A Toast and Roast to My Mom at 75

A former roller rink queen, purveyor of quirk and true eclectic mind

Growing up, January 31st to February 11th was total cake mania due to a string of birthdays. My grandmother, dad, sister, aunt and mother dotted the days. Our family was annually lost in a thick Black Forest, the youngest of us warring over the maraschino cherries that circled the traditional cakes.

Last week (if you’ve been dialed into this page) I posted a toast and roast to my dad, Flo, who turned 80 on Groundhog Day. Kim and I actually live just north of Wiarton which is home to the albino meteorologist woodchuck known best as Wiarton Willie. He did NOT see his 5 o’clock shadow which promises the arrival of an early spring.

Springing forward, it’s now time to toast and roast my mother who is turning 75! I’m sure she’s had a week of trepidation knowing she was next in the milestone line! This is a natural fear when you have a writer in the family. Oh god. What will she say about us now?

The Secrets of Sandra

Back in high school, my friend Rob Shortell had a Mrs. Robinson-style crush on my mom. Remember how grads were asked to create corny yearbook bios? You’d list your nickname, career aspiration (*did I really say I wanted to be a maxi pad hand model? Yes!) and who you were known as (KA). In Rob’s case, his KA was “the guy in love with Julie Torti’s mom.”

She’s gorgeous, still, always. She has effortlessly moved through the years, fashions and hairstyles, all perfectly coiffed and poised. She insists that she has only ever used water to wash her face. No soap and then at night, a liberal application of Oil of Olay. That’s the magic.

Her affinities and affections are lifelong from Oil of Olay to Jean-Claude Van Damme fight scenes. She will never pass by a thrift store, live auction, historical plaque, roadside freebie or pioneer cemetery. We’ve all been victims of minor whiplash as she’s brought her vehicle to a sharp halt on the gravel shoulder to investigate an old trunk, mystery box, antique bird cage or brass bed frame that’s been propped up at the end of a laneway for free.

When homeowners abandon their ferns that have curled and browned or given up on rootbound clivia or philodendron plant, my mom is there to rescue it. My dad is the polar plant opposite as all he sees is another pot that will have to be shuffled inside or outside depending on frost warnings. On the flip side, my mom has grown and fruited lime trees (indoors) and has a very happy pineapple crown that will probably, eventually, produce a big chunky pineapple.

Greenhouses, garage sales and used bookstores are magnetic forces for my mom. If she comes out empty-handed, it’s only because she’s forgotten her purse in the vehicle.

Yes, my parents are as yin and yang as you can get. While houseguests may think that the Malaysian spears and antique guns that hang on the walls in my parents house belong to my dad, they are part of my mom’s carefully curated collection. Same goes for the wild taxidermy collection (which makes for great, late night “house hunting” with my sister).

Her dream Jeopardy categories would be: The Holocaust, Species That Thrive in Plant Hardiness Zone 5a and 6a, Pavarotti, the Bee Gees, Liberace, Fancy Cat Breeds, Laura Secord Chocolates, Chapin Family Genealogy (we’ll never need the likes of ancestry.ca), Nordic Noir films (*insert my dad groaning now at the subtitles), Natural History, Darwin, Wales, Items at the Mandarin Chinese Buffet, Austrian Aristocrats, Arctic Explorers, Martha Recipes, Gloria Vanderbilt’s Empire, Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat Books and Flashy Foreign Sports Cars (she has owned several, including a Triumph TR7, Subaru XT and Plymouth Sapporo) and Obituaries.

Back when we both had print newspaper subscriptions, no visit would be complete without a “clippings swap.” We’d save the quirkiest articles for each other and dozens of obituaries that made us smile. When we can, we still do, but more often, we send them via email coupled with bizarre and drop-dead-gorgeous house listings on realtor.ca.

Just be Interesting

My mom definitely instilled a bone-deep curiosity in us. “I don’t care what you do for a living, just be interesting.” That became a personal mantra. She never wanted us to have to endure the backbreaking work of farm life and picking tobacco as she did in her early years. We were encouraged to dream big and without borders. Her other signature line was, “Only boring people get bored,” and she made sure that we never were.

Our weekends were pleasantly jammed with exploration—we’d walk around a swampy boardwalk with binoculars at the ready at a conservation area or nature centre we’d never been to. We’d swing by the local library and fill our arms with as many books as my little arms would permit. My mother currently has a more extensive personal book collection than her local library branch in Walkerton.

