Category: Memories Of Mama

Memories of Mama: Christmas Cut Out Cookies

10/2/2019

My mother was the Cookie Queen, at least among our relatives and friends. In addition to having whole bookshelves of cookie books, she owned literally thousands of cookie cutters of every possible theme and subject. Peanuts, Sesame Street, Looney Tunes, and Winnie the Pooh all made it into the collection, along with cutters for every imaginable holiday, civic or religious. The cutters to the left are from the Robin Hood set that were placed in bags of Robin Hood Flour as a premium in the 1960's. Obviously, the Friar Tuck cutter is among my personal favorites. Mom even had a special recipe and cookie cutter for Groundhog Day!

It may see a bit odd to be posting an article about cut out cookies in October, since we usually associate that kind of baking with Christmas. I hasten to point out that my mother had two large boxes filled with nothing but Halloween themed cookie cutters (including a fairly large one of Snoopy asleep on top of a Jack O' Lantern) , plus cutters for fall and Thanksgiving. But my real motivation in writing this post is that this summer my publisher said he wanted me to produce a short book of holiday recipes. I knew I had to include Mama's Sugar Cookie Recipe, so on a warm night in early October I was baking and decorating Christmas trees.

Some of my favorite memories of Christmas center around baking and decorating cut-out sugar cookies. One year Mama baked about a dozen large angel cookies, and had my sister Eileen and I decorate them to depict her closest friends and co-workers, including their eye color and hairstyles. They were all delighted with such a unique gift, and several of those ladies saved their cookie portraits, carefully wrapped in tissue, and displayed them every year.

I suspect my mother's favorite recipe came from a magazine ad or the back of a package, and I'm sure many Breadheads will be using the same or a similar recipe as a family favorite. It uses almond extract instead of vanilla, cake flour in place of all-purpose, and when she rolled the dough out, she sprinkled the counter with powdered sugar instead of flour. The shortening in the recipe ensures that cookies keep their shape during baking, instead of spreading out as butter cookies often do. Try it "as is" before you make any changes---you'll be happy with the results, I'm sure, and the house will smell heavenly.

Mama's
Sugar Cookies
½ cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 well-beaten eggs
2 Tbs. cream
1 Tbs. almond extract
3 ½ cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder

Place flour and baking powder in a medium bowl and whisk until well blended; set aside. Cream shortening with sugar until light and fluffy (this is best done with a stand mixer, if possible). Add eggs, cream and almond extract and beat until smooth. Add sifted ingredients to creamed mixture and mix well. Shape into a mound, cover with waxed paper or plastic wrap and chill thoroughly (at least two hours). Working with about 1/3 of the dough at a time, roll out on a board lightly dusted with powdered sugar---dust the rolling pin with powdered sugar as well. Cut out with assorted cutters as desired. Place cookies on a lightly greased cookie sheet, or use parchment paper. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 8 minutes (less for smaller cookies) until the edges of the cookies are just slightly browned.

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St. Nicholas Cookies

11/24/2017

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Adservice Printmarketing, The Netherlands, posted on www.stnicholascenter.org

November 28th I'm giving a presentation on Christmas baking (private event for a club) and I've been putting together my PowerPoint presentation, mostly using my own photos but occasionally making use of online images---with appropriate credit given of course! I start with the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6 and work my way all the way through Our Lady of Guadalupe, Santa Lucia Day, Christmas Eve and Day, and all the way to Epiphany. I include recipes from several cultures and traditions, with foods in honor of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the shepherds, the angels, and the Magi. Most of the material comes from my book 'Tis the Season to Be Baking, but this week I was inspired to expand my presentation to include a traditional cookie for St. Nicholas' Day called speculaas.

A version of speculaas can be found in any country where St. Nicholas is honored, but especially in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Ukraine. They are a spiced cookie with similar flavors to gingerbread but without the molasses. They can be molded or rolled out and shaped with cookie cutters. Go to www.stnicholascenter.org for recipes, cookie cutters and other resources. (I used the recipe for "Dutch Spice Cookies"). Having cleaned out my mother's house in the past year (the one with 9,000 cookie cutters in the basement), I didn't need to shop. I had the perfect cookie mold in storage, just waiting to be used.

