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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
I opened the box of my mother’s mementos and pulled out her ancient flour sifter, encrusted with the remains of countless batches of chocolate chip cookies; I read postcards sent to dad on trips we had taken together; and found an apron, something she almost always wore. Then I noticed a stunning chinoiserie scarf.
It appeared new, never worn. Where had my mother, a selfless, frugal person, not given to frivolity, bought this exquisite crimson silk scarf?
I thought back to the trip we took to Rome more than 18 years ago. There were three generations of women. My daughter and I tried to cajole mom into buying an Italian leather purse. She resisted. “I don’t need it.”
“No one needs a red leather purse,” I remonstrated, “but that’s no reason to not buy one!” My daughter and I bought fancy designer bags for ourselves; mom would go no further than a simple black cloth bag no matter how much we tried to sell her on the joys of Italian leather.
She had wanted to go to Paris too, but my father hated travelling. When I was on a research leave in England, she telephoned me asking if she could meet me in London and go to Paris. I was flabbergasted. But knowing that she had no experience navigating big, confusing airports on her own, I promised her I would take her to Paris on another occasion when we could travel together. But as luck would have it, my work took me in the opposite direction. I phoned to see if she might like to accompany me to China for a conference in Beijing. We could book the Paris trip later. To my amazement, she agreed.
At the time, mom was 82, slow on her feet, and needing a wheelchair to cover extended distances, such as large airports. Nonetheless, she stepped up to every challenge the China trip threw at her. I attended my conference in the mornings and in the afternoons, we saw the city, taking in a walking tour of the Imperial Palace, where the guide was tickled pink with her; a jaunt to the Beijing zoo to see the pandas, where we got continually lost trying to find the exit; a shopping trip to the silk market, where the bravest thing she would buy was a pair of bamboo undies, and an excursion to the Great Wall, where she walked as far as her legs would take her. It was in a crook of the Great Wall where we were taking a little rest that a family decked out their finest outfits insisted on us posing for family photos with them. It was such an amazingly funny experience that we took a picture with them, too. When we headed back down the Wall, the tour guide raced toward us, gallantly offered her arm and carefully accompanied mom to the waiting bus, nodding at me to continue my exploration of the wall for another 20 minutes. There followed a lunch, foot massage and jade factory tour. Could she have bought the scarf at the gift shop?
Our last night in Beijing, we went out for Peking duck. I insisted on getting directions to a restaurant serving locals and was careful to copy the exact Chinese characters that identified the place. The evening was hilarious, from the help we needed from a shopkeeper who pointed us further down the street when he saw us checking out his sign, and the card handed to us on arrival that said, “Please sit down,” to my inability to convey in Chinese our request for green tea, which arrived as a pot of warm water. Our Peking duck magically appeared after it was clear we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We had to watch diners at the tables around us to figure out how to eat it!
These memories came flooding back as I admired the soft scarf in my hands. Had she finally bought something pretty for herself and then been too shy to wear it?
We did finally get to Paris. My daughter accompanied us, so we had round-the-clock care for mom, who by that time, was on overdrive just from walking through the Louvre. Which we did along with the must-do sights of Paris. We shopped, of course, but there were no silk scarves. So its origin remains a mystery.
One Saturday, when I was dressing for the opera in Toronto, I pulled out her deep red silk square edged in gold and draped it artfully around my neck. It offset my little black dress perfectly. And that night, I took my mother on one more adventure, albeit from beyond the grave. Wearing the elegant silk scarf she had never dared wear, I took my mother to the Four Seasons Centre and watched a splendid opera performance, something I am sure she never got to do in life. I miss you, mom.
Heather Lotherington lives in Toronto.
