Thank you, Mom!

From left to right: Front - Me and my little cousin Julie Balharrie. Middle - Great-grandmother Gilchrist; Grandfather, James Balharrie; my mom, Florence (Balharrie) Hogenkamp. Rear - my dad, Jan Hogenkamp; Grandmother Florence (Flossie) Balharrie; Uncle Watson Balharrie.

Writing recently about my mother, has put me in a reflective mood about Mothers' Day. Most years I've thought so little about it. I always considered it a contrived celebration to strengthen the card, restaurant, flower, candy and gift industries. Of course when Maya was growing up we made a big deal of it because she would make me cards and gifts and write me poems, created as school projects, and encouraged by desperate teachers. She was very creative and enjoyed these special assignments greatly.

When she grew a bit older she made me coffee and served breakfast in bed. One year she put a big homemade signin the garden below my window so I could see "Happy Mother's Day. I love you Mom" when I raised my blind. She was infinitely imaginative and each year was a surprise. Oh how I loved Mothers' Day then.

Later, it started to lose its fun appeal and became more of a cultural ritual. Maya left home, went to university, then away far but she always called or sent a card. Yesterday was the same, she called, we talked and it was nice. The real fun this year was in receiving all the greetings from other Moms out there. We all seemed to feel the need to congratulate one another and through the magic of email we did. My other daughter Tracy sent me greetings and a sweet photo of her family.

I reflect on all the years I never could wish my mother Happy anything and I understand my own ambivalence. Still, Mothers' Day was not important when I was growing up. I think my Dad and I would give her flowers but that could have been for some other occasion because I don't really remember. At any rate, let me say it now Florence Balharrie, my Mom: It was you who taught me dignity, and it was you that passed on your values, your dislike of pretension, and love of reading and the arts. Proper deportment for every occasion may seem irrelevant today, but knowing how to behave smooths a lot of rough water and provides confidence. You taught me how to recognize quality and avoid kitch and eschew the superficial. You insisted on truth in all things, in particular you taught me to honour myself. Quaint as it may seem in the 21st Century, you raised me to be a lady- with manners, respect for others, and class. Looking at society now, I wish that more people were learning that lesson.

Thank you Mom. I hope I haven't disappointed you, and oh yes - Happy Mothers' Day!

A second chance after all,

In going through and editing my photos, I came face to face to face with the physical resemblance between Maya and my Mum. My mother died 15 years before Maya was born so I never saw the connection at all. Then, in organizing the pictures side by side in a collage, it jumped out at me - Maya looks like my mother. Yes, she looks like her paternal grandmother, Rose, but dear God she looks like my Mom as well - same face shape and same smile - and I'm pleased with that. I look more like the Hogenkamps, than the Balharries, but I still have their DNA in me. So Maya does look like me and my mother and my grandmother, since my mom looked like her mom (a Ghilchrist to be specific).

What an amazing discovery. Why it took so long to see this is beyond me. Perhaps it's because I spent so many years not wanting to be like my mother, that prevented me from seeing her genetic and cultural influence. She was such a complex person in my life and my feelings were so layered that I just distanced myself from her. I muted my memories and shut her away so she couldn't hurt me. It's time to let her out of the box and recognize her influence on me and her many gifts. Her spirit was very strong even as she was very weak.

She longed to be accepted by a father who never could. It mattered a lot to her what people thought. She was convinced that she didn't quite measure up to the opinions of others. Hence she was an education and social snob. She was a well read, very gifted, quick and articulate woman who always believed that people were looking down on her from some unfathomable place that she couldn't attain.

Yet for all that (fear) she had huge courage.

She lived through a combined seven years in a TB sanatorium, where she was expected to die but survived. She trained to be a registered nurse and was struck down with TB in her final year
so missed graduating with her class. When she returned all those years later to complete her training, she was not allowed to nurse because she had had TB. She finished her training anyway.

At 27, she sailed to Holland to marry a man she hardly knew in a foreign country where she didn't know the language, history or the culture. She always referred to that decision as her salvation. Without my father she saw her life in Ottawa stretching out in unending narrowness.
She learned Dutch and became fluent within a year. She had to because to speak with an English accent could have cost her her life once the Nazis occupied Holland.

She raised her child in occupied Holland while her husband was away in the resistance and she never complained of the danger. She loved Holland and always longed to go back after returning to Canada. After my father died. and after years of being a stay at home mother, Mom went back to her first love, nursing. It was probably too hard for her by that time but at age 48 she became a geriatric nurse to prove to herself she could do it. She still was a snob, still cared what the neighbours thought, still was embarrassed by her radical, ban the bomb and civil rights marching daughter, but she never ever said I was wrong. She just wished I could demonstrate less visibly.

We had come a long way towards being friends again by the time she died so suddenly at 50. I was devastated to be left alone with all that unfinished business between us. The things she never saw me do and become. She never saw me get my Masters Degree, become a teacher and university lecturer (it would have warmed her snobbish heart). She wasn't there for her grand daughter's birth. It would have been her second chance at mothering. She had an acerbic sense of humour and was the master of understatement.

Sitting one rainy day, in our (Alfie and my) yet unfinished farm house, the windows leaking a tidal wave, with pots and pans everywhere catching the water. The sound of dripping water was filling the air, and my mother smiled sweetly. "This is such a wonderful house" she said..." just a few minor wrinkles need ironing out". It was her understatement at its finest, calmly delivered without a hint of criticism.

Sometimes I don't even know if she was aware of her understatement. Once we were sitting in her garden after I had married Alfie (which she greatly approved of) and the subject of children came up. She leaned forward in all earnestness and said " remember dear, never ever strike yor child in anger, because when out of control, you can really hurt your child". I stared at her in confusion, she couldn't be real? My mother, the past master of corporal punishment was counseling me against hitting my children. I don't know if she was even aware that I had once been afraid of her. I think she had erased that whole dark period of her illness out of her mind.

I said nothing. She died a year later. So much was left unsaid. I'm glad Maya looks like her.

Our DNA is who we are.

Three generations of Maya's maternal family women. My mother in her early twenties with the first in a long line of Winkies; Maya showing off one of her many talents -spoon hanging; my favourite cat Chester demonstrating his dedication to personal hygene; and me at nine, fifteen, sixty and now.

Can you see the family resemblance? It's interesting how photos can reveal what the eye sometimes misses. I never realized that Maya looks like my Mom. Because Maya never knew my Mom, we always assumed she looks like Rose, her paternal grandmother, and she does. However, look at the shape of her face compared to my mother's. Pretty clear isn't it?

What an interesting melange of genes is found in each of us. No matter how we may wish to escape our heredity, we never can. So suck it up disgruntled ones, our family DNA is who we are. It's what we do with it that counts.