I bought this cookie mold for my mom while I was at school at St. Meinrad Archabbey, at their (now defunct) Abbey Press. They had some kind of yard sale, and I found this terracotta mold for all of $3.00. Based on its condition when we found it in the house, I don't think Mama ever used it so I decided that a test was in order, if for no other reason than to get some photos for my presentation. I found the recipe online at the aforementioned St. Nicholas Center and mixed up the dough in a jiffy. Some recipes call for chilled dough, others say to use the dough at room temperature--the instructions that came with the mold suggested the latter. They also said to dust the mold with flour, but flour didn't want to stick to it, so I measured out the dough (about 3 tablespoons) and rolled it in flour before putting in the mold---worked like a charm! The cookies popped out of the mold without any difficulty.

The result was three dozen of these adorable cookies which made the kitchen smell delightfully like Christmas in spite of it being the day after Thanksgiving. I don't need Black Friday to get myself into the holiday spirit! You'll have to special order the mold for yourself (some resources HERE) unless you are lucky enough to find one in an antique mall or flea market. Longaberger made one but it's too large for my taste and it's harder to get the cookie out of such a long mold.

I might also add that having experimented extensively, I think speculaas are equally delicious with cold milk, warm tea or hot coffee, but you will have decide for yourself. December 6 isn't far away--get baking!

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A Blessing for Mother's Day

5/14/2017

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This is my first Mother's Day without my dear mama, and it has made me realize that Mother's Day can have a lot of different meanings depending on your circumstances. So I wrote this and offered it in place of the traditional blessing of mothers customarily used at the end of Mass on Mother's Day. I was asked by some people to make it available to them so I post it here. Please share it as you wish.

Blessings to all mothers

Blessings to all who mourn the loss of a mother or the loss of a child

Blessings to those mothers with special needs children, whose motherhood perhaps turned out to be differently from what they dreamed of, at the same time better and worse than they imagined.

Blessings to all who long to be mothers but cannot because of circumstance or biology or some mystery still to be revealed

Blessings to adoptive mothers and their children, and to the biological mothers who gave them life.

Blessings to all who never knew their mothers, or lost them too soon

Blessings to all who are estranged from their mothers, or from their children

Blessings to those separated from their children by illness, distance, or military service.

Blessings to all who struggle with what it means to be a mother, who are fearful of failure, who second guess themselves and wonder what they did wrong or how they can get it right.

Blessings to stepmothers and second mothers and grandmothers raising their children’s children and to all the women in your life who have been like a mother to you.

Blessings to those for whom Mother’s Day is not a blessing, and to those for whom it is a mixed blessing and to those who find it a blessing in every way and a great singing joy.

Fr. Dominic Garramone

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Estate Sale

3/11/2017

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As regular readers of my blog know, I love to shop in thrift stores, second-hand shops and the like. This week at such a store, I found an embroidered hand towel to use on my next bread quilt, a square baking stone for a mere $5, and a copper-bottomed Revereware sauce pan for making caramel. And one other surprise I had not encountered before . . .

One of my cookbooks. For a dollar.

This is, I must confess, a day I have be anticipating with some unease, even though I know that my discomfort is irrational and at least partly based on a lack of monastic humility. After all, do I really have any reason to take this personally? Who knows why this particular book ended up at the thrift store? It might have been part of someone’s downsizing before moving to a retirement community, or perhaps the owner lost mobility because of age or injury and could no longer enjoy baking.

Or maybe, this book was part of an estate sale, not unlike the sale that is going on at my childhood home, even as I type this. Perhaps the previous owner had no children who were interested in baking or (dare I hope?) they already had their own copies. Perhaps they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of cookbooks in their mother’s (or father’s!) collection.

I can sympathize. I have eight xerox boxes filled with bread cookbooks from my mother’s bookcase---there were as many cookie recipe books to sort through as well, most of which ended up in the sale. I took all the bread books home so I could sort through them to determine which ones I might want, which might be used as bread demo door prizes, and which could be donated or even discarded.

