I started writing this post just before Mother’s Day, when we were staying with our Grandkids while our son and daughter-in-law had a few days’ get-away. And I wrote and remembered and sketched as Mother’s Day came and went and then my birthday, these past few days. . . More personal a post than I’ve written in a bit (and took me back to the period of remembering and drafting a memoir manuscript about Mom and myself, as I did on and off for a year or two, a few years ago. . . ). A wondering, wondering kind of post; thank you in advance for indulging me. . .
I may have told you before that, as a child between the ages of perhaps 9 and 12, I became a bit apprehensive with the approach of May. That is, I anticipated my miid-month birthday with a predictable mixture of hope (sometimes vulnerable) and excitement. But until I was old enough to do the simple calendar calculation and realize that the second Sunday of the month could never fall later than the 14th, I worried each spring that I would have to share MY day with my mother.
Obviously, I knew enough to keep keep mum — ha! — about this selfish concern. There was no question that my mother — who had eight children when I (the oldest) was Nine, ten by the time I was Twelve — deserved far more than a single day of recognition and pampering.
On the other hand, I can’t be too hard on that young girl. As the oldest in such a large family (and I would gain two more sisters before I turned 15), I too craved — perhaps, a psychologist might even argue, needed — a day of my own. And my parents did their best to make sure that our birthdays were special days, although often in small ways according to their means. I remember a vase of my birthday flower — lily-of-the-valley — for example, placed at my place setting at the breakfast table.
There was always a gift, but almost as important was the day’s exemption from helping with the dishes or folding laundry or any other household chores. A cake, of course, and the birthday song — which in our family custom was always accompanied by something called “the birthday bumps” whereby siblings grabbed hold of one’s hands or feet and — “gently, gently” came the exhortation — lifted the birthday kid up by the limbs and “bumped” them down on their bottom as many times as the years they were celebrating.
I also remember a “pinch to grow an inch” and sometimes a “pull on the hair so you’ll never swear.” Again, no idea if this was a tradition only in our house or more widespread. For that matter, I have no sense of whether or not it persisted as a practice on my younger sisters’ birthdays a decade and a half later.
And somehow all of this arrived in classic stream-of-consciousness style when I walked past a lilac tree in full bloom the week before last. Fragrance and memory, you know. . . I snapped this photo as a blogpost prompt for when I could find a minute — and almost posted it on Instagram as a nod to Mom on Mother’s Day, but, finally, the remembering and writing wanted to be here, in this community.
Mother’s Day and lilacs and my birthday . . . In one of my earliest visual memories of my mother, she is standing between the two lilac trees that flanked a short flight of concrete stairs leading to the vegetable garden at the house I best remember from my childhood — my home from four to sixteen. At the clothesline, she must have been unpinning clothes rather than hanging them out because it was after school. I remember this because I was leading a small troop of classmates home to my birthday party. All girls, all wearing party dresses although we wore uniforms to school. Did they — did I? — bring dresses to school and change there? Or is my memory faulty?
Except for a few friends I invited over when I turned fourteen, it was the only birthday I celebrated with anyone other than family. It must been my seventh birthday. The year before, turning six had launched me precipitously into Grade One with the one-year-older classmates who’d begun in September. Mom had tried, unsuccessfully, to have me begin with them in the Fall. (An early reader, I’d also begun playing piano by then, but even with her teacher’s training, she must have thought I needed more more instruction than she could spare time for.) A concession had been made, though, whereby I could join the Grade One class after my sixth birthday, thus becoming the smallest and the youngest and the least experienced in the room for the five weeks left to the school year. And then in the Fall, I was in second grade.
So the party must have been for my seventh birthday: I had no classmates to invite until after I turned six, and I turned eight following the birth of a new sister scarcely two months earlier, not likely conditions for Mom to host a gaggle of giggly girls for an afternoon. The window of opportunity was a narrow one, and apparently she grabbed it. I’d been to a few of my classmates’ birthday parties in second grade; she might have felt obligated to reciprocate, maybe known it would give me a better chance of integration in the class I’d belatedly joined.
