Santa Lucia Day

If you had an interest, or if you found something that you got really excited about, she would encourage and support that interest.
When I was little (8 years?) I was really interested in Sweden. I don't remember what it was, but I remember only wanting to read the All American Girl books about Kirsten the Swedish immigrant and Addy the African slave. Mom bought me those two dolls - Kirsten and Addy.
I started to look into Santa Lucia Day during my Swedish interests, and I think I even interviewed a Swedish person for a class assignment at some point because I was so dedicated.
There's nothing Swedish about us, of course.
That Christmastime during my Swedish obsessions Mom took me to Strawberry Bank in Portsmouth, NH for their Swedish Christmas celebrations. They had events and classes where we could learn about Swedish traditions and try Swedish holiday activities. There was a Smorgasborg and other very Swedish things. And Mom made sure we got to go to this event.
I remember LOVING it and learning about Santa Lucia Day and little Swedish cultural highlights with Mom. Like the sprite that will steal stuff from your house if you don't appease him during Christmas.
I was thrilled that my Mom joined me in learning about my interests around Sweden - her investment in my interests helped me love our day there even more.

Mom was Creative

Mom always embraced the unusual things that I was interested in when I was growing up. Whenever people called me weird or strange at school, she would always tell me that I wasn't weird, that I was "uniquely creative".
She was emphatic about this.
That it wasn't a bad thing. That it was okay to be not like everyone else, to be weird. She encouraged it in a lot of ways.
One of my memories of this was when I got into acting when I was little. I was such as a theatrical kid.  And Mom dove in head-first with me, into the theater world and theater programs I found and joined.
If I wanted to dance around, she would dance around, too. She supported the behind-the-scenes of almost all of the plays and performances in which I participated. She helped people with lines, she worked on costumes and decorations. She learned the music.
She always wanted to find the quirky joy with me. She would sing songs that were funny or new (or at least new and original for her).
Or she would find original stuff for us to try or make - she was so crafty.
She always encouraged us to be creative and not be hindered by our self-doubt.

Hospice Talks

When Mom went into hospice, I wanted to get as much out of her head as I could before it was too late.
We talked about what she wanted us to take. We talked about how much we loved each other.
I asked her what her favorite memory of Aimee and me was.
She said it was when we were little in Buffalo and we danced and sang on the fireplace platform, with the fireplace spokes and curtain strings as a fireplace.
I also asked her what her words of advice were for me.
She said to "keep it simple".
I asked what about for Aimee.
She said to "keep it simpler".

Strange Analogies

Mom had a knack for having strange analogies for the things she saw in her world.
My favorite was in Hawaii.
We went to Paris and London as a family when I was 10 years old. The next year we went to Hawaii.
We were walking down the main thoroughfare of one of the islands - either Oahu or Maui - and Mom declared, "This reminds me of the Champs Elysees!"
Aimee and I found this hilarious. Mostly because we were in a tropical paradise, surrounded by palm trees and people walking around in bathing suits - a far cry from Paris in April, with scarves and cigarettes.
But, to Mom, she explained the wide boulevard with the fancy shops reminded her of walking down the shopping destination in Paris. The large differences didn't always matter to her.

Christmas Parties

Mom's parties were epic. They always were. The guests always left beaming and going home with an array of items Mom would pack them up with.
She was never someone who wanted to "half ass" anything, and parties were no exception. She was going to get the best quality food and decorations, and she never forgot to find entertainment.
The Christmas parties were every year as Aimee and I grew up. They were partly for making appearances for Dad and his executive lifestyle, but also they were partly for Mom to have a mission to focus her creativity and craftsmanship.
Usually, though, Mom didn't start putting the party together until a week or two before (save the invitations). The house would become chaotic and we girls knew not to cross Mom during these times.
It was partly a wild prep because it wasn't just about decorating the house with tinsel and a big Christmas tree - Mom would make so much of the party by scratch. She made a gingerbread village from scratch, which meant she was making and molding and baking pounds upon pounds of gingerbread, carefully building the houses with sweets and frosting with painstaking precision so as no house were to look haphazard.
She would make each individual goody-bag for guests. Sometimes they were graham cracker house ornaments. Sometimes they were handmade chocolate pops. Sometimes they were other fun and crafty things. They were never just simple, store-bought kitsch items. They were always perfectly homemade.
She also would make some of the food days in advance and freeze them in the outdoor sunroom/porch, when there was snow. Our freezers and cupboards would be packed with food she would store up for the holidays. Some she would mail order, a lot of it she would still buy from stores all over. It was a lot of people and she had a policy in parties that she had to keep feeding people the whole party.
She always got a great Santa, and had him give the children "magic" gold coins and an envelop filled with "magic sparkles" that the children had to put on their driveways on Christmas Eve so he could find their homes faster.