I found it moving that many of the books I found were already in my collection because my mom gave them to me for Christmas, my birthday, or “just because.” A few of my mom’s copies were claimed by my siblings, sometimes after I convinced them of the worthiness of a particular volume. Little by little I’m working my way through the remainder. If you attend any of my upcoming bread demos, most likely you’ll get a free raffle ticket for a chance to win one of these treasures.

On one shelf on Mom’s bookcase was filled with all of my cookbooks---she usually got the first copy out of the box from the printer. Naturally, I have all the same books on my shelf in the pantry of our abbey kitchen. I’ve decided to replace all of my copies with hers, and give my own away. They are all inscribed to her, of course, with a personal message. I’m happy to have them as mementos of her and how I loved her--still love her.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the estate sale. It’s heart-wrenching in many ways, and in other ways a great relief. An abundance of gratitude is due to my siblings, who have worked far harder than I have in getting the house cleared out and ready for the onslaught of bargain hunters. We are of course hoping for a good monetary result from the sale, so that we can have the funds for some necessary repair and upkeep for the house before it goes on the market, which is a source of some anxiety.

But I’ve also been experiencing some anxiety for a different reason: the feeling that the people who run the sale and the ones who come to shop will not value Mom’s things for what they are truly worth, or as much as we do. What if a rare cookie cutter goes out for a fraction of its value? Will people realize what that batik fabric costs per yard? Will they know if a dresser is pine or cherry? Like my discomfort at finding my first published cookbook priced for a dollar, my fear is that somehow my mother's memory will not be honored by people picking over her things and haggling over their worth.

In one way, these are all legitimate concerns. We want to receive appropriate value for the estate whenever possible. But I've come to realize that the sale, ultimately, has nothing to do with my mother's legacy. My siblings and I had taken away everything we genuinely wanted, or at least as much as we had room to store. My sister Angela took Grandma Stellie's rocker; my older brother Marty got the grandfather clock and a rug Mama braided out of rummage sale wool coats; I have her bread books, plus a trunk made by my Irish ancestors who took it over the Great Plains on a covered wagon; Eileen wanted the dining room table and the Cookie Lamp (the subject of a future blog, I promise!): Vinny saved another braided rug, plus a doll Mom made for him from a towel that came in a box of laundry detergent. We all got cookie cutters from her collection and favorite Christmas ornaments and baskets she had made, and all the letters and cards she saved. We have no reasons to regret what we left behind.

So how am I to understand the value of what remained? After much reflection I realized the real value of those Longaberger baskets and Belleek China and Waterford crystal, all the vintage cookie cutters, the boxes and boxes of quilting fabric. It is this: they made my mother happy. She loved having the ideal basket to carry homemade cookies to a potluck, was delighted when someone needed a particular color or print of fabric and she could find it in the sewing room closet, took pride in getting out the good china teapot to entertain her quilting friends. All that "stuff" had already shown its genuine value long before the sale, because it gave her pleasure and afforded her opportunities to make other people happy as well. My mother did not value them as "things" so much in themselves as in their usefulness in showing how much she loved her family and friends.

And those memories of how much she loved us, and of the multitude of ways in which she showed it, will endure long after the last box of odds and ends goes home in somebody's trunk.

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Memories of Mama: bread quilt

1/17/2017

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You may remember a previous post about bread quilts made with vintage dresser scarves and other embroidered linens. This one I made in honor of my mom. I had started it several months ago with the intention of giving it to her for Christmas. The two blue birds in the center two rows came from a dresser scarf my Grandma Tootsie made. My mother loved violets and roses (wish I could have found an embroidered lily of the valley) and an abiding love for baskets, which she both made and collected.

The square on the far right with tulips has special meaning for me: in the days of my mother's last illness, I had felt the need to do something hopeful, so I went out to plant some bulbs for the spring. I had just come in from adding a small bed of tulips to accent the kitchen garden when I received word that my mother had died.

We continue to go through the house, finding treasures and mysteries and memories in every drawer, every odd box in the back of a closet. Our mourning continues, each of us coping in our own ways. When I get to missing my mom, I mix up a batch of dough, cover it lovingly with her bread quilt, and look out the window to the kitchen garden, waiting hopefully for the joy of spring.

