first person Daily personal pieces submitted by readers. Want to talk? See our guidelines. tgam.ca/Essay Guide.
This week, readers share stories about mothers and their sadness and sweetness.
Illustration: Marley Allen Ash
I have six large trash cans in my basement labeled “Queenie.” This is all I have left from my mother. I have never opened it in 22 years, nor have I seen the video of her talking for hours and telling her story in the weeks before she died of ovarian cancer. She was only 70 years old. I was in my 30s. It was a rip-off of epic proportions. Although she was a good mother, she was not a perfect mother, but she never wavered and did her best. I always thought she would shoot the bullet for me, and that was actually very important in the whole thing. That was a big loss.
After she passed away, we only had a few weeks to clean out her apartment. It wasn’t an easy job. Of course, there were emotional reasons, but also because her mother protected her in everything. It was like looking through the archives of not just the life I knew with her, but her early life in Hyderabad. Before her departure for Canada, she had shipped a steamer trunk filled with her most prized possessions. It’s a connection to her past, and we had to experience that too.
Whatever I couldn’t let go of, everything that defined her to me, I stuffed it in the trash. As I look at them now, I wonder how an extraordinary life can be crystallized into keepsakes and keepsakes. If I opened them, would their contents capture her essence and do justice to her story?
She was born in India in 1927. Her family is Anglo-Indian, a byproduct of colonization, and she is named after a British princess born the previous year who would one day become queen. She was proud of her own name and even though she hated British India and what it did to India, she loved the monarchy.
Her young mother died during childbirth, leaving her child to be cared for by her aunt, who had just given birth. She lived there like an orphan for 20 years, until her beloved father died and she officially became independent. Despite her beauty and her intelligence, she was not a candidate for her marriage. Her parents had no dowry, she lived in a hostel, and she had Indian blood in her veins. When she was 30, she married the first man who asked her out, far past her prime by Indian standards. Turns out she didn’t know what she was getting herself into.
Desperate to escape from his Brahmin roots, his father had secret plans to go abroad and find fortune. He chose Canada, changed his name, converted to Catholicism, and took full advantage of his new wife’s English sensibilities. Shortly after we arrived, he divorced his girlfriend and moved out.
Although it was difficult, she was resilient, had a zest for life and an interest in the world around her. Although her heart was in India, she became a proud Canadian. She loves politics and space exploration, and if she could she would go to the moon. She continued to work hard, learn, adapt, and grow. She is fun-loving and she has made many long-lasting friendships here. She was elegant with her shoelaces and always neatly dressed. And if there was one passion in her life, it was dance. My mother hated social competitions. For most of my childhood, she went out every weekend and danced up a storm.
I loved it when she opened the trunk and showed us her precious luggage. Her sandalwood box contained her father’s cotton handkerchief, an Ayurvedic diary, and her pocket watch. A British sweet tin filled with jewels and gold. her simple wedding dress. An album filled with old photos and news clips about the last Nizam, Gandhi’s peaceful protests, and the Queen’s coronation.
For a long time, I avoided sifting through her belongings. She didn’t want to decide what to keep and what to let go of, and she didn’t want to chip away at her. Besides the contents of her trunk, I also have the blanket she knitted for me, the cracked bundt mold she used for the only cake she ever baked, her trusty chapati bowl, her dance dress and her well-worn stilettos. , Jimmy Cliff and Lata Mangeshkar’s albums. , a silk sari, and a tattered kettle. There’s nothing of great value except sentimental things.
In fact, she didn’t need any of these things to evoke her memory. I think of her every day – when I hear her favorite songs, when I bake her sour cream coffee cakes or share her recipes, when I see her on the faces of my daughters, my Indian family. and when people tell me how much I remind them of her. I’m also proud of her name. Not because it was bestowed upon her queen in her honor, but because it befits her. Because she was dignified in her own right and she left behind a rich living legacy.
I decided to go through everything and save just a few treasures. It’s okay if the kids don’t keep it when I’m not around. I was finally able to convert the video, so my mom is always with me, but this Mother’s Day, I’m going to ask her to watch the video and talk to me again.
Shirley Phillips lives in Toronto.