I remember nothing of activities (probable suspects: Pin the Tail on the Donkey; some game involving clothespins, a blindfold, a basket; another that rewarded whomever remembered the most items on a tray). Food and drink? Hot dogs, probably, and other late ’50s, early ’60s party staples: jello; vanilla layer cake with a butter icing, homemade jam between the layers, and wax-paper-wrapped coins baked into the batter; glasses filled from a jug of Freshie (the Canadian alternative to Kool-Aid in those days). I don’t remember being self-conscious about my classmates (older, taller, more sophisticated?) seeing my home. Perhaps I was annoyed at my younger siblings joining in the games, sitting with us at the table. Likely, they showed off for my friends. . . Or did I show them off, especially the baby, the toddler?
My only clear memory of the afternoon? my mother standing on those stairs between the lilac trees, reaching up to the clothesline, backlit by the afternoon sun, slim and pretty in a simple dress, turning to smile and greet the girls I was leading into the yard.
I don’t think I ever told her about that memory. And honestly, it’s isolated, not representative. It’s layered over by memories of her strictness, of the challenges that mothering such a large family presented to her introverted and shy personality. It didn’t come easily to her, nor was she easy on us.
But I’ve been thinking about that memory lately — as one does, it seems, post-70. . . .
This last week, Mother’s Day and my birthday and the lilacs blooming altogether, I’ve connected it with a childhood memory of her own — one she shared with me a decade or so ago, when the lilac trees by the beach at our old island home were blooming. The scent, she told me, rolled her calendar back to the mid-1930s when she was a four-year-old sitting alone, crying, under a lilac tree at her family’s new home after a long-distance move.
Socially awkward, a shy introvert as an adult, for her that fragrance evoked a feeling or memory of intense loneliness, even as she found its perfume intoxicatingly rich. (In late winter, the scent of hyacinths on sale in supermarkets and florist shops triggered in her a deep sense of grief; their forced blooms were everywhere the month my brother died suddenly, at 19, almost half a century ago). She loved unreservedly the scent of Daphne odora, of violets, lavender,mmusk roses, and mignonette.
I miss the two gnarled, aged lilac trees by the beach in our old garden, miss taking my secateurs out to clip huge bouquets that filled the house with their spicy sweet fragrance. But for me, the scent of lilacs carries only that mild wistfulness, no deep sadness except for my mother carrying those childhood tears for a lifetime.
At my son and daughter-in-law’s place last week, the blooms on the old lilac hedge were fading, almost done for the year, not worth cutting for a bouquet. The pink buds of the impressive hawthorne in front of the house were beginning to open, though, and up the hill behind their home, the wild camas lilies were a riot of blue. A squirrel came to drink from the little pond in the back garden, and then scampered up through the cedar branches before stopping to scold our interruption. The kids played soccer on the back lawn, and later, from inside, we watched through gaps in the hedge as five adult-sized deer single-filed their way through a neighbour’s yard.
And after dinner, I went for a walk ending up on the campus that’s grown around the big old building where my mother, at 19, had done her teacher training. On a previous visit, I’d discovered a sign noting the venerable clock-towered building as the erstwhile “Normal School,” and decided it might be worth sketching. I snapped a few photos of it (a sunny evening, fading into dusk), and quickly drew it into my sketchbook the next day (using Koosje Koene’s “blob technique”) and thinking as I did of all the questions I’d never thought to ask her, the conversations I’d missed.
I wish I could show her this sketch, ask her questions about what she learned inside the building, who were her teachers, classmates, what it was like to stay with her brother and his wife for however long it took to get her provisional teaching certificate. For most of the time she knew me, I didn’t draw, believed myself to be “not artistic” — in contrast to her, naturally talented although she scarcely drew, even more rarely painted, after the deluge of domestic and maternal tasks flooded her 20s. Instead she sewed, knit, took up doll and teddy-bear making, quilted, gardened, hooked rugs, decorated, and cooked creatively — and encouraged creativity in all of us. . .
Have I redeemed a bit of that childhood selfishness? I take out my beautiful new box of crayons, a birthday gift from a thoughtful husband
and sketch some lilacs . . .
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, to both of us. Wish you were here. . . .
I had one last birthday celebration today — Dim sum with the in-town kids and grandkids — so between Mother’s Day and a stretched out birthday, my apprehensive nine-year-old can relax and know that she/I had MY DaY and then some. Thanks for reading. Comments welcome, as always,
xo,
f
Beautiful post, Frances. I love those glimpses into your childhood. That image of your mum at the clothesline. My birthday is also in May, but I had to wait until the following September to enter grade one. I wonder why you started school with only five weeks left? That must have been difficult.
