My mother was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on January 26th, 1922... meaning that today would have been here 99th birthday, were she still alive.
Although we were never that close — once I reached adulthood — I do miss her sometimes.
The apartments in Spain where my mom spent her final years
As I look back, our relationship was typically characterized by great geographical separation, starting when I was 15 and started boarding school in the UK, while she was living in the south of Spain. Later, I would head to college in Texas, while she and my stepdad remained across the ocean.
A few years later, they bought a house in the Phoenix area because they wanted to live in a place where "it was always sunny."
There are many things I am grateful to my mother for.
One thing she made sure of was that I knew how to take care of myself. By the time I turned 14, I could cook, I could clean, I did the wash, I could mend clothes, I could keep house, balance a checkbook and I knew the fundamentals of budgeting and investing.
My mom and I, circa 2008
Those skills have always stood me in good stead, although they occasionally had some odd "side effects" that offered a bit of insight into the many human psyches: In college, I more often than not made the women I tried to date "nervous" because (in the words of a couple of them) they felt superfluous because I didn't really need them for anything and I was better at what rather "traditional" Texas still considered "women's work."
Although we were not that close, one of the placed we did connect was in the kitchen, over food.
In the beginning, she taught me all I knew about food, but my culinary curiosity grew once I left home and from that point forward, I could always count on my widely spaced and sporadic visits to my Mom's house to turn into a week-long celebration of food.
Flowers outside their building
Over most other things, we did not see eye-to-eye: Politics, lifestyle, work, my preferences in women. In some ways, I was a perpetual source of disappointment because I had approximately zero interest in the conservative, country-clubby business magnate society crowd she so valued... and she never quite appreciated my choice to go the self-employment route as real work.
Up until the very end, most phone conversations we had would include some words along the lines of "so, are you going to get yourself a REAL job, sometime soon?"
In retrospect, I believe her honest expression of "caring" was expressed more in terms of whether or not I was successful rather than whether I was happy with my life.
My mother was sharp minded, manipulative and very outspoken. She had no hesitation in insulting the Pope, the President and Person next door, all as part of a normal day's work!
She strongly disliked the first Mrs. Denmarkguy as well as my next partner of 10 years because neither were rail thin. She strongly disliked the women I dated in between because they were also not rail thin and typically "too earthy and not very fashionable."
Ironically — because the Universe does have a sense of humor — there was an incident in Arizona many years ago when I was mid 30's and separated and visiting her in Mesa. We were waiting for a table at a steak house, and there was a very beautiful blonde woman and her mother also waiting there... and my mother went over to compliment the woman on her exceptional hair — and then in her usual outspoken way — publicly declared "Why can't you marry a nice girl like HER???"
Of course, it is a parent's job to do cringe-worthy things in front of their children, including adult children.
Without getting into a novel-length backstory, the irony is that that young woman in a restaurant waiting area in Mesa, AZ in 1994 actually is the current Mrs. Denmarkguy! But by the time we actually met again in 2003 and put a lot of old pieces together (we actually met as kids, too, and our paths had crossed many times since 1973), my mom had moved back to Europe and the two never got to meet.
Mrs. Denmarkguy still has amazing hair, 27 years later...
The proverbial "Elephant in the room" that was never talked about is the fact that my mother was an *(functional) alcoholic for essentially all my life... and the formal "cause of death" was chronic and acute liver failure. She passed away on August 3rd, 2009, at the age of 87.
When I was little, she often augmented the effect of drinking through the use of various prescription tranquilizers, and I remember her often being "asleep" on the couch or "taking a nap" at all hours. That, too, was how I learned to fend for myself at a very early age.
I expect some of her disappointment in me stemmed from my rejection of the "mixed drinks and cocktail party lifestyle" she and my dad, and later she and my stepdad so enjoyed.
Because she always vehemently denied the drinking and denied any underlying psychological/emotional issues, she always just skated by without comment or explanation, and would often rotate friends if anyone seemed to get too close to seeing the truth behind the carefully maintained self-image.
After she passed, I spoke with her best friend — her cousin — back in Denmark, and we shared a few stories and concluded that my mom ultimately ended up so thoroughly believing her own self-deception that money and status were more important than love and happiness that she just couldn't change the story, and the booze was her only way to manage the chasm between her inner reality and her outwardly manufactured image.
I try not to dwell on it, too much... choosing instead to celebrate the joy of cooking and food, along with the monumental irony that I did end up marrying "a nice girl like HER..."
So, Happy Birthday Mom! I hope you are happier, wherever you are... and that the martinis are good, there! I'm sorry, I still don't have a "real" job... but you'd like my wife!
Thanks for reading, and have a great rest of your week!
How about YOU? Do you have memories of a now-passed parent or loved one? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210126 23:58 PST
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