into a coma. But ever-protective, she wasn’t going anywhere until all of her chicks had arrived. Only then would she set out on her journey to the next world.

If you were telling a story about your mother, where would you start?

Follow John on his Substack

Celebrating Other Mothers

Lucy with mom and grandmother

 LUCY BURDETTE: John and I went to a tennis event over Mother’s Day weekend with a handful of other couples in the Poconos some years back. I have lovely memories about the weekend, but one thing stuck out--they gave flowers to every woman there. No inquiry as to whether we were biological mothers, as it was assumed (I imagined anyway) that every woman does her share of mothering. In my own life I had a funny, warm mother, but she died when I was in my early twenties. So I had other mothering figures who mattered too. There was a therapist who made a huge difference in helping me understand my history and how it impacted my life. There were teachers who were kind and encouraging. My stepmother treated each kid in my family as if we belonged to her, too. And my dad did his share of mothering after my mother was gone. So that’s the topic for today Reds, a salute to all kinds of mothers. Do tell us about yours!

JENN McKINLAY: I’ve been fortunate to have many motherly figures in my life in addition to my own mom, who is amazing, and my mother-in-law, also amazing. But the one who sticks out is Cay Culberston. She was a transplanted Iowan that I met in Phoenix in 1993 when I began to work for the library system. She had three kids my age (mid-20’s at the time), and she took in my lost expression and folded me and my friend Carole, whose mother had recently passed, right into her family. No hesitation.

We played cards, went to movies, watched the Phoenix Suns, and threw ridiculous parties. She knew every single person who worked for the library as she flitted from department to department, making everyone smile or laugh. When something particularly amused her, she’d pat you on the back so hard the force would knock you forward a few feet. I used to call her butternut, because she had a favorite comfy outfit in the color of a butternut squash. That nickname made her laugh, and she always sent me forward with a hearty thump. It’s been almost nineteen years since she passed, but her words of wisdom are some of my greatest treasures and I’ve passed them on to the Hooligans as needed. And with that legacy, she lives on and is always there just when I need her most.

HALLIE EPHRON: I give my mother complete credit for encouraging me and my three sisters to write. To ignore barriers and barge ahead with supreme confidence. To crack wise and often. As a career woman she was way ahead of her time. But for actual mothering, aka nurturing, I’d never have survived if it hadn’t been for Evelyn Hall and Amelia James Evans, Black women who kept our household stable when it was really anything but. I adored them in what then seemed like an uncomplicated way, not so uncomplicated now, looking back. I’m so grateful.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ah, well? I don’t really have any nurturing experiences like that.  My mom was smart and beautiful and always wanted me to have and be the best. Which meant--what she thought was best, which she often told me. And nothing, no matter how good, was ever good enough. She was right about a lot of things, sure, and I often wish I could tell her so. But cozy nurturing enthusiastic approval? Ah, no. 

My mothers-in-law?  The first one was not happy with me because I was not the sort of person she’d imagined her son marrying.  She didn’t really discuss that--or anything--with me.

The second one was not happy with me because I was not the sort of person she’d imagined her son marrying. And she told me about that quite a bit. 

My third mother in law--who was hilarious and brilliant and unpredictable--was not happy with me because she was not happy about anything. Her first words on meeting me: “My, you’re a big one, aren’t you?” 

RHYS BOWEN: my mom was not cozy either although we became close when I grew up. I was raised by my grandmother and great aunt as my mother always worked. Nanny was the one who sat me on her knee and read to me. Blind aunt Sarah ( known as Min to the family) told me stories and played games of pretend with me. I adored them both, also my godmother, Aunt Gwladys who would whisk me off to heady things like restaurants where you sat on cushions or plays or a trip around Italy. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My mom always worked, too, and it was my grandmother, "Nanny," who was the "other mother" in my life. She lived with us from the time I was born and I adored her. We read together, planned globe-trotting adventures together. She was always the one who comforted and encouraged me. I'm sure I didn't tell her often enough how special she was!

Reds, please share with us your stories about other mothers in your lives!

Mothers in Fiction

 LUCY BURDETTE: it’s Mother’s Day, and we celebrate all of the wonderful mothers in our clan! But we also realize that mothering comes in many shapes and sizes. Even if you didn’t have a perfect mother, or wish you done things better, we can always admire mothers in fiction. So that’s today’s subject – tell us about a mother who caught your eye and why.