In March when I was home my sister and I walked past the old “Normal School” in downtown Fredericton and I took a photo of it. It very much resembles the one your mother attended.
Happy belated Mothers’ Day and happy belated birthday. xox
Author
Thanks, Sue!
I think the weird May start was allowed as a compromise to not letting me start when my birth-year was a year later than dictated NOR having me skip Grade One. There was never any challenge with the classwork, but figuring out protocols, fitting into the social milieu took a bit. . .
Interesting that those Normal Schools looked similar at opposite ends of the country. . . apparently the one Mom went to was seconded for service as a military hospital until 1946, so would only have been back in use to educate teachers a few years later.
Lovely writing Frances , very moving . I think the eldest female of a large family can often have a difficult relationship with their mother . My mother was the eldest girl of fourteen children . She was born in 1913 in pretty poor circumstances & became a little mum to her siblings . I could see her relationship to her own mum was not good but I understood why as I learnt more of her story . Life was a dreadful struggle for many women in those days . How fortunate we are .
Wendy, as the other Brit commenting so far, I wonder if you share my memory of classic British birthday party fare?
Gosh, that must have been such a hard life for your mum in those days – and as you say for so many women then. I’m reading the diaries of Duff Cooper at the moment, and they are rapidly turning me into a revolutionary. Upper class excess of drinking, taking morphine, gambling, having affairs right left and centre and dining off lobster and strawberries (by an MP – so nothing much changes!) while all around “the people” such as your mother are struggling to survive.
Yes Linda , the disparity between the different classes in Britain was cruel . I actually find it difficult to share the interest many people have in the TV programmes etc featuring our old aristocracy in ‘ the good old days ‘. I can do the factual stuff but not the glossy media version perpetuating the myths . I guess it’s still going on but at least it’s more difficult to keep it a secret now !
I think you must have been to same birthday parties as me . Remember those homemade maids of honour & the butterfly buns ?
Quite – there’s so much gloss in that partial nostalgic gaze. Have you read Longbourn, by Jo Baker? The servants’ side of Pride and Prejudice. I do remember the butterfly buns, and always found the maids of honour very dull fare for a birthday party!
It’s waiting on the book pile Yes , poor maids of honour seem a little dull now but I think I’m older than you . Post war 1950 party food wasn’t very exciting.
After living in the USA, I retired back to the UK in 2019, right before lockdowns, which has been an interesting transition. After being American for so many years, it is enlightening to see the deference and respect still shown to people with titles here. I too don’t like films or books that perpetuate the myth of a benign hierarchy either, and I don’t want to pay big bucks to tour where they lived in opulence, while we toiled.
Author
Yes, so much struggle just for the basics.
Happy Birthday Frances, cheers to many joyous years ahead!
I particularly enjoyed this post, it brought back memories of my own childhood and a mother, whose May 15th birthday was often celebrated just before, on, or just after Mother’s Day. My mother was a complicated woman and, as flashes of childhood memory pop up at the most unexpected times, I feel like I am slowly beginning to understand her. These days, I have so many questions I would ask her. No lilacs in the memories, however, though there must have been lilacs in my mother’s childhood memories as my grandmother grew lilacs.
Author
Your mother’s birthday would have got squished into Mother’s Day all her life!
It does take us too long to understand, doesn’t it? I have all the questions as well. . .
Happy belated birthday! Mother’s Days memories! Like you, I am the eldest in my family. Mum had 3 children in 4.5 years. All before she was 25. I don’t remember my 2 closest sibling being born but when I was 9, another long hoped for baby came along. I was a Brownie and there was a Mother and Daughter tea. I’d never been to or heard of this celebration. Unfortunately, my mother could not go. My youngest brother was born on May 9. Shy little me attended without a mother. 63 years have passed and many Mothers’ Days. My youngest brother is suffering from a progressive degenerative disorder. We share memories often as he is writing about his life. Funny, isn’t it, looking back…
Author
Oh no! It would have been hard to go to that tea on your own (at least you had something to talk about! Your baby brother!)