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Memories of Mama: Mint Surprise Cookies

12/20/2016

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Starlight Mint Surprise cookies, from the Pillsbury Website

At the very first Pillsbury Bake-Off in 1949, Laura Rott of Naperville Illinois won the cookie division with her recipe for "Starlight Mint Surprises," a fairly simple margarine-based cookie with a chocolate mint wafer in the center and a walnut half on top. They proved wildly popular and were a traditional cookie in American homes for decades. The recipe from the Pillsbury website is posted at the bottom of this page, but be sure to read the rest of the blog for some helpful hints.

In 1963 a version of the recipe appeared in Betty Crocker's classic "Cooky Book", and that is the one that became a perennial Christmas favorite in "The Crumpled House" (our nickname for the house on McClure Avenue in Peoria where we grew up). We made sugar cookies all year long and scores of cowboy cookies, and there was a spritz cookie shape for every holiday, but Starlight Mint Surprises were a special treat reserved for Christmas. My mother always preferred pecans to the walnuts in the original recipe, but in the end it was all about the mint chocolate center anyway.

Alas, like so many treasures of childhood, it was not to last. They stopped making Starlight Mints, at least the chocolate wafer variety. Enter "Starlight Mints" in any search engine and you'll see pictures of the classic red and white swirl hard candy, which is NOT an acceptable substitute. I assure you. The Pillsbury website recommends the use of "thin rectangular crème de menthe chocolate candies (from three 4.67-oz packages), unwrapped"---in other words, Andes Candies. I'm sure they are delicious, but I have never had to try this variation, thanks to my clever sister Angela.

Anj had the idea that you could make your own "starlight mints" using peppermint oil (NOT extract) and dark chocolate candy melts---Wilton makes both of these products and you can find them in the cake decorating aisle. Place two or three drops of peppermint oil in a re-closable plastic bag and add the candy melts. Seal and shake for a minute or two. Leave overnight, and the next morning you'll have your mint chocolate wafers, just like Mama used to use.

Once I get my finals graded, I'll be in the kitchen making these memorable treats. I've seen photos of cookie baking all over social media in the past week: people making springerle or peanut blossoms or cout out sugar cookies with lots of frosting and sprinkles. The kitchen is a mess and the table is crowded, but everyone is smiling---an apt description of my childhood. Don't let your family miss out on the sight.

STARLIGHT MINT SURPRISES
Ingredients
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup margarine, softened
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
60 thin rectangular crème de menthe chocolate candies (from three 4.67-oz packages), unwrapped (OR use variation described above)
60 walnut halves or pieces
Steps
1
In large bowl, beat sugars, butter, water, vanilla and eggs with electric mixer on medium speed, scraping bowl occasionally, until blended. On low speed, beat in flour, baking soda and salt until well blended. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 2 hours for easier handling.
2
Heat oven to 375°F. Using about 1 tablespoon dough, press dough around each chocolate candy to cover completely. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Top each with walnut half.
3
Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until light golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack.

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Memories of Mama: Pecan Pie Bars

11/26/2016

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Although my mother made just about everything else from scratch, she was not above using cake mixes. Among the cookbooks in her collection, I found one titled: Cake Mix Cookies by Camilla V. Saulsbury. I might not have noticed it among the hundreds of titles had it not been for a small Post-It note bookmarking a particular page, where I found a recipe for Pecan Pie Bars.

A moment of silent reverence, please.

Mom made these for some occasion---birthday, potluck, Christmas---or maybe just because she liked the look of the recipe and she loved pecans. But I must have come home for a visit at just the right time, because I remember eating one at my customary spot at the dining room table with a cup of Irish Afternoon tea and relishing every crumb. If you like pecan pie but don't like messing with a pie crust, this is the recipe for you. The crust is made with cake mix, butter and an egg---simple!---and the filling mixes up in a jiffy.