The first one that came to my mind was the character of Maria in the ​S​ound of ​Music. J​ohn​ and I saw this show again this past winter – a wonderful production in Key West​.​ I knew the musical well because I played Brigitta in our high school version.​ ​​(The peak of my acting career LOL.)​ Seeing it again so many years later, I was struck by Maria’s powerful mothering instinct for the children who are her charges. ​She explains them to their own father, she manages to win over even the impossible teenager, she herds them all to safety when the Nazis threaten. She's totally too good to be true--but hey, it's fiction!​

HALLIE EPHRON: Such a good question. The mother who comes to mind is Ma, the mother of 5-year-old Jack in Emma Donoghue's ROOM. She tries to create a "normal" loving environment for her child in a situation that is anything but normal. The grandmother in Roald Dahl's THE WITCHES. She smokes cigars and loves her grandson even after he's been turned into a mouse.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Hmm. Very thought-provoking! And since the only mother that instantly springs to mind is Calpurnia -who is not Jem and Scout's mother, of course, and Atticus Finch-as-mother, whose wife haunts him--you'd think there would be more good mother figures. I'm really thinking about this now. Mother's are often nags, or dismissed, or crazy or creepy or obsessed (TRUST ME) or simply not pivotal.  Someone to be gotten away from. Hmm.  Am I wrong? Help me, Reds and readers. Seriously. I think we Reds ought to do an anthology to full that gap. 

RHYS BOWEN: the quintessential awful mother is Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Poor Lizzie... Complete embarrassment! But she is so well written that she is not over the top,but quite identifiable. I'm also thinking of Georgie's mother in my Royal Spyness books. Completely self absorbed, incapable of any mothering. Also rich, gorgeous and a man-magnet. Poor Georgie... But she makes for great comedy and drama. I was trying to think of good mothers. Little House on the Prairie? But she is too passive. She should have stopped her husband from dragging them all over the country!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've been mulling over this for days. It's made me realize how seldom we see fully-realized mothers in fiction. On the classics side, I thought of Mrs. March, in Little Women. She worries, she grieves, she has a temper--she's human and fallible. And, later, in Jo's Boys, Jo herself is a mother. In a little less classic example, there's Mrs. Murray in A Wrinkle in Time. She's a scientist, so we do get the sense that she has a life outside of her role as mother of Charles Wallace, Meg, and the twins. And what about Mrs. Weasley, in the Harry Potter books?


But these are all, except for Jo March in Jo's Boys, peripheral characters. This has seemed especially true in crime fiction, and I was thinking about it quite a few years ago when I created Gemma James. I wanted to write a woman who was ambitious and good at her job, but whose role as a mother is an integral part of her story and her identity. I hope I've succeeded. Rhys's Molly Murphy is another great example--I would love to see more!

LUCY: Debs, can't believe we didn't come up with those two!! And of course we are looking forward to more of Clare as mother...

JENN McKINLAY: Such a good question! Of course, if we're talking Disney mothers, they're dead, or if she's a stepmother, she's evil. You gotta love the consistency. As for fully realized fictional moms, I love the Anne of Green Gables series in its entirety, and Anne becomes a wonderful mother after being an orphan. She reminds me of Deb's pick Jo in Jo's Boys. Other moms I get a kick out of are, Stephanie Plum's mom in Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter series. She's just so relatable to every mom I knew growing up. I also love Susan Elizabeth Phillips's depictions of moms as she really gives them the complexity a mama character requires, plus, she's wickedly funny.

Okay Reds, your turn to tell us about a fictional mother who caught your eye and why. And happy Mother's Day to everyone who mothers in whatever form that may take...

Accidental Mothers

Mary Jane with Lucy's mom

LUCY BURDETTE: Some years ago, John and I went to a resort in the Poconos with a group of friends over Mother's Day weekend.  We played tennis and ate well, though the resort was well past its heyday and beginning to crumble. One of the nice touches was that all of the women received a rose for Mother's Day. No one asked whether we had biological children or stepchildren or grandchildren. The assumption was that all the women deserved a rose. And that got me thinking about how mothering figures come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes in the shape of a teacher or a therapist  or a grandparent or neighbor or a sister, or even a father. I thought it might be interesting today to talk about a mother figure in our lives who is/was not our actual mother. (Though if you'd rather talk about your mother, that's fine too!) 

