It’s surreal my mom has been gone my entire adult life. This is one of only three photos I have of her, there are times I can barely remember what she looked like.
“Just look in the mirror, Rob,” says Gary, who remembers everything and loved my mom so very much, as she loved him…she knew we were soulmates when we were children.
My mom never got to meet my kids and never knew I would go on to write a bunch of books.
She never got to eat small batch ice cream, use a computer, or fly on a plane.
My mom was the original hippie. We were the first family in the neighborhood to have a bathroom wallpapered in posters in the mid sixties.
We had zero money, so when my mom couldn’t afford posters of the Beatles, she got the idea to visit a travel agent and coyly ask for free, promotional travel posters to show my father in hopes of a trip. As if. Oh, how 10 year old me loved staring at those pics of England and Italy and dreaming that someday I’d visit…
I made it to both places, mom.
My mom doesn’t get credit for it, but in 1964, she invented the first flourless chocolate cake when she drank a glass of Manischewitz while baking and left out the flour/baking powder.
She called it the Flop Cake and to this day, it remains the most delicious thing I ever ate.
We begged her to make it again but she honestly didn’t know how she did it and she was too afraid to try.
How ironic that recipe became iconic right after her death.
Nowadays, instead of mourning my mother and all that she missed, I am grateful she didn’t get to see the end of Roe v Wade and yesterday, Nazis marching through Disneyland.
It would have killed her all over again.
Anyway, I’m not big on Hallmark holidays, especially with my own kids living thousands of miles away, but this year I intend to hug my puppy and husband throughout the day and eat French onion soup and flourless chocolate cake for dinner.
Happy mother’s day ❤️
