I remember rainy days while growing up on the Jersey Shore. I loved the familiar smell that arose from cool water hitting the steamy, salty cement, and the sound of the quarter-sized droplets playing percussion on the green awning protecting our porch. There was a time each Spring when I looked forward to walking home from school and suddenly seeing the bare rafters that once hung winter's icicles now sporting summer's shade. Every few years, we'd get a new awning. Some were deep green with fringes, some had broad stripes, and the last one, was rain-slicker yellow. That awning signaled summer was about to begin and that we had three months off from school to play. We'd spend sunny days on the beach, and after dinner, ride our bikes until our mothers rang the porch bells for us to come home. On rainy days, we'd lay on our bellies under the protection of the awing and listen to my mother tell fantastically hysterical stories while we colored, covered black velvet clowns, kitty-cats and horses with oil from paint-by-number kits, and played with paper dolls and Color Forms. I can still muster up the smell of the oil paints and the feel of the Color Forms under my fingers.
My mother was an artist. She could draw anything from memory and sketched like lightning across the paper. She loved to color and had a sleek box of charcoals she treasured. She was talented and frustrated, and like a lot of artists, she had her dark side, deep, deep inside. Her depression led to illness and her illness led to her early departure. After she died, the porch was silenced. The rafters were torn down and the bright yellow awning was put to rest with my mother. My father extended the dinning room onto the porch with a new roof since my mother always wanted a bigger eating area. The new enclosure seemed lifeless to me and I never got used to it. When other houses put up their new awnings each spring, I'd pine for the times when summer's memories were contained under the safety of our giant yellow umbrella.
There are precious few possessions I have left of my mother. One, however odd, is a cookbook. It's called "The Calculating Cook: a gourmet cookbook for diabetics and dieters", by Jeanne Jones. I don't know why I decided to take this one of my mother's; I guess I liked the cover. Several years ago, when I moved, I was going through my cookbooks and started thumbing through this one and discovered both elaborate and simple drawings accenting the recipes. The book was full of pencil sketches the author used to make the dull task of dieting and counting calories more enticing. My mother, in her boredom, and perhaps depression, had colored many of these drawings in vibrant colors; her medicine. She never stayed inside the lines, and meshed light with dark colors, like her moods.
Having just recently moved again, I found myself going through my cookbooks, and once again stumbled upon my mother's colors of depression. A dismal scenario comes to mind: it's the middle of the night, a lonely woman is seated at the kitchen table, her colored pencils and crayons displayed like a fan in front of her, replacing her usual game of Solitaire. She opens a cookbook and starts to color her world a better place.
I am happy to have her cookbook, and I'm happy she's now in a better place.
