2. Maeve Binchy novels. The Irish settings help (she was half-Irish and grew up largely with her Irish grandparents).
3. Melon, all kinds
4. Cats. The house on Arlington Drive, where she lived the last 37 years of her life, always had cats, and for a while, a dog named Buffy.
5. Panera Cafe in Bloomington.
6. Shakespeare. When my visits coincided with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, we'd attend one or two plays together.
7. Playing silly computer games, like Chuzzle
8. TV medical dramas: St. Elsewhere, ER, Grey's Anatomy....
9. Pizza with lots of vegetables, especially green pepper and black olives
10. Daisies
11. Cooking. Specialties included lasagna, beef stroganoff, and ham and bean soup.
12. Fish. She loved to eat all kinds of fish, every which way. I can remember dinners with her where she had catfish, tilapia, orange roughy, and salmon (not all at once!).
13. Sales. Garage sales.
14. The color blue
15. Her dark burgundy sofa with the recliners on either end
16. Strawberry daiquiris (not that she had them often)
17. Autumn foliage
18. Old James Bond movies
19. Getting her hair cut
20. Constant Comment tea
Very sorry to hear about your mother. My mother passed away last year, it's been a tough year, harder than I ever imagined it would be.
ReplyDelete21. Her family, her husband, her children, her grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry to hear about this. I only heard tonight. You know my heart goes out to you, and your family.
ReplyDeleteHope to catch up soon.
all my very best,
Alan
22. Oversized nightgowns. She had this blue muumuu when I was younger, and we all (my sisters and I) liked to wear it when she wasn't. When it finally fell apart, I tried to find a replacement to no avail.
ReplyDelete23. The comics Family Circus and For Better or For Worse
24. Wheat Thins. French onion dip. Enchiladas. Tacos. Asti spumante. Tuna and chicken (not together) salad sandwiches. Many kinds of soup.
25. Temperate weather. She hated the cold of Illinois winters, especially as it aggravated her arthritis.
26. Teaching. She was a homebound teacher, meaning she visited students who were homebound because of illness, pregnancy, or disciplinary reasons, and that enhanced her sense of purpose.
27. Charitable work. When my sister Sandra was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when she was nine or ten, my mother got involved with the local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. Since her death I found out she'd become a volunteer for the American Cancer Foundation, calling people from home to solicit donations.
28. Diet Coke. Like me, she hated Pepsi products, and we'd avoid going to restaurants that served Pepsi instead of Coke.
29. Fried chicken. When Bloomington-Normal got its first Popeye's, she tried it and found she liked it, so I went there once with her on my last visit.
30. Oprah. She watched the show and recently had a subscription to the magazine, O.
31. As a non-denominational Christian at the end of her life, my mom's liberal beliefs accorded with the general principles of the New Testament. She never proselytized, yet clearly cherished her own religious experience.
32. Like my father, she was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. Voting Republican made no sense to her. The state should do more for the people, not less.