Agreed, sometimes satisfying, often funny, looking back. . .
Loved this post so much, it brings back lilac memories through the years. I am sitting looking at my almost spent bouquet in rural Mn. I wait for your book records and order too many of the books.
Author
I’m happy to know you enjoyed the post, Gayle — and that you had a lilac bouquet to enjoy!
and sorry/not sorry to be an enabler of your reading habit 😉
Happy belated birthday, Frances! What a beautiful and evocative post. I, too, was the oldest child and pampered until my brother arrived and became number one in the family! My mother I think was so overwhelmed with her new life in a new country and my pestering her with all my questions that they enrolled me in kindergarten at the age of four. Academically I was fine but socially/emotionally I don’t think I was ready. We always had a fraught relationship but then I think of how difficult it must have been for her back then.
Author
So many stories of motherhood, aren’t there? And we begin to understand now, but that doesn’t erase what shaped us.
We didn’t have kindergarten in our small city until the mid-to-late 60s; I think Canada was slower in adopting that European model than the US. But I doubt they were quite as “child-friendly” as the kindergartens our grandchildren have attended (nor the ones our kids did, for that matter)
I so enjoyed this post Frances, and Happy Birthday! As it was I had just put a birthday card in the mail to my brother. He is exactly 1 year and 364 days younger than me. My memory is that we often shared our small family birthday celebrations. I don’t remember feeling that I missed out but it was quite while ago so perhaps making myself more generous of spirit than was the case, There is as particular wildflower , it’s different shades if lavender and purple and white, bunches of it grow all together along the sides of the backroad that meanders though the countryside of Northern New Jersey. Past farms and farm markets. I only see it this time of year and only in this location when I drive back from spending time with the world’s cutest pony. Often with my daughter and son in law. Anyway, I like to imagine that it’s blooming for my birthday.
Author
You do sound more generous than I might have been 😉
And thank you for describing that drive back, that wildflower blooming, and you having spent time with your pony. Lovely! Happy May Birthday!
Happy belated birthday! I found your post very moving and poignant. I didn’t realise you came from such a large family. Problems at either end of the scale – I was an only child and only now realise how uncomfortable and impossible I found the laser-like focus on just me. I seemed always to be striving for unattainable perfection and failing. I know that my mother didn’t understand me – she told me as much, and I would love to have had longer with her so that we could get to know each other properly. May is month of mixed emotions for me too – I have always loved the upsurge of green and blossom, but my mother died on 1 May when she was 63 and I was 33, three weeks after her cancer diagnosis. On the day she died the chestnut blossom came out and the swallows returned. Like your mother’s annual grief at the death of your brother, until his death nearly 25 years later my father would sink into an even more profound depression than usual in the run-up to May and throughout the month, and as an only child it was my job to get him through it.
I am glad that your 9 year old self had a lovely birthday this month.
In contrast to your age when you started school, I started at the Easter when I was “four and three quarters”. As an only child living in an isolated house in the country, the sudden contact with other children and their germs meant that I came down first of all with measles and swiftly thereafter chickenpox. So I think I had about 2 weeks of school that term. We then moved to a different village and I started Primary 1 proper at the age of 5.
Interesting to read the subtle variations in birthday party fare in Canada. The British 1960s equivalent would have been white bread sandwiches spread with Shipham’s Ham and Chicken Paste, chopped hard-boiled egg and tomato sandwiches, jelly and ice cream with hundreds-and-thousands, and for a birthday cake a sponge sandwiched with jam and encased in rock-hard royal icing with pink or blue piping according to gender. This last would have sat in the baker’s window for the past week for all passers-by to admire.
Author
Thank you, Linda! I’m sorry to hear about the mixed emotions May carries for you.
Yes! that first year of school and all the germs — We seemed to do mumps, measles (both German and red measles) chickenpox all within a matter of months.
Canada’s a huge country with substantial regional differences, so I wouldn’t claim that mine was representative birthday fare. Especially not given the peculiarity of my family’s size. But I think others might recognize it.
Happy Birthday, Frances! Thank you for sharing some glimpses of your childhood with us. As women of a similar age, it seems we share some similar memories… the birthday bumps and a pinch to grow an inch (I’d forgotten all about that) and mother at the clothesline.
