Last week, as I was sorting through an old box of stuff, I came across this picture of my mother, circa 1972. Isn’t she a hottie?
Not that she would want me to say that. She blushes easily, my mom. She doesn’t like the spotlight; she listens more than she talks. She is a woman of strong convictions, but she holds them quietly. More than twenty years ago, she was already passionate about natural foods, and believed that organic was the only way to go. When people challenged her on this, she blushed all the way to the roots of her glossy brown hair, but she stood her ground.
Her early influences were Adelle Davis, Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet was a bit hit in our house) and Sugar Blues by William Dufty. She joined the first Rodale Book Club, and read each month's shipment before she carefully wrapped it up and sent it back. She read everything on nutrition and health that she could get her hands on, and she sought out people with "alternative" ideas. We didn't have health insurance, but we did have cod liver oil and raw garlic and all the vegetables we could eat, thanks to my mother.
I’ll never forget riding across the countryside with her and watching her point out a crop duster hovering over the fields. “Roll up the windows," she said tersely. "He’s spraying deadly poisons all over the ground." Her voice was grave. “People are going to eat that food.” We all felt the gravity of what was taking place right in front of our eyes. “What do you think will happen to that man?” she asked us. “He’s breathing in all of those fumes. Do you think his lungs will suffer?”
Those are the kinds of conversations that stick with a person.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
{this is one of my favorite Mom stories}
After we moved to the farm, we decided to get a goat. Everything we knew about goats came from nursery books, and we therefore imagined a merry creature capering about the farm, snacking on thistles and the odd tattered shoe.
Then my father brought Cindy home. Cindy had a broad, flat nose and bristly black hair with a jagged white splotch in the center of her forehead. Her ears flopped against either side of her head, classic Nubian style. Since we didn’t have fences yet, we tied Cindy to a rope attached to a stake, the idea being that she would nibble on whatever was growing around her; we could move her around, a portable weed eater of sorts. Genius!
Alas, Cindy was only interested in the most succulent shoots of tender green grass. She wouldn’t even glance at a thistle, let alone eat it. If goats in nursery rhymes wore straw hats and ate rusty tin cans, Cindy existed to prove that fairy tales are a cruel mockery of reality.
Cindy was a cantankerous old broad at best, but she reserved her greatest ire for my mother. Whenever my mother approached, Cindy bared her lips to reveal huge, yellowed teeth; she lowered her head and pawed her foot into the ground, like a prizefighter challenging an opponent to a fight.
My mother took it personally. “Why does she hate me so much?” she wailed, but Cindy didn’t reconsider.
One mild afternoon, my mother looped a basket over her arm and stepped outside to harvest some lettuce. She hummed as she clipped, unaware that her nemesis had just managed to wrench free from the harness. She looked up just in time to see Cindy lower her head and break into a trot.
Inside the house, I heard the unfamiliar sound of my mother screaming. I ran to the window to see the edge of her skirt disappear around the far corner of the house, Cindy in hot pursuit.
“Call the neighbor!” my mother shouted over her shoulder. I had never seen my mother run before that day, but the crisis revealed a latent talent. Watch out! Mom is sprinting and zigzagging like a pro! My brothers were no help whatsoever; at the first sight of the chase, they collapsed on the lawn, convulsing with laughter.
When the neighbor arrived (a farmer, who was luckily at home when I called), he collared the goat while my mother stood panting, hair askew, basket still looped over her arm, trying to compose herself while we wiped our eyes and tried our best to look sympathetic.
Her cheeks still turn rosy when we tell that story, and so we do like to trot it out from time to time.
Today is my mother's birthday, and so I thought I'd try to make her blush from a distance.
Happy Birthday, Mother of Mine. I love you.