The photo I've shared is of my mother with her best friend Mary Jane, who was our next-door neighbor for many years when we kids were growing up. She had her own five children, but she was kind and welcoming to all of us as well. And many years later, after my mother and her husband had both died, she became my stepmother.  She was lots of fun and she opened her heart to my siblings and me, as she had when we were children. She loved to dance. I can remember so clearly the day we took MJ and my dad to see STRICTLY BALLROOM (a great upbeat movie, by the way!) As we came out of the theater, she turned to my father and said: “Throw away your cane, old man, and let’s dance!” It was pretty special to have a stepmother whom we'd known almost our whole lives, who had a shared history, and who had known my mother quite well.  So today I'd like to raise a teeny tiny glass of wine to Mary Jane (as we used to tease her, since she was a tiny person)…

How about you Reds? Who would you like to remember?

JENN MCKINLAY: When I first moved to Arizona, I was lucky enough to get a job working for the Phoenix Public Library system. One of the first people I met, who became a surrogate mom to me, was a woman named Cay Culbertson. She had short gray hair, glasses, and a laugh that barked out of her. And when you really made her laugh, she'd slap you on the back so hard she'd send you across the room. She had three grown children but she made room for me in her family, as well as anyone else who needed a mom. She took the time to meet everyone and get to know them, to make them feel welcome and that they belonged. She was a fierce protector of her people but had great humor and could laugh at herself, even when she locked herself out of her car for the millionth time. When she passed, it was a crushing blow that rippled through the library system and positively gutted all of us. The piece of advice she gave me that I hold most dear and frequently refer to was when her son, about thirty at the time, started to have seizures for no explicable reason. I asked her how she was dealing with the worry and she said, "Well, I turn it over to God and then ten minutes later I do it again." I'm not particularly religious, but I've never forgotten that or her and I never will.

Debs with Nanny and cousin Meredith

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I would raise that mothering glass to my grandmother, without a doubt. Lillian Lorraine Dozier, nee Jordan, mother of four, of whom my mom was the second eldest. To me, she was never anything but Nanny. Widowed during the Depression, she somehow managed to raise her kids, and somewhere along the way, when the kids were grown, she got a teaching certificate and left Texas for California. This is the part of her life about which I know so little, and sadly, all her children are gone now, so there's no one to ask. I do know that when I was born, she came back to Texas and moved in my family. We shared a room the first few years until my parents added a wing to the house for her. She was my primary caretaker, my best friend, my supporter, my counselor. She taught me to read and to be interested in everything. We planned world adventures with a globe and issues of National Geographic. She was fascinated by Egypt, but the longest journey I remember her taking was by train to a spa in Mineral Wells. I was with her when she died at eighty-six of congestive heart failure. It took me another ten years to write my first novel, but I was thinking of her, knowing she would be cheering me on. So, cheers to you, Nanny, and a dozen roses, too.

Hallie and her mother

HALLIE EPHRON: My mother, bless her heart, had barely a nurturing bone in her body. Somehow she ended up having four of us. Fortunately she and my father made a good living as screenwriters so we had help. World Class Help. The mothering I got was from the lovely Evelyn Hall, who worked for my family for more than 40 years, and Amelia James Evans who took care of me when I was little. They were smart and cozy and when you were with them you felt safe.

RHYS BOWEN: My own mother wasn't exactly the warm and cuddly type either. She worked from the moment I was born but I was raised by two wonderful women, my grandmother and great aunt. Nanny was soft and gentle and I don't ever remember her ever raising her voice. My great aunt Sarah Ann (known to the family as Min) was blind, extremely well-read and kept me occupied with stories she made up as well as books she remembered plus games of pretend in which I was always the heroine...fairy princess, good queen, and she was always the villain--evil fairy, bad queen, or poor old woman gathering sticks. She had a phenomenal memory and when she couldn't sleep she would recite whole Shakespeare plays to herself. My story-telling gene clearly came from her.

Hank and her mother

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Rhys, that is astonishing. Yes, indeed, you had wonderful teachers. As for my mom? Yeah, not so cuddly.  My mom was so smart, and very chic, and worldly and artistic--but I don't think I can remember a time when I was growing up that she said to me: good job, honey! (Is that fair?) One of her favorite comments was: "I'm not criticizing, I'm observing."  My Gramma Minnie, also not cuddly, was pretty great--she taught me to knit and crochet and type. Oh, on her Underwood typewriter that was in a kind of suitcase thing. I loved it, and used to type like mad, mostly copying the vocabulary words in Readers Digest.  But who I would remember is my mom, no question. You don't have to be cuddly to be formative. I think of her, and am grateful to her, every day.