I made a batch, along with some Cowboy Cookies, to take with me to Peoria Notre Dame High School's Production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. I was doing a review/talk back with the cast after the show and decided I should bring post-show treats. The show's director was Kathy Svoboda, a dear friend with whom I have a long standing joke about caramel pecan rolls. But I didn't have enough time to make a yeasted dough, so these pecan pie bars were the perfect recipe for the situation. The students were surprised and delighted when I brought out the treats and both the cookies and the pecan pie bars were devoured in short order. I might add that their show was selected for performance at the Illinois Hig School Theatre Festival in January.

It was satisfying to see my efforts so greatly appreciated, but something else occurred to me on the drive home. I had honored my mother's memory by baking two of her favorite recipes, but even more so by sharing them unexpectedly, by bringing treats when I didn't have to, by doing what she so often did: making other people happy by a random act of kindness in the form of a plastic container full of home-baked goodies. I hope the students were paying attention, and will come to do the same.

I'm sharing the recipe for these bars (slightly adapted) in the hopes that it will entice you to buy the book---it's a keeper!

Pecan Pie Bars
adapted from Cake Mix Cookies
by Camilla V. Saulsbury

1 (18.25-ounce) package yellow cake mix
5 Tbs. butter, softened
4 large eggs
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
1½ cups dark corn syrup
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1¼ cups chopped pecans, divided

Preheat oven to 350° F. (or 325° for dark-coated metal pans). Position oven rack in middle of oven. Spray a 9 x 13-inch metal baking pan with non-stick cooking spray (you can also line the pan with foil or parchment).
Set aside ⅔ cup of the dry cake mix. Combine the remaining cake mix, butter and 1 of the eggs with an electric mixture at medium speed until blended and crumbly. Press mixture in the bottom of the prepared pan and bake 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl combine reserved ⅔ cup cake mix, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla extract, and remaining three eggs and mix until well blended. Stir in ¾ cup of chopped pecans. Pour mixture over hot crust. Sprinkle on remaining pecans.
Bake an additional 30-35 minutes or until filling is set. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. Cut into bars.

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Memories of Mama: Cowboy Cookies

11/13/2016

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Cowboy cookies were a staple in my family home, a recipe found on a battered and stained card in the metal box and regularly used to make classroom treats, a dessert to pass at a Cub Scout meeting, or "just because." If you look up "Cowboy Cookies" on the Internet, you'll find several versions with oatmeal, nuts, coconut and/or cinnamon added, often served in large, even Texas-sized portions.

I reject such modern innovations.

Cowboy cookies are, at their finest, modestly-sized chocolate chip cookies with rolled oats added to the dough, made with shortening instead of butter or margarine. The oats have to be the old-fashioned whole rolled oats, not the quick cooking ones (which are chopped too small) or the instant variety (which has a lot of extra salt, is precooked and chopped even smaller). The cookies are scooped out by tablespoon, so you get a good number of them---about 10 dozen. However, I generally use a commercial cookie scoop which measures out 3/4 oz. of dough, so the recipe yields about 4 dozen.

There is a lot of speculation as to why they are called cowboy cookies, and one of the aforementioned versions has even been at the center of a political struggle, but I have my own theory: kids like cowboys. These cookies first became popular when the cowboy movie or serial was a popular genre for kids (think of the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy) and dressing up as a cowboy or cowgirl among the most popular Halloween costumes. In fact, the back of the recipe card above features the image to the right. I have no idea who these children are---they were cut out of the magazine in which the recipe appeared---but this could easily be a picture of my older brother Marty and my younger sister Eileen, pigtails and all.

As we were cleaning out the house after my mother's death, we of course came across a thousand memories a day, many of them in the kitchen. On the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet we found the coffee can, decorated in classic 70's style, in which she kept her chocolate chips and coconut, clearly labeled "For Cookies". I used to sneak chocolate chips, but I should have known my mother would discover the culprit. One day I opened the canister to discover a note (addressing me by my baptismal name) that stated emphatically: "Michael, if you eat any more of these chocolate chips I will break your arm!" My siblings made sure I got the canister and its contents after the funeral. In addition to the Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips with which I made the batch of cowboy cookies pictured below, it held a note that read: "Dom, Enjoy the chocolate. No broken arms. --your sibs."

I'm definitely feeling the love. Bake these cookies and you will, too. Take the recipe from the card at the top of the page---it needs no improvement.