When Kim and I are heading anywhere, I put in a request. “Do you have any books on Portugal? Vietnam?” She always does—and if she doesn’t, the request is noted on a search list for her next visit to VV (Value Village). Most often, she has found a few magazines (bookmark inserted on the destination page), a coffee table book, a Bradt or Lonely Planet or a biography on someone who has been there. The year Kim and I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago, my mom found a road map of Spain in her collection that folded out to 36 square feet.

Her inquisitive nature was contagious. Even though my siblings and I engulfed 98% of her time (in addition to her working full-time), she still managed to take evening courses on duck carving and architecture. She even built us a darling two-story dollhouse with a cedar shake roof at one of the local college’s continuing education programs. Each room was carpeted and wallpapered with scraps from our own home.

She was ahead of the game with trends and timeless design choices like exposed brick and beams. The grass cloth wallpaper she applied to our living room walls back in the 90s has seen a resurgence. Kiley, Dax and I always had a say in the redesign of our bedrooms (Dax and I shared and luckily we were of the same mindset). My mom would bring home a load of bulky wallpaper swatch books for us to flip through. The graph paper would come out and as we cut out tiny replicas of our furniture we’d play with the placement of each object in the room.

It’s ironic that our birthday gift for her this year was a wallpaper gift card—wherever she found her desired rolls, we’d pick up the tab and assist in the revamp of the lower bathroom.

For my 50th birthday in September, my parents gave me the best gift ever. It was technically from my mom as my dad said his collections were hands off (insert golf balls, a dozen mantel clocks and over 60 nutcrackers here). Inside my card, I was invited to choose ANYTHING from inside their house as my gift.

My mom’s collections are diverse, thoughtful, global and unlike any other. She has a bowl made out of an armadillo shell, deer sheds (antlers), a dozen mini Eiffel towers, a taxidermy fox (and two owls and countless ducks), sepia prints of lambs and longhorn cattle. There are carved wooden shorebirds, prints of bee-eaters, dog portraits, vintage postcards, Japanese tea sets, Irish moustache mugs, inkwells, milk ware, depression glass, Beswick horses, horse collars, agricultural implements, glass hydro insulators, century-old school readers, glass floats (used by fisherman), antique water pitchers, bedpans—it’s one very incredible museum display. Even their cats question what’s real in the house.

Naturally, when I chose a simple silver ostrich she demanded I take something else. “I know you’re a minimalist and all but that ostrich doesn’t even count.” By day’s end she followed on my heels, room to room, suggesting better items. “You don’t want the snowy owl?” Over the years I’ve poached several items from her including a carved puffin, silver greyhound head and water buffalo horns. So, in addition to my small ostrich, I was sent home with a serving plate with a parrot on it, a trio of carved African animals sitting on high chairs and a glazed owl tile.

The rooms are always changing at my parents—all under my mom’s influence. Antique fireplace mantels get shuffled in favour of a new treasure—a Victorian walnut dresser or old billpaying station. There are more antlers or new prints of tropical birds or llamas to find a home for. I know I’m missing a lot of her notable inventory here and will probably hear “why didn’t you mention such-and-such collection?”

I have always loved my mom’s insatiable appetite for learning, reading and experimenting. She’s fearless in the kitchen and shouldn’t be fearful at all, ever. Though she confesses, “I think your brother has surpassed me in the kitchen with his skills.” Her decadent Nanaimo bars, pecan pies, mile-high meringue on lemon pies, break-your-heart shortbread, moist banana chocolate chip muffins, towering tiramisu, deadly date squares, extra peanut buttery cookies, stuffed cannoli—really, insert anything here. She’s nailed the savory stuff too—10-layer lasagnas, cheesy baked ziti, zingy spaghetti sauce, spicy kofta, perfect quiche, spanakopita that shatters with each bite, cabbage rolls…yeah, I can go on but it’s her Panettone French toast that drops from the heavens with a beautiful thud. She would lean in here and say, “It’s the bacon grease. You need that to make it all worthwhile. And whipped cream (which she has at the ready in a professional dispenser with back-up nitrous oxide cartridges if need be). And probably more butter.

All of us learned to be open to it all. Even when she tried to convince us that she was serving us frog legs (it was tofu). She introduced us to chai tea long before it was a thing at Starbucks.

At age 18, when I was hellbent on moving out to Vancouver, she was equally hellbent that I had $1,000 in my bank account before I went. It was more money that I’d ever owned in my entire life. As soon as I hit that mark, I was off—with her unwavering support to take advantage of the time to “explore my personal geography.”

Years later (in pursuit of a PhD in Personal Geography), I announced that I was going to volunteer in Uganda with the Jane Goodall Institute. My mom was quick to let me know, “I’m not going into the jungle with you to catch butterflies for four months like Jane Goodall’s mother did!”