INGRID THOFT: I’ve been wracking my brain trying to name some mother figures in my life, and I think I’m coming up empty because I hit the lottery in the mother department.  I really can’t say enough good things about my mom; being her daughter is one of the greatest blessings of my life.  One of the many things I love about her is her sense of adventure.  She is extremely curious and loves to travel and learn about other cultures.  She traveled to the Soviet Union when it was the Soviet Union and to India.  More recently, we’ve been to Vietnam, Greece, Turkey, and just over a year ago, we traveled to Spain, just the two of us.  We rented a car and drove through the south of Spain, which was exciting and occasionally nerve-wracking.  One afternoon, we found ourselves inching our car down the circular tunnel of an underground parking garage in Ronda.  The walls were so close, we contemplated that it might be our final resting place!  We survived with another great travel story to add to our repertoire!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Ingrid, we hit the same lottery - my mother has been cuddly when I needed it and a boot in the butt when I needed that. I was also fortunate to have three very different, very influential grandmothers: Grandma Greuling, Grandmother Spencer and Grandma Fleming. The former, my mother's mother, was twig-thin, highly opinionated, sharp as a tack and enormously house-proud. It's because of her I live in a 200 year-old-house. 

Grandmother Spencer, also known as Spencie and Maw Maw, was my southern grandma, plump and soft as a featherbed, who read her bible every evening and would set tables groaning with the most amazing southern food. No matter how old she got, she always took great care with her appearance; hat, shoes and bag, powder and lipstick. When you look at me, you can see her - I won the Spencer side in the gene pool. 

My Grandma Fleming came into my life when I was in my early teens, moving close to our house after my folks got married. I would stop by after school for cookies and to tell her how my life was going that day. She was an excellent audience for a dramatic teen, a combination of sympathetic and no-nonsense. I created a character modeled on her in my novels - Russ Van Alstyne's mother Margy.

Jungle reds, tell us about a mothering figure in your life!

Songs for Mothers

LUCY BURDETTE: With Mother's Day coming tomorrow, who could resist a collection of songs about mothers? I know not everyone had a perfect mother, or was a perfect mother, though sometimes we get lucky with other kinds of mother figures. (More on that tomorrow...)

Here are three songs that span a range. The first one is a sweet song from three of my favorite women. The second is a cautionary tale from the Stones. And the third is about a different kind of mother--I hope this duo knocks your socks off the way it did mine!



What songs would you add to a Mother's Day playlist? 

PS Daniele K is the winner of Sherry Harris's A GOOD DAY TO BUY--CONGRATS! Contact Sherry to arrange the drop: sngrad at aol dot com.

A special treat for a special day

HALLIE EPHRON: Happy Mother's Day! To celebrate, my sweet husband gave me the most gorgeous bouquet of yellow roses -- my favorite kind. We're celebrating double: Mother's Day and our anniversary. We were actually married on Mother's Day in 1969.

Today I'm remembering my mom, Phoebe Ephron, who taught me to savor well turned phrases and to appreciate really good, really REAL food. The perfect Mother's Day present for her would have been a bowl of home-roasted almonds, roasted in olive and salted with coarse salt so they come out like pricey Marcona almonds. (She wouldn't have turned her nose up at a few ounces of Beluga caviar. She loved salt.)

So, in honor of her, here's how:

Phoebe Ephron's "Marcona" almonds

1 lb. of unroasted (raw) almonds, skin on
A few tablespoons of olive oil
Kosher salt

1. Boil the almonds in water for a minute (not longer).
2. Drain them and run them under cold water and pat dry.
3. Use your fingers to pinch each almond, gently squeezing the almonds from its skin. (Time out for a contest to see how far you can shoot one across the room.) Discard skins.
4. Dress the almonds lightly with olive oil so each is lightly coated.5. Spread them on a cookie sheet,  sprinkle them with kosher salt to taste, and bake in a 350-degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
6. Cool and eat, one at a time, savoring each one with a sip of champagne.

So what would be the treat you wish someone would make for you on your special day?

Happy Mother's Day!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My dear hubby has a thing about not celebrating what he calls "Hallmark

Holidays" which include Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. (However, he has no strenuous objection if someone does something nice for him on Father's Day...)

Fortunately my daughter doesn't share his view. My daughter and I belong to the "any excuse to celebrate" club, as did my mom. The three of us always did something fun or special, even if the last few years for my mom that meant Mother's Day Tea at the nursing home.

