'The older I become, the more I miss my mother.' So wrote a friend recently. And she is 93. I am not nearly that venerable age, but am old enough to know that the grief and the longing do not go away, but lurk constantly, always ready to inflict the rapier thrust of pain and loss. My mother has been dead 20 years, and still a day never passes without my thinking about her.
Once a daughter loses her mother, there are many forms of 'missing': the flashes of memory, the need for advice that can never come, the futile desire to right wrongs, to name only a few. But above all, once a mother goes, the daughter feels very strongly that there is now no one in the front line of life's battle.
I can't remember when I asked my father to send me Mum's recipe book, and I didn't know why I wanted it, but want it I did. Long before 'lifestyle' became an ambition, most Australian women, Presbyterian or not, had a copy of the standby that was first published in 1904, and remains in print. (I still use my own dilapidated copy here in Greece, and my grandsons eat PWMU Anzacs.) The Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union Cookery Book: the first recipe, appropriately enough, is for porridge.
But most women also had their own compilation: my mother's is contained in a Summit/Lion brand book designed for the purpose. It is labelled 'Recipe Book', and has chapter headings and dog-eared index tabs.
The book is here on my desk now, and I realise, with a shock, that it has been part of my life for 60 years. As small children, my siblings and I were pressed into the work of copying recipes from The Australian Women's Weekly and other founts of culinary wisdom. There were also contributions from friends and relatives, all conscientiously and formally attributed to the donor: Mrs I. M. Stanton, Mrs Unsworth.
Every entry is, of course, handwritten, and I can match the handwriting to the amanuensis quite easily even now: there is my own unformed script and that of my sister, also long dead. My brother's features prominently: 'Mum got me at it when I had my broken leg,' he told me, with a rueful laugh.
The handwriting conjures up the person: my father, who went through a pie-making phase, is there, and so is my grandfather, who contributed 'Fay's Sago'.