Jennifer Gorman

Keeping Mom's Memory

My mother was an artist. It was a talent she shared first with her nephews and nieces, and later with her children and grandchildren. If art was involved she had infinite patience. When I was eight, Mom and I cut hundreds of hearts from red and pink construction paper to glue on white streamers for a Valentine's Day party. She made every centrepiece for my bat mitzvah and later for my children’s. For my sweet sixteen, toga-themed, Mom recreated our home with floor seating, columns, and silhouettes of Roman soldiers and women to welcome guests. I remember her sketching, cutting, and colouring. But the best were her collages. There wasn’t a lot of money, but Mom filled cabinets art supplies of all kinds, most of it odds and ends from around the house. She created amazing art from the scraps she saved. And she saved everything. Egg cartons. Plastic containers. Keys. Ribbon and wrapping paper. Buttons. Tissue paper. Odds and ends and found objects, even dried flowers and pressed leaves from my father’s garden. And old books of all kinds: children’s books, primers, cookbooks, books in other languages, songbooks, magazines, even wallpaper sample books. Mom would pour over those books, cutting out shapes, old advertisements, letters, fantasy and fairytale characters, whatever struck her fancy. From these we would create collages of all kinds. Every one imbued with love. Sometimes they were simple pictures surrounded by tissue paper that would be gifted to friends and family, simply signed, “Rosalie.” Sometimes the collages were intricate, like the beautiful mirror with the decoupaged frame Mom made as a gift for my second-grade teacher. When I saw her years later, she told me she still had that mirror.