This will be our first year without her, but my daughter and I have plans to have a late Sunday lunch/early supper (I'll be flying in from California) at our favorite Mexican restaurant. We are  hoping for good patio weather, and will have guacamole, and shrimp brochette, and Mambo Limos, which are topnotch frozen margaritas with a swirl of Chambord. Husbands are included, even mine, who gets to be designated driver, his reward for being testy.

But I say why not take every opportunity to celebrate those we love--mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, special aunts and uncles and grandparents and friends?

REDS, do you celebrate "Hallmark Holidays?"

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Mother's Day I get flowers from my sweet husband (tulips, please...) and calls from my kids. On Father's Day I cook something special for Jerry (pate, or lobster bisque, or gateau St. Honore...) and HE gets calls from the kids.  

If Hallmark depended on us it would go out of business. My husband draws cards. I get one for Christmas, New Year, Valentine's Day, Groundhog Day, and my birthday. And I've kept every single one he's ever made me. Here's one he did for me on an anniversary... just to give you a taste.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I am terrible about Hallmark Holidays. I forget family members' birthdays, I don't celebrate my own anniversary, and I had to look up right now to see that Mother's Day, is, in fact, May 11 (I'm writing this several days ahead, and a good thing, too! I can still send my mom something!) Seriously, internet ordering and overnight shipping are the only things that save me from being a total pariah. I just seem to be missing the part of my brain that says "This date! Be happy now!" Maybe I've got holidaylexia? I also don't decorate for Halloween, Easter or Independence Day.

That being said, I usually send my mother flowers or a flowering plant in Mother's Day, since her condo rules prevent her from doing much of the gardening she used to enjoy. In my household, Ross browbeats the kids into creating handmade cards, which I confess I do cherish. Some flowers from our garden, which is always beautiful this time of year, he makes lunch after church, and we call it good.

RHYS BOWEN: My husband didn't believe in Mother's Day, since it wasn't celebrated in England. He thought it was one of those commercial holidays. When my favorite aunt was still alive she would send the children money for me to celebrate English Mothering Sunday in March. I would be lured out of the house while the kids prepared an excellent tea. It was a lot of fun. Since my kids are now grown they have been very sweet about remembering Mother's Day. In fact Dominic is coming over to cook me a special dinner on Sunday.

And my kids always made handmade cards for everything, Julia. I also have a box of them which I treasure. This is great as John is hopeless about holidays. The day before our anniversary he'll say "Oh, I suppose you want a card?"  How I wished for that fantasy husband who would show up with arms full of roses, strew the bed with rose petals, light candles, play romantic music, whisk me off to Hawaii.... does he exist?

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: We do NOT celebrate the holidays in our house with Hallmark cards, ever. Having the kiddo around certainly makes holidays more fun, so my husband and I have split the difference — he does all the crafts, etc. and I make the food. Divide and conquer! But no Hallmark cards or fancy presents, no. No crazy outlays of money. And I'm perfectly happy with that.

Miss Edna and I are absolutely delighted with our homemade cards on Mother's Day as well as a brunch (where we don't have to do anything but sit and look pretty — the guys will clean and cook). Lemon cake has become a tradition — let's see if the guys whip one up this year.

I don't even buy cards (for any holiday) anymore — do you know the mark-up on a greeting card is 400% Save a tree! Use an e-card! (I like paperlesspost.com.)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I've said to Jonathan for years--I absolve you of any responsibility for Hallmark holidays. It seems so artificial -- if the commercial universe has to bop you over the head to remind you to tell someone you love them, that's too bad.

And my mother--in this photo, we are at my fifth (or so, what do you think?) birthday (NOT a hallmark holiday, I might add)--used to say: Every day is Mother's Day." I can still hear her saying it!

(And how did you like the punctuation in that sentence?)

DEBS: Oh, my gosh, Hank, that is the most adorable picture! And your mom was gorgeous--we can tell where you get your looks!

I totally agree with your mom, every day is Mother's Day, but I'm still happy for an excuse for a little special time with my lovely daughter. Every year I feel more and more blessed to have been cherished by my mother and my grandmother, and I hope I've given the same gift to my daughter.

Readers, we wish you the best today, however you may spend it.

Mothers In Law

LUCY BURDETTE:  I was clearing out some overstuffed folders on my desk when I came across this photo. You will see immediately why I had to blog about it. The dilemma became, is this a blog about mothers-in-law? Or hats? With Mother's Day on the horizon, I opted for mothers-in-law.