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Memories of Mama: Banana Coconut Cookies

11/8/2016

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Banana Coconut Cookies

For many years, my mother gave each of her children and grandchildren the same birthday present: a batch of their favorite cookies. My mother would ship them, carefully wrapped to avoid breakage, or would have them waiting on the dining room table when you came home. Actually, "favorite" is a bit of a misnomer, since she would always ask in advance which recipe you wanted, and for most family members it might change from year to year: Cowboy Cookies one year, Starlight Mint Surprises the next, with Peanut Butter Blossoms thrown in one year to mix things up. Monks, however, are creatures of habit (pun intended) and so I consistently asked for my all-time favorite sweet treat: Banana Coconut Cookies.

The original recipe came from Rawleigh, a company that used to sell door-to-door in neighborhoods with products like home remedies, spices, extracts, and pudding mixes. I remember Mama's cupboard always had a cardboard canister of Rawleigh's Imitation Pie Filling and Dessert, and I think the recipe was on the label. The company is still around but alas, they no longer make the banana flavored dessert, although my mother bought several canisters before they became unavailable and used it judiciously for several years.

This year my mother was unable to make the cookies for me, because she was seriously ill for most of October and suffered a stroke on the morning of my birthday. She died a few days later---you can read her eulogy HERE. We served cookies at her wake and gave attendees one of her cookie cutters as a memento. My siblings and I have been scanning recipe cards and perusing cookie books for the last week. I'll be posting more of her favorite cookie recipes in the weeks and months ahead---but back to banana coconut.

Although there was about a third of a canister left in Mama's cupboard, I knew that the Rawleigh product would need a viable long-term substitution. Jello brand Banana Cream Instant Pudding proved unsatisfactory----the cookies were too cakey, and didn't have enough banana flavor---but Jello just came out with a new line of "Simply Good" gelatin and pudding mixes with all-natural ingredients. I gave it a try and found the results very close indeed to the original, and my siblings agreed that it was a superior product. Give the recipe a try and let me know what you think. Better still, if you like the cookies, do what I did and let the Jello people know what you think, and encourage them to keep making the product. I'm buying a large supply, just in case.

Banana Coconut Cookies

2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 packages) Jello brand Simply Good Banana Pudding Mix
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) margarine
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
1 teaspoon banana extract
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

In a medium size bowl, combine flour, pudding mix, baking powder, baking soda and salt, and whisk blend completely. In another bowl or stand mixer, cream together margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, milk, and extracts and beat until well blended. Add flour mixture and mix well. Stir in coconut until evenly distributed throughout dough. Wrap dough in waxed paper or plastic film and chill in refrigerator for at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 375° F. Drop balls of chilled dough the size of walnuts on lightly greased baking sheets (you can line the pans with parchment paper instead) and flatten balls slightly. Bake for 10 minutes or until browned. Yields about 4 dozen cookies.

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My mother's funeral homily

11/4/2016

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My dear mother passed away on October 29 at about 1:00 in the afternoon. You can find her obituary HERE.

If you've read any of my cookbooks or seen my shows on PBS, you know that she had a huge influence on me and my baking. In the next few months I'll be posting bread blogs with plenty of memories---accompanied by recipes, of course! For right now, I thought I'd share my homily from her funeral, which was November 3. The readings were:

Proverbs 31:10-39
Romans 8:36-39
Luke 2:15-20

Funeral Mass Homily
Mary A. Garramone
St. Bernard's Church, Peoria, IL
November 3, 2016

Mom wanted things arranged in advance for her funeral, and she must have thought about it every now and then, because she sent me many versions over the years: a couple of songs, three or four responsorial psalms, several sets of readings. So I was surprised when, in our most recent conversation about the funeral, she left the choice of the first two readings and the psalm to us.

It should not difficult to imagine why we chose the first reading from Proverbs: it is an apt description of her as it was for Mary Otten, her dear friend of happy memory.

She gets up while it is still night
All those nursing shifts working 11 to 7, and getting up give us kids meds and cool iced tea when we were sick.

She sets about her work vigorously , her arms are strong for her tasks.
We called her “Toughie McNutt”

She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.
Like her mother, Grandma Tootsie, she was always worried about the hungry poor.