Roadtrip to Vermont

One summer, when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, Mom and I decided we were going to go on a road trip to Vermont for the day, with the sole purpose of getting ice cream at the Ben & Jerry's Factory. I don't remember why we decided we were going to do this, but it feels like it was one of those spur-of-the-moment things with mom one summer weekend.
We got into the car and we drove for hours and hours, from Massachusetts to Vermont. We listened to a poor radio signal of "A Prairie Home Companion" (a radio show she enjoyed listening to) most of the way there. We talked about how beautiful the mountains were on the drive, and I declared I wanted to live in the Vermont mountains when I got older and write poems all day long. She loved that and remembered that fantasy for life.
We got to the factory during the day and took the factory tour. I was so excited, and we got to try a few new flavors they were testing out. I believe one of the flavors I got to taste (though it was already out there on the market) was Cherry Garcia.
We had a fun adventure. We probably made an outlet stop on the way somewhere, but it was a long time ago so I can't recall.

School Crafts (Lincoln Logs)

Mom was really good with crafts. She even had a cottage industry going on for a while where she would make holiday ornaments and other fun little decorations for people and sell at craft fairs.
Sometimes even she would be invited to our classes to help students with Father's Day or Mother's Day cards or artsy gifts, and her projects were always so lovely yet simple and fun. One year she helped my class make cards for Father's Day where the cards looked like a button-down shirt with an origami tie cut into the shirt. Another time she helped us make "mini gingerbread houses" out of graham crackers and frosting.
She was so good at helping me get my crafty projects for class.
When I was in 4th grade, I had a craft project for a book I had read. I had to build a log cabin in the woods, with a blue car holding a flamingo in the trunk. It was trying to depict a scene in the book where I felt the plot turned.
Most of my classmates were collecting twigs and sticks to build the house. But Mom wanted to be crafty with me, so we went to Michael's and bought some medium-thick craft sticks. We cut them up with a little saw and crafted some gaps into end of each little log we had made. We stacked the logs to make the cabin, and used glue and dirt to make a puddy paste of some sort to put between the logs.
I was so proud of how professional my project looked. My teacher, on the other hand, thought I had cheated by using Lincoln Logs for my project. They didn't think it was possible for sometime to make something from scratch that looked so nice, especially at 9 years of age.
I went home crying to Mom, telling her how they thought I had cheated on our work together, and how I didn't understand why they thought we would do such a thing. She stormed into class the next day to have a word with the teacher and explain how we slaved over making a nice log cabin.
I think I did okay after that.

Car Naps

Mom would drive me to all of my extracurricular activities when I was younger, and I did a lot of activities. Often I would be exhausted, and the purring of the car engine would put me to sleep while she drove me to, say, dance classes.
Sometimes when we were early for classes she would just drive around a little longer while I napped, because she would "just feel like a good nap may help". She hated waking me up after those extra few minutes of naps I would get on our drives.

Car Adventures

When we moved to North Andover, MA, we had a hard time getting around the cow paths (aka streets). They turned and twisted, and this was the time before GPS units.
Mom was always notorious for getting us lost on our car rides with her.
We had to find my elementary school before the school year started, and we became hopelessly lost. We kept finding ourselves on the same streets, going in circles for an hour or so.
When we asked Mom why we were so lost, she said, "We aren't lost - we're on an adventure!" She never really seemed to mind too much if we didn't know where we were or how we were going to find our way back.
This was her motto nearly every time we got lost, and we got lost a lot in New England.

Anonymous Cake

Mom used to say, "Real charity is done anonymously".
And Mom was so good at making fun and beautiful cakes.
Dad mentioned at Mom's funeral something I never knew about her when it came to this philosophy.
He mentioned when we were little and living in Buffalo, NY...Mom used to make one of her famously nice cakes every month and bring it down to the local orphanage for the kids there to be able to have a birthday cake once in a while. So the kids with a birthday in that month would be able to celebrate with something.
And she did it secretly, almost - it seems only Dad knew about it. She'd make the cake, and pass it to the orphanage, and leave without much of a thank you, it seems.
That's pretty remarkable, that she did that.