This photo is early in my relationship with Dorothy. John and I had each been married before--I know she was worried about whether I'd be good for him. Whether this time he'd picked the right woman. Two years after we were married, I invited Dorothy to a member-guest golf tournament at our club.  I was a very new golfer and nervous about everything. Would we get along? Would I play well enough to avoid humiliation? (Apparently I wasn't worried about the hat.)

That morning at breakfast we exchanged dreams. I dreamed that we got hopelessly lost on the golf course. She dreamed that they told her she was too old to play. We laughed and laughed. And then we were assigned to play with elderly twins, who were dreadful golfers but quite entertaining. We still love reliving that day--it definitely cemented our friendship.

She is almost 101 now (can you imagine) and still sharp as a tack. She keeps tabs on her seven kids and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren and has lots of opinions about life. (One of my other favorite memories was arriving at her apartment during the last presidential race. She was so relieved to have another Obama supporter in the room to help the president make it through the last debate.) I consider myself very lucky in the mother-in-law department!

What about you Reds, mother in law or even daughter in law stories? It's not an easy job either way...

HALLIE EPHRON: My mother-in-law, Freda, was a lovely woman and a terrific grandma to our two girls. Even in her 90s she could walk my feet off in the mall. She'd been quite a looker in her youth, and took a long time to settle down and get married. Her mother used to sew her outfits -- she'd bring her a picture of what she wanted and her mother would whip it up. Her mother was a terrific cook.

Neither cooking nor sewing got passed down to Freda. Her one culinary success was meatballs. Easiest recipe ever. 1 pound of chopped meat rolled into 1" balls. Put them in a sauce pan. Dump over them 8-12 ounces of canned Hunts Tomato Sauce, a good handful of brown sugar, and about 1/4 cup of vinegar. Cook slowly for about an hour and serve over rice. Yummy.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I loved my mother-in-law, Ida,  but she was truly fierce, and quite the piece of work. She was assistant principal at VanBuren High School in New York City, and also a licensed marriage and family counselor. (You'll see why that's funny in a moment.) Like all intellectuals at the time  (in the fifties), she and her husband flirted with Communism.  I asked her, fascinated, about the "meetings." Did they really advocate the overthrow of the US Government?" She said "Mostly the women made coffee." 

Jonathan's mom

 She was a wonderful poet, truly gifted. She took classes in French (she was fluent)  and in Human Sexuality (no comment) at Hunter College when she was well into her nineties, and died at 94.

However. She could be so opinionated that after the weekend I met her, Jonathan's friends all called him to see if I had survived. Everyone knew about "Black Thanksgiving," after which, as a result of Ida's inability to see the other side of any question or to believe that she might be wrong, the entire family and a whole group of friends stopped talking to each other for a year. Once, when a family member (not me), failed to send her a thank you note, she also stopped talking to them. (I'm not sure the person was upset by that.)
When she first saw me, she said "My, you're a big one, aren't you?"  I absolutely miss her. 

Shirley Dale Wilson, dancing with Dr. Paul Kincaid Wilson.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've had two. My ex--former (?) mother-in-law is German, a war refugee who met my ex-husband's father after WWII when he was in the British army and she was in a refugee camp.  She was QUITE difficult and didn't like me at all.  I see now that she had her reasons, but it was a rocky relationship that eventually improved, then went south with the divorce.  She's 93 now, the same age as my mother would have been, and still sharp as a tack. In spite of past disagreements, I miss her, and have great admiration for the things she endured in her life.

Now, mother-in-law #2, Lee, I have known since I was a teenager.  I also envy the fact that she was incredibly glamorous when she was young! She puts up with the fact that I'm always busy and never have as much time as I'd like to spend with the family.  This Christmas, the first without my mom, she gave me a huge hug and said, "Deb, I'm your mother now."

RHYS BOWEN: I was terrified to meet my mother-in-law. I married John in Australia and then moved to California so it was over a year before I met my new relatives. But I heard enough about her--what a wonderful cook she was, how organized she was, what a gracious hostess--pictures of how elegant she looked when she attended high level functions around the world, and wintered in Barbados, and had ancestors who owned Sutton Place and various other stately homes. When I met her she turned out to be gracious but sensitive. They came over for the birth of our first child and she said, "Let me know what you'd like me to handle while you're resting. Shall I just take over the cooking and leave you time with the baby?"

