I have an enduring vision of my mother running along a beach. Our family was on vacation somewhere, there was a beach, and my mother very suddenly took off, running along the shore. I was quite young. I stood and watched her go. And then she came back, overflowing with happiness, a smile all over her face. My mother loved life, and loved nature, and most of all, she loved God. She was a devoted Christian for as long as I can remember and long before that. She went to a Catholic church as a girl and loved to sing hymns. Her entire life was infused with and guided by her love for God. She was quite eccentric. As a child I sometimes wondered why the mothers of my friends were so conservative. They didnt seem so inclined to run with complete abandon down a beach. Or lie in the grass looking at the sky. Or climb a tree on the way to the river to collect bulrushes. As a girl, my mother loved animals and had a mengarie of pets. We didnt have quite as many, growing up, but there was a cat named Dapper Dan, a little canary named Bird--so named by my sister, I believe--and a cottontail rabbit, named Bun-Bun who never tired of digging her way out of her backyard hutch and running around the neighbourhood until one of us was sent to fetch her home. My mother doted on all of them and showed us how these little creatures could enrich our lives and teach us about caring for something other than ourselves. The mantle of family chef did not rest easily on my mother. She applied herself as best she could but I dont think it ever appealed to her all that much. Id have to say her best recipe was Swiss Steak, consisting of flank steak simmered in tomatoes and onions, salt and pepper. It was quite good and my dad, a meat-and-potatoes man, loved it. However, something about the process of making grilled cheese sandwiches seemed to perplex her. They always arrived at the table almost black, sometimes requiring a bit of careful scraping to make them palatable. It was only decades later that I discovered that grilled cheese sandwiches could be quite enjoyable. She introduced our family to the music of the Beatles by bringing home a 7-inch single of the songs She Loves You and Ill Get You. They were a big hit with us kids, though I dont think they appealed much to my Dad who grimaced whenever they were played. She was a skilled artist and draftsperson and produced many pencil and pen illustrations which, alas, have been lost over the years. When she found her life busy with parenting three rambunctious children and realized that she could no longer keep in practice, she burned her entire portfolio. My mother loved the outdoors and taught me how to find wild mushrooms in a little copse of trees just outside our backyard fence. I would go out there sometimes and return with a bag of mushrooms that would be checked carefully by the expert and then cooked immediately or reluctantly saved until supper time. I would love to tell you more but there are so many stories... they rise in memory like a painting of the joyful person that was my mother. And I have no doubt she is in a place where there are trees and mountains to climb, mushrooms to be picked, and an eternal beach along which she is running even now, though I cant watch her as I once did. The light in that place is too bright too look upon. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.