On Mothers: Jewish Coffee Cake

My parents brought me up in what I refer to as a fairy tale. I was innocent and loved and hugged and kissed and grew up in the right amount of time. I wasn’t afraid of my parents, I was afraid of disappointing them. 

Their own childhoods were wildly different, but clearly their childhoods created them, so we can’t be too upset. 

My grandfathers were both known as good men, marked by the war. My mother describes my grandfather as the best man she’s ever known, followed by my own father. My dad explains his father as a more typical father from the fifties, but close to him. They both died before I was born. My father’s mother was a flawed-but-overly-generous soul who died when I was seven. My mother’s mother is the only grandparent I really grew up with. 

Grandma McAllen was loving and proud of us and proud in general. She gave birth to nine—I repeat, NINE—children. She had seventeen grandchildren, two great grandchildren, and touched hundreds of people as a nurse, a good coworker, and a wonderful neighbor.  She was Irish Catholic, strict, and loud. She liked her SoCo&limes, black tea, cookies, and reading the newspaper. She was honest, blunt, and a terrible cook. My mother says she disappointed my grandmother a lot growing up, but in the past few years, my mother has been the primary care giver for her.  In her hospice bed, my grandmother abdicated (or I suppose forgave) my mother of all the sins she has ever committed and anxiety she gave my grandmother. 

 

 

One thing I learned from my grandmother is that you can hate the sin, but love the sinner. My grandma and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of social issues. But we didn’t discuss those. I didn’t introduce the Lady as my Lady because I didn’t want to be the cause of my grandmother’s heart stopping. We didn’t talk about Obama or different religions. We didn’t talk about my Holocaust and Genocide Studies concentration in college. But what my grandmother was, who she was, was someone who loved. Unendingly. She showed me what a mother’s love could be, and what a daughter’s love could be. I hope to love my children in the same ways she did, though maybe with a little less yelling and a little more patience. But I think fewer than nine children might help that situation.

My grandmother passed this June, around the time I really needed my own mother. It worked out well, though we’re working on the boundaries of what I need now (like not being taken care of). But when I asked my mom what I should bake this week, her response was “Jewish Coffee Cake” because it reminded her of Grandma. Okay. 

Also, a regular at the bar asked for apple crisp. I asked him to pay for ingredients. He told me he could tell it was baked with love. Gramma’s legacy lives on.

I could barely read the instructions, you think I'd post them here?! So silly.