And she was a fabulous cook. Absolutely fabulous. It was her raison d'etre. She had a housekeeper and so all her energy and creativity was focused on her cooking. For lunch she would make one sauce for the meat, one for the vegetables, brilliant desserts, little cakes for tea. My mouth still waters when I think about her food. And I have a big book of recipes that she wrote out for me.  I don't make them often because they are all complicated and require zillions of ingredients and hours of preparation.

It was only after she died, rather young, that I realized what a lonely life she led. My father-in-law had a distinguished career and was involved in a life that didn't usually include her. Her children went to boarding school. She had no real friends. No wonder cooking made her feel useful during those long days.  The other thing I discovered about her was that she looked so distinguished and upper class but she loved dirty jokes and had this barmaid's laugh.  She was also a lovely grandma, although she never let me really get close to her. 

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: My mother-in-law, Miss Edna, has had a difficult week, but is doing much better now. She says "Cheers, darlings" — and is busy reading Beatriz Williams's THE SECRET LIFE OF VIOLET GRANT.

LUCY: So glad she's feeling better! Cheers back at you Edna! xo

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I've never had a mother-in-law. Ross's mother died shortly after he and I started dating - she had been in a nursing home due to her multiple sclerosis and passed on from pneumonia. But I did have the most fabulous father-in-law a bride could ask for. Victor was funny, opinionated, high-handed and generous to a fault. He loved me and his grandkids (and his sons, of course.)  Thanks to his desire to combine his two passions, family and travel, we went to Cancun regularly, to Key West, skiing in Montreal, on safari to Africa, and twice to Hawaii. When he died, too young, at 68, he didn't leave us much in the way of money or possessions. He had already given away what was most valuable: his time and his company. When I become a mother-in-law (someday in the future, I hasten to add!) I plan to model myself on Victor.

On Mother's Day...

HALLIE EPHRON: On this Mother's Day, I thought I'd share with you my thoughts about the complicated person who was my mother.

When people ask about what it was like growing up in a family of writers, I tell them about her. Phoebe Wolkind Ephron was first generation, her mother just off the boat from Russia and pregnant with her older brother Hal (whom I am not named after, she assured me). She cracked wise like Dorothy Parker and looked like Katharine Hepburn. She marched for Sacco and Vanzetti and voted for Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party of America’s candidate for president. She hated to shop, didn’t do housework, and never chatted on the phone or met friends for lunch.

She’d had to quit work when she was pregnant with my older sister Nora. Women had to in those days when they were "with child." And just like that she went from being secretary to a top Broadway producer to walking a baby carriage up and down Riverside Park near the cramped apartment she and my father shared with her parents. She named that baby after Nora, the character who walks out on a stifling marriage in Henrik Ibsen’s play, "A Doll’s House."

Fortunately for her, my father knew better than to expect her to be a homemaker. He'd been thrown out of Cornell for stealing books and made his way to Broadway where he was a stage manager for some of the Broadway greats. But he was a closet playwright. For years been churning out plays he couldn’t convince anyone to produce. He asked my mother not to go back to work but to collaborate with him on a play.

I love imagining the conversation.

"Why not," he'd say. "I have connections."
"What, and I can type?" she'd respond.

All they needed was a great idea. And she came up with one: An unhappy new mother moves in with her parents in a cramped apartment that’s already crowded with crazy relatives. She arrives, alone and in tears with the baby and a carriage and a pile of diapers. The baby cries. The new mother cries. The maid (it seems even families in two-bedroom apartments had one in those days) quits. It’s a farce with the baby as the whoopee cushion. This was my mother’s brand of alchemy, transforming unhappiness into comedy—her ticket out.

From Broadway they moved to Hollywood where they wrote movies for Twentieth Century Fox, and never looked back.

My mother called her brand of mothering “letting them make their own mistakes.” She was fairly useless when I got my first period. Couldn’t understand why I might need a bra when I was, as she charitably put it, “flat as a pancake.” Prided herself on letting us walk to school and skipping parent-teacher night. But as a wife her views must have been more traditional because when my father cheated on her, she didn’t walk out on him. She’d lost the power that might once have enabled her to transform her own unhappiness into a hit comedy play.

Instead, she drank. She died when she was 57 years old. I was 23. Dry and mordant to the end, when she was in the hospital she said, “You’re a writer. Take notes.”

I am, and I do. I thought of her often as I reimagined the end of her life in my novel "There Was an Old Woman." Of course I think of her on Mother's Day.

Tell us about your mother, and what thoughts you have about her this Mother's Day.

