Happy Mother's Day Weekend

I have posted this story below before, but felt that to honor my friends mother and my own I would post it again. My friend Sybil's mother left this world the afternoon of May 17, 2010. She would have been 89 in July. My own mother passed just three years earlier than Dr.Sever on May19Th. There were many of my own mother's birthdays that fell on Mother's Day, so it seems fitting this Mother's Day weekend that I post it again.

Next weekend, on what would have been my mother's 88Th birthday (May14Th), I will join my friend in Los Angeles to commemorate the first year anniversary of her mother's passing and to celebrate both of our mothers lives.

In the photo below my mother is on the left and Sybil's mother, Dr. Elfrieda Sever, is on the right. They were two glamorous babes in their hay day! Two German blonds on very similar paths.

I was so glad I took this trip to see Elfrieda over Christmas when she was still well enough to enjoy a visit.

This is what I wrote after our lovely visit:

Yesterday I took a trip to Beverly Hills to visit my friend Sybil's mother, Dr. Elfrieda Sever. You see her in the picture above, on the right, with my mother on the left. Elfrieda (I called her Dr. Sever when I was growing up) and Sybil, her only daughter, spent many a Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrating with us.

Sybil and I met when we were just 15 years old. We lived on Young Drive and Sybil and her mother lived on Durant. We met in cooking class. Sybil was new to Beverly Hills, moving from San Francisco. As we all know, moving away from friends and all that is familiar when you are fifteen is no easy transition. I liked Sybil right away, but she had an instant distrust for me, thinking I was much too sweet to be for real. Ah well... she knows the truth now. I really have always thought of Sybil like a sister and I believe she thinks of me that way too.

Our mothers were both from Germany and both single. My mother had worked in San Francisco when she first worked for Elizabeth Arden. They had a lot in common. We introduced them and they became quick friends. They spoke German to each other and so much of the information I was anxious to hear about their adult lives was hidden from me. So, they both remained mysterious and glamorous, with their blond hair and their distinctly European ways.

It's truly wonderful to still have friends that know my history and share my story.

Sybil lives in London now, and has her very own glamorous life, but her mother still lives in Beverly Hills and is so far away from the daughter she holds so dear. After losing my own mother in May of 2007, I have a new appreciation for my friend Sybil's mother. Most of my mother's friends are gone now, so it was especially meaningful for me to share a little holiday cheer with Elfrieda.

When I first arrived, Elfrieda was just at the end of having a lovely massage, by a masseuse that Sybil hired, to make sure her mother was properly pampered. She told me the masseuse comes once a week. What a luxury! My mother would have definitely approved.

Elfrieda took great pride in showing me the latest, beautifully hand embroidered tablecloth she was working on. She showed off her beautiful orchids and told me she couldn't live without flowers. She had me look at the beautiful bougainvillea and wonderful Meyer lemon tree she was growing in pots on the balcony. Her lemon tree had twenty lemons ready to pick. I was so glad, because I wanted to bring her lemons off my tree, knowing she loves lemons, but they weren't quite ready to pick. We had tea and strawberry cake together and then she became a little tired. She had, after all, just had a relaxing massage.

Rest in peace, dear Elfrieda and you to my sweet Mama

A very Happy Mothers Day to all of you who still have their mothers with you and to all of you that have lost their mothers.

A Mother's Day Tribute

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Several years ago my daughter wrote a Mother's Day tribute for an online magazine and then gave me a copy of what she wrote for my Mother's Day gift. I have carried that tattered copy around with me for years. Here is what she wrote:

The same now-yellowed newspaper clipping has been taped to my grandmother's refrigerator for the past 15 years. My mom was out with my baby sister in a stroller when a photographer was on assignment to scout a sweet centerpiece scene for Mother's Day.
Young mother and baby out for a walk in the spring sun? Perfect.

I love looking through old photo albums at my grandmother's house. I love looking at my mother with her long, straight hippie hair, and my aunt, her sister--the one who played jokes on my mom from the time they were little.

Like when she hid in the bathtub behind the curtain and their cousins locked my mom out and flushed the toilet. "She's going down the drain!" they taunted. And my mother, just three years old, burst into tears. She was away from her mother for the week, her father had just left and now, in this strange house with these strange boy cousins, her sister had been flushed down the toilet.

I used to tell my friends that my mother almost strangled a boy who tried to kiss me after school in the parking lot in second grade. Actually,I ws trying to kiss him and he was struggling to keep me away by putting his hands around my throat. My mother, seeing this, leapt from the car where she had been waiting, grabbd the kid by the collar and proceeded to demonstrate on him exactly what she wouldn't allow him to do to her daughter. I thought that was the best story. The time my mom strangled my boyfriend.

I never wrote thank you notes to my mother. Mothers make you write thank you notes to your grandmother and your aunts and the kind neighbor who always remembers your birthday. But there's no one to make sure you write Mom one, too. Mothers know you love them, and that they gave you exactly what you wanted, so we assume the thank you is understood. And those are just the wrapped presents.

But then comes a moment when you realize there are so many thank yous that you forgot to say--that you couldn't possibly catch up. So many gestures big and small that you could write a note every day and always have more to say. Just the things she did for my wedding day alone outnumber the days left in this year.

A few weeks ago, I came home from vacation to find a formerly bare and ugly dirt patch in front of our house filled with Easter lilies, hydrangeas, begonias, azaleas, daisies and other sweet-scented colorful blessings I couldn't name, but thought beautiful. I knew immediately who the spring angel was. I called up Mom to thank her.

"Do you like it? she asked. "Did you notice right away?" She was as excited for me to have come home and found the surprise birthday gift as I was.

The best gift my mother gave me growing up wasn't the parties, the clothes, or the trips to take me my forgotten lunch bag. It was a sense of myself as a woman who wanted to be both strong and tender, independent and able to connect, angry at injustice and at peace with myself. It was the knowledge that I could be anything I wanted to be, including a wife and mother-if I wanted to, because they were good things to be.

And the knowledge that if I failed at any of those possibilities, she would not hold it against me, but would always be there to come home to, brush off the dirt and tears, and try again.

Happy Mother's Day! Thanks for everything! Love always, Amanda