All my life, and since 2014 when she passed, it seems like May 10th holds a very sacred and dual meaningful significance to me. As spring would break, the sun shining in its cerulean blue umbrella and the sweet essence of flowers blooming, the trees would green as if to announce to me: it's Mom's birthday, that's why Mother Nature is freshening up! But many a year it would sound the obbligato of joy because it was also Mother's Day too! How wonderfully appropriate it was for me as her son.
Mom would remind me who she was, and what having a mother meant to her. She would often tell me about losing her mother, that awful day for her when her mother as laid to rest, how she saw the coffin, lowered into the sanctified ground of the cemetery plot on that dreary October day, how final and alone she felt, even with her little family and two sisters beside her.
I remember Mom always had a cake for me on my birthday, white cake, chocolate layered with a cherry on top. Every year she made it for me, sprinkled with walnuts, just the way I liked it. There was more flavor in that cake because of her touch than from a master baker!
Today she is in my heart and soul at 99-years old. Although she passed on in June of 2014, she never died and will live on for my eternity, however long that is. I always tried to afford a present for her, not to recognize her birthday, but to renew my love for her at this time of the year and to remind her that I was there for her.
remember her 80th birthday, a catered affair in a local Italian restaurant, her being surrounded by the many friends she made volunteering in the local hospital, how happy she seemed and so filled with joy! I gave a little speech about her, her disciplinary measures that kept me in line AND forever had her face in front of me wherever I went and whatever I did.
Her life was filled with great disappointments, her father abandoning his little family at a tender age, the tears her mother cried from loneliness and sorry, the struggles to raise her three daughters during the Great Depression, and finally succumbing to stomach cancer in 1942.
But boy, could Mom cook and bake, and always made sure we ate well. It is her fault that I love food so much, and as I try to replicate her dishes, no matter how well I do, I could never hold a candle to her art, nor the ability to laugh at the ugliness she faced in her lifetime!
Happy Birthday, Mom!
From your only son,
Love,
Joseph
Mom would remind me who she was, and what having a mother meant to her. She would often tell me about losing her mother, that awful day for her when her mother as laid to rest, how she saw the coffin, lowered into the sanctified ground of the cemetery plot on that dreary October day, how final and alone she felt, even with her little family and two sisters beside her.
I remember Mom always had a cake for me on my birthday, white cake, chocolate layered with a cherry on top. Every year she made it for me, sprinkled with walnuts, just the way I liked it. There was more flavor in that cake because of her touch than from a master baker!
Today she is in my heart and soul at 99-years old. Although she passed on in June of 2014, she never died and will live on for my eternity, however long that is. I always tried to afford a present for her, not to recognize her birthday, but to renew my love for her at this time of the year and to remind her that I was there for her.
remember her 80th birthday, a catered affair in a local Italian restaurant, her being surrounded by the many friends she made volunteering in the local hospital, how happy she seemed and so filled with joy! I gave a little speech about her, her disciplinary measures that kept me in line AND forever had her face in front of me wherever I went and whatever I did.Her life was filled with great disappointments, her father abandoning his little family at a tender age, the tears her mother cried from loneliness and sorry, the struggles to raise her three daughters during the Great Depression, and finally succumbing to stomach cancer in 1942.
But boy, could Mom cook and bake, and always made sure we ate well. It is her fault that I love food so much, and as I try to replicate her dishes, no matter how well I do, I could never hold a candle to her art, nor the ability to laugh at the ugliness she faced in her lifetime!
Happy Birthday, Mom!
From your only son,
Love,
Joseph
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