Elizabeth Benedict's "What My Mother Gave Me"

HALLIE EPHRON: Just in time for Mother's Day comes a wonderful collection of essays, What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most (Algonquin paperback) edited by Elizabeth Benedict. It's all about the presents our mothers gave us that have served as a model, a metaphor, or a touchstone in our own lives. The 31 essays range from funny to poignant to heartbroken, and on through a gamut of emotions.

For me, there's no doubt that my mother's gift was books. She doled them out to me and my sisters the way other mothers might give out toys or candy. And, whether it was intentional or not, they almost always featured strong female characters.

From little Madeline who was not afraid of the lion in the zoo, to Dorothy Gale who faced down the wicked witch of the west, to Eloise who turned the Plaza Hotel into her own personal playground, these were characters who provided a model for the women we could be... and also, it turned out, for the women we could write about.

Sadly, though she was a writer, she never shared her own story -- what it had been like growing up, being a woman screenwriter in 1950s Hollywood -- and she died much too young. So the books and those characters that she loved, too, are my placeholders.

Welcome, today, to Elizabeth Benedict! Liz, what was the inspiration for this anthology?

ELIZABETH BENEDICT: It began with a beautiful scarf, the last gift my mother gave me. She bought it from a holiday vendor who came to the assisted living facility where she lived before she moved to a nursing home. 

I began wearing it on my winter coat, and wherever I went, people often said, “What a beautiful scarf. Where did you get it?”

I longed for a simple answer – say, “Bloomingdales” – but there was nothing simple about this story, especially after my mother died. 

I had had a loving but distant relationship with her, but because I was so physically close to the scarf, wearing it around my neck and wrapped around my face when it was cold, I was baffled by my attachment.

I spoke to absolutely no one about this, even my husband, because I didn’t have the words to articulate these conflicted feelings. 

One day I wondered if other women have a gift from their mothers, a gift that opens up into the entire relationship the way the scarf does for me. It was my way of finding people to talk to about this!

HALLIE: Can you tell us a little about your essay that's in the book?

LIZ: My essay goes over some of my history with my mother, and how my relationship to her changed in the last few years of her life. I wrote it after receiving and editing the other 30 essays in the book. I only had a few days before I had to hand in the entire manuscript, and I knew the only way for me to write the essay was to give myself this tight deadline – and to be as candid as the other writers had been in their essays. I don’t think I could have written the same essay if I hadn’t had the examples of the other contributors.

HALLIE: You have an incredible lineup of authors. Was there a piece that especially surprised and delighted you?

LIZ: I was thrilled by each essay, because of the incredible variety of gifts – and the stories and

revelations that come out of them. But as far as delight, I’ll mention Rita Dove’s piece about getting a box of usual-colored nail polish when she was 15. She had to beg her mother to buy her the green and blue polishes, and her mother finally relented, not thinking they would lead to anything serious.

In fact, her elaborately colored nail have become Rita Dove’s signature, and a symbol for her of her mother allowing her to move into adulthood in her own way.
Another kind of delight is from Lisa See’s essay about her mother Carolyn See giving her the gift of writing. Carolyn passed on the lesson to write 1000 words a day – no matter what – and a charming note to someone who intimidates you.

HALLIE: Some of the essays have a dark side, too. An example?

LIZ: Judith Hillman Paterson’s mother died of alcoholism when she was 31 and Judith was nine. The gift she wrote about was a year of sobriety that Judith remembered decades later and that she revisits with aching tenderness in the essay. 



Mary Gordon’s mother only used to give her money as gifts – sometimes checks - when Mary barely knew what money was. Mary was bitter about this, even as an adult. In the course of the essay, I can see some of the bitterness dissolve as she remembers the day her mother took off from work and took her daughter on the Circle Line boat around Manhattan.

HALLIE: Tell us where you will be appearing in the weeks to come.

LIZ: This coming week, as it leads up to Mother’s Day, is the last week of the formal tour.

• Tues. May 7th 6.30, New York Society Library, 53 E. 79th St., NY NY, RESERVATIONS REQUIRED - Margo Jefferson, Martha McPhee, Roxana Robinson, and Liz.
• Thurs. May 9, 7:30pm, Greenlight Books, Fulton St. Brooklyn, Join Mary Morris, Maud Newton, Elissa Schappell, Emma Straub, and Liz.   

Visit the book's tumblr site to see photographs of the gifts in the book and photos of some of the mothers and daughters – and to submit a photo of a gift from your mother with a brief story about it.

HALLIE: And here on Jungle Red, share: What's one gift your mother gave you?