(In 2009 our little English cottage experienced a disastrous flood. Mother had died in 2001. David, her still broken-hearted English husband, was now in a care home, as the cottage was wreaked. I flew there to live for a year in what little what was left, and to rebuild what was lost.
Amid the ruins, though, there were shining moments…)
Sitting on the carpet-stripped, unlovely floor of our flooded-out cottage I sadly sifted through damp, intriguing mother-mementos. She’d saved limp old London Times Sunday magazines for their wonderful commentaries, or for the alphabetical listing of the 1000 most influential people of the twentieth century, or for any interesting information that had caught her eye. Some of the sodden pages were tough to separate.
Hmmm… Here she’d circled an article about tail-less cats…
Mother loved to read about the universe’s origins, biographies of interesting people, or even about why tigers have stripes. She (‘the great experimenter’) devoured cookbooks gleefully; a few of her elegant meals wanted a decent burial; most were wonderful.
Occasionally, careful sifting would yield personal treasures.
I found a folded page containing a cherished poem about a tree at the end of its life. Mother loved trees: one photograph shows David and her standing next to an immense 700-year-old oak, a sapling during England’s Great Plague. It’s still living happily outside a nearby country pub we’d loved to frequent, called Loughpool.
More memories surfaced. I recalled sitting inside an even more gigantic, thriving tree nestled in a Gloucester churchyard. Its massive lower branches rested quietly on the ground, too incredibly long and massive to remain suspended. So, over the centuries the earth had gently risen to meet them.
In spite of that room-sized, hollow heart, Tree, fully dressed in green, was happily soaking up the sun. The medieval churchyard’s ancient, teetering tombstones kept it company.
And what was this? I exposed a tissue-wrapped stone bearing the stunning fossil of a finger-polished, hundred-million-year-old tubeworm, and smiled. She’d carried it in her jeans for 25 years after spotting it one day, cast up on a remote, wind-swept Scottish beach.
My mother died amazed that it was happening: she had so much to do, to see, to taste, to learn, and suddenly, she found herself blinking out.
A poem she loved- with just 7 lines- is titled
A Life
And reads-
Innocence?
In a sense-
In NO sense.
WAS that it?
Was THAT it?
Was that IT?
That was it.
Oh! Here was a magazine photo of a gorgeous, fully dressed, delectable-looking hamburger. In a margin she’d written, “Frame this!”
Good heavens—I knew why, because she’d told me her ‘hamburger heaven’ story, once.
One summer lunchtime in the little Welsh town of Abergavenny, not far from our home, where she’d often sell their beautiful, handcrafted clocks at craft shows, Mom brought out a plump, seven-ounce hamburger patty she’d formed at home from butcher-bought ground (the British say ‘minced’) beef. She’d obtained permission to cook it on the craft park’s communal grill.
Next, she unpacked a pretty china plate and placed slices of purple onion, Double Gloucester cheese and crisp lettuce on it. She halved a generous bun. Ketchup and English mustard stood guard. Passersby, noticing the gorgeous beef patty and her preparations, gathered to watch what was about to happen. One amused Welshman couldn’t resist a comment: “M’love, tha’ overweight ration of meat canno’ stick together withou’ cereal and additives…” (British burgers (always anorexic) are ‘kept together’ with ‘binders.’)
Mum looked up, astonished, then grinned. “Why ever not?”
People shook their heads and settled down to watch her ‘unbound’ burger fall into ruin. This silly, deluded American didn’t have a clue.
She popped the open bun and naked burger on the grill and added seasoned salt and freshly ground pepper to the meat. It sizzled happily. A few minutes later she flipped it to cook the other side to medium-rare, then slid it onto the perfectly toasted bun, added the condiments, and downed the burger triumphantly, chasing it with a chilled, local ale. Onlookers gaped. Nobody spoke.
Suddenly, late-comers pushed forward, proffering bills, saying, “Eh, I’ll have one o’ those…” The bewildered grill master stood open-mouthed amid the clamor of futile shouted orders. His thin, additive-bound burgers, stacked between waxed paper, were ready to be grilled and sold. Compared to her robust, unadulterated beef patty they looked positively unwell.
Unabashedly licking her fingers Mum collected her spatula, plate and condiments, thanked the Welshman for the use of the grill and returned to her booth replete- and not a little smug.
