A couple of weeks ago, in an effort to clean the Taos house after having some roof and wall work done, I found myself tackling a large bookcase at the back of the house.
This piece of furniture was where my mom kept most of her cookbooks and gardening books. There were books, vegetable seeds, clipped articles, and a stack of cards that she received over the years from friends and family that she always shoved into cookbooks. So many that they were truly a testament of how well loved she was. But more than that, there were literally hundreds of fine cooking magazines, thoroughly read with dog-eared pages and circled recipes. Often, while she was still alive, she entertained the idea of getting rid of these stacks of magazines but always ended by saying that she just couldn’t do it and we would have to figure out what to do with them all after her demise (her word). A little over three years later and I finally took the project on. The thing about it is that it was even hard for me to let the magazines go. They were a testament to how my mom lived life following her passions, cooking being at the top of the list. I’d be surprised if she didn’t try most of the marked recipes and I can guarantee they would have come out spectacular! My mom had the unique ability to always be able to entertain herself and enjoy her own company, even after my dad passed and Miles and I left for college. The gardening books and clippings that I found demonstrate why she always had prolific vegetable and flower beds around the house. On a side note, I also found her make-up tray amongst the books because she always sat in the lovely morning light in the back room to “put on her face”. Eventually in life, we have to let these things go, but these were hard.
A day never passes that I don’t think of my mom and miss her in an extraordinary way. Time does not heal grief, it simply gives us the grace to learn to walk beside it for the rest of our days without drowning in it. I am thankful to have had the very best mom possible for 51 years of my life. She will always live in my heart.
