My Mother Used to Bake

I was at Barnes & Nobel the other day buying a last-minute baby-shower gift and a book caught my eye. It was one of those books they have by the cash register. You know the kind, designed more for form than function, to sit on the shelf and be pretty, rather than actually read. The title was "Just like my Mother used to bake" and it had an assortment of baked goodies on the cover. But, the way they'd played around with the font, it looked more like "Just like MY MOTHER USED TO BAKE", which took me down an entirely different line of thought than I think they intended.

My Mother Used to Bake too. Amazing things. Hand-cut valentine cookies with each of my class-mates names piped in pink royal icing. Home-made gingerbread houses. A Chocolate Espresso Cake that took about 400 steps. And Sunday roasts that were nearly as good as Grandma Hamilton's. Now she can't remember how to turn the oven on (or off), and the closest she gets to cooking is asking my Dad if he'd prefer Azteca or Soprano's tonight.

She used to have huge dinner parties, making roast beef dinner (with Yorkshire Pudding!) for the entire church after the Christmas pageant. And she never would have considered sending an invitation with the words "we'll provide the main dish, please bring a side-dish to share". She was an "I'll do it all myself, thank-you-very-much" kind of lady. (Not that she was above giving her kiddo's 40 pounds of potatoes to peel, but family doesn't count, apparently). How things have changed. This year I stepped into her role & hosted Thanksgiving dinner, my parent's contribution was a Costco-tray of pre-cut veggies. That would have never passed muster in the household that I grew up in.

I have a friend who got married several months after Keith & I did. Her mom had died shortly after she finished college, and I remember wondering how on earth she was able to pull a wedding together without her Mom's assistance. Little did I realize that a few short years later I'd be staring down the nose of Motherhood with my Mother alive, but absent. How am I supposed to do this on my own? How do I know the things a Mother knows? Do I really need a wipe-warmer? What the heck is a boppy, anyway? Sometimes I wish I could surprise an answer out of my Mom. If I jump around a corner and throw a question at her, would the answer come flying out before her plaque-filled brain realized that it had been duped?

I know that I am fortunate to still have her around. I look forward to seeing her hold my baby boy. And whatever level of understanding she'll have, she will love him and everything he does. But I want so much more than a great photo-op. I want him to know her as a person, not just a memory. After spending the last 15 years fighting to be independent, I need my Mommy and it's too late. I want to put my little boy down on his blue & green bicycle-themed baby quilt and tell him how Grandma Hamilton loves to make quilts and she made this one just for him, but it's not going to happen. I want to take my Mom to Babies-R-Us and have her decipher the eight-hundred-million options for me, but I'd just end up trying to keep her corralled within the store. I want things to go back to how they used to be, back when she was just forgetful and a little crazy, but not enough to need a name for it.

So, my mother used to bake, but she doesn't any more, and that makes me sad.