When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are doubly clothed. My mother was into the “layered look” long before it was fashionably, especially if we were going sledding.

She makes coverings for her bed, working with eager hands. She took great delight in being a quilter, and loved spending time with “The Mary Quilters” and other sewing groups.

She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. My mother may not have ever eaten the bread of idleness, but she baked every OTHER kind of bread, and was a legendary cookie baker.

But it should be equally obvious why we chose the second reading: she did not allow anything to separate her from the love of God in Christ Jesus: no grief, no loneliness, no suffering, frustration or anxiety was ever powerful enough to make her lose her faith. Lose her temper, yes. Lose her customary cheerfulness and courtesy—perhaps, but only in extremis. Even to lose her courage, once or twice, towards the end. But never her faith.

My mother was devoted to the Blessed Mother and prayed the rosary often. She liked to hold the beads in the fingers but have the crucifix in her hand. When Mama was in her last hours she was not responding or even moving much, not even opening her eyes. My sister Eileen noticed her rubbing her fingers together. She put the beads between Mama’s fingers, and my mother flipped her hand and expertly caught the cross in her palm, a gesture she’d done thousands of times.

Later in the night, my sister played hymns on her phone and sang to comfort my mother, including “Here I Am, Lord” one of my mom’s favorites. When they got to the refrain, my mother, hours from death, paralyzed on one side and hardly responding otherwise, raised her arm straight up in the air, as if to say, “Here I am, Lord.” An obedient and beloved daughter of God to the end.

As far as the gospel is concerned, I think we really should have had three, so I want to comment on two other familiar passages in addition to the one we heard. Many years ago she made out a pair of typed pages with readings, response and gospel chosen---the paper is yellowed now, but the gospel is still fresh: Jesus saying “Let the children come to me.”

Let the children come to me in the kitchen—my favorite classroom, and I’ll teach them to count cups of flour, and to tell time until the bread is done, to learn patience and cooperation and gratitude and to take turns on who gets to lick the beaters. Let them come with me to the library, my mother would say, and to the “New New Park” with the roundy-roundy slide, and to Dairy Queen for a fling because it’s payday. Let the children come to me, said Mama, and I’ll take them to the Heart of Illinois Fair and the Spring Bay Watermelon Festival and the Tremont Turkey Festival and anywhere they serve haystack onion rings, and then it’s off to the Glen Oak band concert on the fourth of July and I’ll lead a parade of children marching around the blanket, all of us waving sparklers and flags. That was my mother.

But another gospel verse comes to mind as well: John 15:13 in which Jesus says: “Greater love has no-one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And she did give her life, a continuous stream of sacrifices for her children, her family, for her patients and her nurses, for anyone in need. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy were daily activities for her---she did not need a Year of Mercy to remind her. But we sometime forget the verse that follows and we ought not forget, in my mother’s case: “Greater love has no-one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do as I command you.” No matter what, she couldn’t turn off the button that says “Mind your Mama”---it was always dialed up to ten. I was in the monastery for two whole years, going to church five times a day, before she stopped calling to remind me that December 8th is a holy day of obligation and I’d better go to mass. That was my mother.

But what of the reading she herself chose? An odd choice, perhaps, to use the gospel more suited for the Christmas mass at dawn. But the angels and the shepherds and the manger are not really the point. The point was the last verse: “And Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

My mother did not merely remember her experiences, good and bad---she treasured them, prayed about them, thought about them deeply, tried to understand their meaning. She pieced them together like a quilt as she pondered, found the pattern and the purpose, God’s will hidden in everyday things. And as she pondered, mere knowledge was transformed into holy wisdom, speculation turned into spiritual insight, and in a kind of personal transubstantiation, living her own faith was turned into a powerful witness to the gospel. As a Eucharistic minister, my mother had the greatest love for the Blessed Sacrament, cherished it in the tabernacle, offered it with reverence, received it with deep devotion. The Word became flesh, and the flesh became bread, and my mother received the bread of life, and the Word became flesh in her, so she became a sign of the Love of God at work in the world.

So may we all.

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