Our desired destinations remain quite opposite. Me: anywhere Africa, remote volcanic isles, jungly pockets, preferably molten hot, equatorial. My mom: anywhere moody and misty with shipwreck history, abandoned lighthouses, dank castles and mossy cemeteries. We meet in the middle with a shared love of newness, discovery and birds.

I’m grateful for the local nature club meetings we went to together that introduced me to places I hadn’t yet entertained like Botswana and Ellesmere Island. I fancied myself a future in the field, collecting specimens of some sort. Conveniently, my mom was working at a retirement home that had a pharmacy attached to it. Her friendship with Dwayne the pharmacist allowed me direct access to unlimited formaldehyde which I needed to preserve my growing collection of dead bats, baby opossums and other finds.

She encouraged me to label my specimens and document my collections. There was financial support for all of my early efforts and cash infusions to propel me on. I sold my stories and drawings to her and the extended family. Even though I ruined more than a dozen tablecloths in my impromptu painting sessions at the kitchen table, she still cheerleaded my artistic endeavors and sideline gigs. Even when my tie-dyed t-shirt production line inadvertently tinted additional loads of laundry.

As for my enthusiastic promises to pay her back for clay, acrylic paint and canvases by doing dishes or making my bed—let’s get real. I didn’t, so I should probably cut her a big fat cheque to cover those ruined tablecloths and White Rose bills.

Though we balked at too many museum visits and Kiley yawned over anything to do with nature, we saw a lovely chunk of the eastern seaboard on road trips. The fact that my mom agreed to a week in Bahamas (which is against all her creature comforts and interests), she made that happen too. She continues to be a crackerjack researcher, carting my dad around to Civil War markers, mansions and botanical gardens. She finds ice cream stops and baseball bat factories to keep him engaged.

Turkish Van Cats and Sneaky Beers

I know I’ve kept both my parents sleepless over the years and I continue to be. I introduced my mom to the insomnia alphabet game. It’s simple and free range–if you fail to find sleep, work your way through the alphabet with an established theme. For example: fancy cat breeds. When I suggested this to my mom she found herself getting out of bed to consult her cat books to find a cat breed that started with Q and X. Fun and sleepless fact: there are none! But there are Japanese bobtails, pixie-bobs and Turkish van cats!

This stubborn pursuit of knowledge is mirrored in each of us (in very different directions).

Thank you for listening to so many end-of-bed monologues and endless dictations of my creative writing efforts through the years (with your own book folded over on your lap with a smile).

Thank you for my binoculars, microscope and shelf full of Golden Guides that took me on extraordinary expeditions in our backyard and beyond.

I also am grateful that you insisted I get braces, despite my pre-teen meltdown and revolt. And though I battled back, I’m so grateful that I took that grade 11 Business class and learned how to properly type! Look at me now!

I’m also (hindsight) grateful that you pushed enrolling in geography over art in grade nine. It’s your fault that I want to head off to places like the Congo, western Madagascar and the soupy swamps of Botswana!

Thanks too for sharing half your post-workday Labatt’s Blue with me on the sly (shhh) when I was just shy of 18.

Thank you for encouraging us to quit if we weren’t truly happy—whatever it was that needed to come to an end. And sorry for the glut of poor partner choices you endured with a grace (and no comment, until after the fact, but only if asked).

Thank you for keeping all our kooky memorabilia—-including my life-sized octopus and panda papier mâché menagerie in the attic, teeth molds, Vanilla Ice concert tee, stuffed animals, doodles and trophies—and letting us choose what we wanted to keep when we were old enough to realize what remains important. The photos we have from our childhood are beyond precious—-thank you for taking so many even when we were pouting about it!

Thank you for picking tobacco and cauliflower so we didn’t ever have to and driving us all around to our silly part-time jobs while you were busy working your own.

Thank you mom, for never allowing us to be bored and for making our lives so interesting. Sorry about those tablecloths and thank you for listening to all my stories (live and in print). Sorry for all the sibling battles, the bedroom door off the hinges and the dent in the wall from that cat brush I threw at Kiley’s head.

We are lucky to have such a cool, progressive, gorgeous, encouraging, creative and brilliant mother to shape our lives. Let’s pop some prosecco, your laughter is our favourite thing to hear.

What did your mother teach you? I’d love to hear about the wisdom (or old wives tales) that guided you. Is there a recipe that is now in your hands (that never tastes quite the same)? Introduce me to your mom and thanks for listening to me brag about mine. Happy birthday, Sandra!