Memories of Mother

The best thing I remember about my mother is that she was a great listener. (I wish I could listen half as well!) She always had time to listen to me, and it wasn't always easy.

I learned from her example to take a sympathetic view of people. (She even felt sorry for Nixon!) That's probably the most important thing she did for me.

I must also mention that she was well-read.  She liked to talk about people like Samuel Johnson and Abraham Lincoln. (She was also sympathetic toward Lincoln's unbalanced wife.) I'd come home from the university library and tell her the latest things written by columnists in the British magazine The Spectator.  There was "High Life" written by the shameless millionaire Taki Theodoracopolous (he once came on The Oprah Winfrey Show as a man who preferred younger women!); "Low Life" by sportswriter Jeffrey Bernard; and "Long Life" by Nigel Nicholson, son of writers Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West, who became an MP and publisher.  I liked telling her what they'd written, and she liked hearing it.

She also told me a lot of stories about her Cape Breton youth. Like the time she was in a candy store with her sister, my aunt Alma, and said, "Let's get ten cents of this!" Alma said, "Ten cents, me eyeball!" A grownup overheard them and the next time he met them he repeated "Ten cents, me eyeball!"

I joined this memoir group shortly after her death, and I really with I could tell her some of the stories I've heard here!  I know she'd be interested in them.