bittersweet

When Robin and I went to the SF Symphony a few weeks back, the lights that glowed on the Beaux-Arts dome and columns of City Hall were a peculiar copper-orange color:  Giants Orange.  Orange is not a color we wear a lot in College Station, particularly not Burnt Orange, but this other orange used to be my mother’s favorite:  something my mother, Marie Iverson Mitchell, called bittersweet.

It has been a bittersweet week:  this used to be Mom’s favorite time of year, and her birthday was the 26^th.  She has missed it now for the third year running.  People have told me they have been visited, somehow, by their beloved dead, but until recently I had felt nothing beyond a lingering horror.  Subtly, recently, I seem to feel companionable presence beside me as I drive again around her favorite places. 

The semester I spent teaching in Italy, in the fall of 2005, I was already worried about Mom’s health, and at this very time of year I went for a long walk up the Val di Chio, on All Saints’ Day.  The leaves in the vineyards were going a bright yellow, and the persimmon trees were losing their dark red, heart-shaped leaves, exposing the orange fruit hanging heavy on the slender boughs, and I thought of my red-haired mother, always a little delicate yet forging on regardless to one adventure after another as we travelled the world.  Persimmons ripen on the bough from inedible sourness and hardness to unbelievable softness and sweetness, something she had often remarked.  The bitter memories of 2010 are softening and sweetening, too.

The winter before she had the stroke that left her speechless and immobile, I took Mom on a drive to Point Reyes Peninsula, just as a treat.  Dad had trouble walking, she no longer felt safe driving, and she didn’t often get out.  We went at an easy pace, looking and talking about everything we saw, going out and coming back. We sat in the sunshine outside a cafe at Point Reyes Station, and later ate lunch together at the diner, taking our time and getting the pie.  She was so grateful to get out and about, to just be buddies, and it was the last time we ever did.

I adored my mother, but we didn’t do many things together like that, just she and I. My daughter Tia, though, has outlived my most irritating years still willing to do things with her Ma, still talk on the phone, still “hang out.”  When I was out here on my own, teaching at Sacred Heart, and again during my father’s long illness, we spent a lot of time together.  But last Thursday night – you might call it Mom Birthday Eve – has to be one of the most memorable of Tia Times. 

I had just straggled home late from the SF airport through a massive traffic jam what with the World Series game, right there by the Bay Bridge, and had one ear entirely deaf with a cold-plus-cabin-air-pressure, but had every intention of collecting the dog from Tia’s apartment and dashing off to church choir practice at FCCB, with dinner at some later time.  Tia disabused me of this foolish notion, however, insisting we go out to dinner.  How could I say “no” to the person who had dog-sat Oscar and who had been busy teaching all day?

So, though I ached a bit to be deserting my fellow Altos for this sweet chance for some family time, we adjourned to an unlikely enough place for it:  the Hotsy-Totsy Club (“tipsy since 1939”), a black box of a bar with good neighborhood ambiance and a taco wagon, and not usually a sports bar, but a notable exception was made that night.  We got our three tacos each (Pastor, Pollo, and Asada for me) and our drink of choice (dirty Martinis made with two gorgeous olives and local gin flavored with the herbs of Mt. Tamalpais) and made these last through the seventh inning of the second game of the series, watching the Bunt of the Century roll fair.  Giants Orange, and sweet, very sweet because spent with my Tia-pot.

Today I wore the salmon coral necklace my mother’s Aunt Til -- one of my favorite people, a business woman and a world-traveler – gave me a million years ago, a child-sized necklace brought back from Naples and originally strung on wire, which I restrung on silk and expanded with matching beads from Pompei, so that it is long enough now to throw on anytime one is ready for action.  And now whenever I wear it I will think not only of adventurous Iversons past but of this present grand-daughter of Iversons, my daughter Tia, who made me part of an evening I will never forget.  Thanks, Miss Peeps, and we raise our Martini glasses to you, Mom!