Author
Okay, so that wasn’t just my family! 😉 Thank you!
My mother loved lilacs too, especially white lilacs, so I have two of my own. One a very pale lilac, the other a gorgeous white. Having cut them back ladt year they have bloomed beautifully. As for birthday parties – yes to birthday bumps as well as musical chairs/statues and Kim’s Game, the-objects-on-a-tray game. Happy Birthday indeed.
Author
Ah, there’s a connection to the birthday bumps across the Atlantic! I wonder if my dad’s family did that as well — and the games sound very similar too! So much less expensive (and complicated) than the extravaganzas tha my grandkids get to!
Your garden looks splendid now — I’m sentimental about a lilac having blooms that colour, but the white blossoms against the green leaves are always stunning.
Happy Birthday Frances!
I wish you many lovely ” Your Days”
You are very brave lady
Dottoressa
Author
Aw thanks, my friend! xo
My birthday is in January, my sister’s in October, so there was no problem about giving each of us her personal day. Mothers’ Day was neglected in my family, because my mother hated it. In part, I think, for political reasons. The occasion, and motherhood in general, had been abused by the former regime of this country, and she wanted none of that. She also used to say that the day was sheer hypocrisy: one day’s compensation for a whole year’s work. But I have come to suspect that there was a personal motive as well: she did not want to be celebrated in that particular capacity. She loved her daughters, but she resented the social role of wife and mother. At school, we were made to prepare little presents or learn sentimental poems about maternal love, which we dutifully delivered at home, knowing that they were going to be received with little enthusiasm. Luckily, my mother’s birthday was in June, in the season of roses and larkspur (her favourite flower).
I understand your mother’s qualms, Eleonore. I don’t like celebrating Mothers’ Day when there are so many women who are not mothers. I’m uneasy at Valentine’s Day too. I’ve taught on college campuses and know how alienating and isolating such celebrations can be for many people.
On the other hand, we can all remember our own mothers, good or bad memories.
I too had a birthday in May, the 8th, which is usually Mothers Day in the USA and some other countries. So my birthday got squashed in with that, in terms of greetings from my kids. Still, now the kids have flown away, I am grateful for any time they remember me–I’ll take any celebration. I must admit, I’d prefer my birthday to MD celebrations tho. Like your mother, Eleonore, I resent social categories.
Author
I have a similar resistance to Mother’s Day, and yet. . .
Another really poignant post. Happy birthday!
My mother turned 89 on 15 May. Her birthday has sometimes fallen on Mother’s Day (in Australia) which she said she liked as a double whammy. I think she has always been generous.
I’m from a family of six siblings (which seemed fairly large at the time) and our birthdays were always celebrated in a way that made us feel really special. Having said that, our 8th birthday was the only birthday in our primary school years which was celebrated at our home with our whole class. Every other birthday was the eight of us, birthday cup in the morning, dinner of choice in the evening. Very different childhood parties now!
Author
Sounds similar to the way birthdays were treated in my family Genevieve (and happy birthday to your mother! ). I remember some of the specificity of that 7th birthday party, while the others blend together as a day of feeling special in quite simple ways. A quiet, shared joy, really . . .
P.S. Oh yes, the birthday party games. The classic was “Topfschlagen”, which would roughly translate as “hitting the pot”. An empty pot was put upside down on the floor, with a little present/sweet underneath. Each of the guests and the birthday child would be blindfolded one after the other, get down on their knees and search for the pot with the help of a wooden spoon while the others would shout “hot” or “cold”. In the end, everyone was a winner in his oder her way, and every one would receive the same present. Does anyone outside Germany remember that game as well?
I am at that age where these memories come rushing back at the oddest moments and I try to capture hat feels important. I love your drawings as a memory keeper. I have been playing with colored pencils lately too. Thank you for writing in this space.
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You’re very welcome, Juliann, and thank you for letting me know you enjoy the posts. Yes, surprising the way the memories surface. . .
What a very lovely and touching post. I love Lily of the Valley — they remind me of my maternal grandmother as she had a garden of them.
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I’m so pleased to know you enjoyed the post, Beth! And that you share happy memories of lily-of-the-valley.
Very beautiful, Frances. And reminds me of Uprooting, now that you mention it, in its own way. Your mother resonates down the years.