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Like mother, like daughter
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A daughter reflects on notable events in her mother's life and appreciates the worth of a mother's work.
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By Maggie Dwyer
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Our mother leans down to kiss her daughters goodnight. Her cheeks are sweet with the scents of powder and rouge. Where are you going? we cry. In our cries she hears a slightly indignant tone. Where is she going without us? It must be a weekend when her father is visiting and watching over the household. She has a date with Dad.
Young love
She cherishes the first valentine he gave her. Their courtship was a simple one. He was a close friend of her brother's, and they met at one of the dances that were held in local homes in the final years of the Great Depression. Both families were members of St. Patrick's Church at Kinkora, Ont. Their grandparents and great-grandparents, early settlers from Cork and Kerry, were buried side by side in the cemetery and memorialized in stained-glass windows given to the church in their honour.
Their marriage banns were read out here, but they didn't hear them. Following the local custom, they had slipped away to attend Mass in a neighbouring parish, avoiding the initial reaction from the crush of well-wishers. It was as if they had eloped. Their friends and neighbours held a wedding shower for them at the church hall and wrote a loving letter of good wishes. They married in September 1940, after the harvest was in and my mother was free to leave her widowed father and brothers.
We always shared
Their deep and enduring love was the inspiration and foundation for their partnership in marriage and family life. We didn't always have much, she says, but we always shared. Their early married years were spent in northern Ontario at Kirkland Lake, where my father sold magazine subscriptions. Mom contracted a serious illness there and lost her first pregnancy. It would be five years before my older sister was born. Long awaited and happily welcomed.
Their next move was south to Waterloo, where he worked as a machinist during wartime and she as a clerk in a jewelry store. After a few months she gave up this job, which she enjoyed, at Dad's request -- women did not work outside the home unless economics required it. She stayed at home from then on.
Best for young feet
Several pairs of white high-top leather shoes are lined up in a precise row. It is late in the evening, and Mom has finished polishing them. The thin, chalky smell of the polish hangs in the kitchen air. This is the last on her long list of daily duties. It is after eight in the evening, and her little girls are upstairs in bed. The house is quiet, and she will sit down with her husband now, to read the newspaper and listen to the radio. My mother says she had all of us in these shoes to the age of six, in keeping with the wisdom of her day concerning what was best for young feet.
In those years, homemaking and caring for children were labour-intensive -- think of the meals, the laundry and ironing, the cleaning. Six daughters born within 10 years and the birth of the youngest celebrated with the gift of a fur coat for their mother. My sisters and I grew up in a house where the linen was fresh, the meals made from scratch, the furniture gleaming, our hair curled in ringlets and our little white shoes polished.
The true value of her work
There was laughter, music and kindness. We accepted it all in the selfish way of children. She knew the true value of her work. If we forgot to compliment her on yet another delicious meal, we were reminded. She would quietly say, "Well, I guess that tomorrow night, I'll put a bale of hay in the middle of the table...." We'd hurry to make amends and pour her tea.
On a warm afternoon in a long summer season of canning, Mom is efficiently quartering pears. I am breaking a clove into quarters and inhaling its pungent scent while I listen to a story about how she and her mother and sister managed the cooking for a threshing crew of 20 men.
She excelled in domestic arts
A woman's work on the family farm was essential, respected within the family. The work and roles of men and women were distinct and separate but complementary and accorded equal value. Women looked after the house but were not permitted inside the barn. Mom recalls that her father allowed women to come to the door but no farther. She tells us with pleasure that on days when her mother had to go to town, which meant Stratford, "She wouldn't have the buggy out of the drive before I started to bake." She was 10 when she began, and her pastry has always been light. She excelled in the domestic arts, and this excellence was the reason Dad gained 40 pounds in their first year together.
Mom has many stories and sayings about women and kitchens, recipes and providing hospitality. One of my favourites, on the occasion of unexpected dinner guests: if you haven't got much to put out, use your best tablecloth. In our house the cloth was white damask and the dishes were her mother's.
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