“Americans may be brash and wet-behind-the-ears,’ she’d gloated to herself, ‘but by golly, we understand how to form and cook a proper hamburger!”
Ahh, what a delicious memory!
Amid the ruins, though, there were shining moments…)
Sitting on the carpet-stripped, unlovely floor of our flooded-out cottage I sadly sifted through damp, intriguing mother-mementos. She’d saved limp old London Times Sunday magazines for their wonderful commentaries, or for the alphabetical listing of the 1000 most influential people of the twentieth century, or for any interesting information that had caught her eye. Some of the sodden pages were tough to separate.
Hmmm… Here she’d circled an article about tail-less cats…
Mother loved to read about the universe’s origins, biographies of interesting people, or even about why tigers have stripes. She (‘the great experimenter’) devoured cookbooks gleefully; a few of her elegant meals wanted a decent burial; most were wonderful.
Occasionally, careful sifting would yield personal treasures.
I found a folded page containing a cherished poem about a tree at the end of its life. Mother loved trees: one photograph shows David and her standing next to an immense 700-year-old oak, a sapling during England’s Great Plague. It’s still living happily outside a nearby country pub we’d loved to frequent, called Loughpool.
More memories surfaced. I recalled sitting inside an even more gigantic, thriving tree nestled in a Gloucester churchyard. Its massive lower branches rested quietly on the ground, too incredibly long and massive to remain suspended. So, over the centuries the earth had gently risen to meet them.
In spite of that room-sized, hollow heart, Tree, fully dressed in green, was happily soaking up the sun. The medieval churchyard’s ancient, teetering tombstones kept it company.
And what was this? I exposed a tissue-wrapped stone bearing the stunning fossil of a finger-polished, hundred-million-year-old tubeworm, and smiled. She’d carried it in her jeans for 25 years after spotting it one day, cast up on a remote, wind-swept Scottish beach.
My mother died amazed that it was happening: she had so much to do, to see, to taste, to learn, and suddenly, she found herself blinking out.
A poem she loved- with just 7 lines- is titled
A Life
And reads-
Innocence?
In a sense-
In NO sense.
WAS that it?
Was THAT it?
Was that IT?
That was it.
Oh! Here was a magazine photo of a gorgeous, fully dressed, delectable-looking hamburger. In a margin she’d written, “Frame this!”
Good heavens—I knew why, because she’d told me her ‘hamburger heaven’ story, once.
One summer lunchtime in the little Welsh town of Abergavenny, not far from our home, where she’d often sell their beautiful, handcrafted clocks at craft shows, Mom brought out a plump, seven-ounce hamburger patty she’d formed at home from butcher-bought ground (the British say ‘minced’) beef. She’d obtained permission to cook it on the craft park’s communal grill.
Next, she unpacked a pretty china plate and placed slices of purple onion, Double Gloucester cheese and crisp lettuce on it. She halved a generous bun. Ketchup and English mustard stood guard. Passersby, noticing the gorgeous beef patty and her preparations, gathered to watch what was about to happen. One amused Welshman couldn’t resist a comment: “M’love, tha’ overweight ration of meat canno’ stick together withou’ cereal and additives…” (British burgers (always anorexic) are ‘kept together’ with ‘binders.’)
Mum looked up, astonished, then grinned. “Why ever not?”
People shook their heads and settled down to watch her ‘unbound’ burger fall into ruin. This silly, deluded American didn’t have a clue.
She popped the open bun and naked burger on the grill and added seasoned salt and freshly ground pepper to the meat. It sizzled happily. A few minutes later she flipped it to cook the other side to medium-rare, then slid it onto the perfectly toasted bun, added the condiments, and downed the burger triumphantly, chasing it with a chilled, local ale. Onlookers gaped. Nobody spoke.
Suddenly, late-comers pushed forward, proffering bills, saying, “Eh, I’ll have one o’ those…” The bewildered grill master stood open-mouthed amid the clamor of futile shouted orders. His thin, additive-bound burgers, stacked between waxed paper, were ready to be grilled and sold. Compared to her robust, unadulterated beef patty they looked positively unwell.
Unabashedly licking her fingers Mum collected her spatula, plate and condiments, thanked the Welshman for the use of the grill and returned to her booth replete- and not a little smug.
“Americans may be brash and wet-behind-the-ears,’ she’d gloated to herself, ‘but by golly, we understand how to form and cook a proper hamburger!”
Ahh, what a delicious memory!