On my first date with my future husband, Stan, I met his mother, Lorraine. She was standing next to the fireplace in a long sapphire blue robe trimmed in white. Her hair was lightly mussed from the day's work but that pure white color apparent and her presence regal, confident, graceful and serene. She welcomed me into her home with the practiced manner of someone who has welcomed many of her children's friends and possible spouses before. I felt like I had entered a sanctuary with symbolic collections decorating the walls, fireplace, sideboards, china hutch and table. They heralded a love for nature, wild life, the mountains, family, work and most of all children. With seemingly no effort, she handed me a slice of apple pie, hot with a dipper of ice cream on the side and I began my tutorial of womanly graces with Lorraine.
Her husband, Roy, was a handsome, young man with dark curly hair she met at the Y. He swept Lorraine off her feet dancing long into the night and taking motorcycle rides in the canyons. Their courtship began during the depression. They eloped. As the years went on they worked together to raise a family of seven children and establish a car repair business, eventually becoming very successful in both areas despite life's challenges and upsets.
In her first home in Provo, she painted flower borders in the living areas to decorate the walls. As she was telling me this, her eyes seemed to glisten going back in time. She indicated this was a precious time in life for her, working with Roy, raising little boys, struggling to make ends meet and putting her heart into that modest little home by painting her flower borders. She even commented on how she loved the effect of her handiwork. it gave her a great deal of pleasure to create beauty in her home. Her love of beauty, nature and flowers is reflected again in the beautiful yard she crafted in Pleasant Grove.
Golf was Roy's passion. But rather than staying at home, Lorraine, a natural athlete, adopted and excelled in golf too. Tuesdays and Thursday were her golf days with the woman's league. She won many trophies and was a competitive golfer with Roy and their golfing friends as well. Along with others, I have often speculated that it was Lorraine's good food and golf that contributed to her longevity.
In Roy's later years, after Roy had recovered from the first bout of prostate cancer, he said to me that once he decided to just do what Lorraine suggested, he was happiest he had ever been in life. Creating an atmosphere of love, hospitality and beauty, nurturing with food, activity and laughter, and being an example of healthy living, Lorraine had a positive influence on all of her large extended family.
Stan and I discovered each other through Roy and Lorraine's watchful eyes, our future more apparent to them than to us. They recognized the difference, the attraction, the affection and cultivated their rights to observe by introducing us to "Rook". We competed, we won, we lost, we laughed and came again and again to bask in their company as we learned how to be a couple in the game of life. Rook was a vehicle to draw us back as much as Lorraine's food.
Meal preparation was an art form. Lorraine understood menus, complimenting tastes and compatibles in food, timing and presentation, like a skilled oil painter creating a composition, carefully calculating lighting, tones, and contrast. Her dinners were an experience beginning with the aroma greeting us at the front door to the table center piece carrying the theme of the day. A farm girl, Lorraine also understood the rhythms of harvest, so food was selected by the seasons, temperature, and occasion. A cold wintry night would be offset by a fire in the fireplace and hot vegetable beef soup or pink-eyed beans and ham with homemade rolls and a dessert. A warm summer's evening would feature a cold shrimp in lemon jello salad with rolls and cold drinks.
Dessert was a requirement. Pie was a favorite but real homemade cake watered my mouth as soon as I walked into the kitchen trying with my x-ray vision to see into the metal cake cover. Black Walnut Cake, Anything-But-Cake, Picnic Cake, Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, Sour Cream Chocolate Cake she discovered and delivered all during my nearly forty years of marriage to Stan and every diet I ever tried was tested by our mutual love of sweets. The cookie jar was required to be full with homemade or store bought cookies but always full and clear glass so you could see the contents.
And then there was the candy. Always a stash somewhere supplied by her sons and kept constant by herself, never hoarding, always offering and bemoaning her own weakness for candy. Not the cheap stuff, mind you, See's or Kara's or what's the name of the one in Salt Lake off of 7th East? That's the one she most preferred and savored each bite like a true connoisseur. She would open her mouth wide and then with her front teeth clip a third of the chocolate behind them pressing the candy into her palate and rolling it around her taste buds, moaning as the flavors hit her senses. Watching her eat candy became part of the experience. Only one piece at a sitting unless she was driven to eat two...and always offering a second (of her precious candy) to every one. Love: love was food, service, beauty, sacrifice, time and money for Lorraine and she gave freely.
Family gatherings in the spring and summer were set in the landscape of her ever blooming yard with all kinds of flowering shrubs, bulbs, annuals, perennials and trees. With Roy as her best worker, Lorraine cultivated the acre grooming every shrub while dubbing the yard "the canyon look". She weeded mounds of myrtle, planted hundreds of bulbs, cut flags and pruned roses, staging a magical garden around her home. Visitors were mesmerized by the colors, heights of varying blooms, positive and negative space drawn in the grass or through the branches of the trees. How many different varieties of irises, roses, daffodils, tulips, crocus and lilies were there? It was like she had to celebrate all of them to express her passion for horticulture. Then she would hose down the patio, make cupcakes, hamburger patties, two salads, have chips, dip, buns and hot dogs for her growing clan of children, spouses, grandchildren and greats. And we would gather, playing pin-pong, watching the children, laughing, talking, growing into a close-knit family.
Cultivating family came as naturally to Lorraine as gardening. She resisted losing her freedom to the demands of tending little ones in her late 50s but by her early 60s embraced grandchildren as the reason for life. She loved them, smiled at their discoveries, provided good books, old toys and an acre to explore while chronicling their lives in pictures. Every event deserved a picture. New shoes, pretty hair, Easter, Christmas, baptisms, rain, mud, kittens, Thanksgiving, school programs, eventually weddings and more babies are all preserved for us in her Life Books. We watched ourselves grow up in those books. All the joys, pains, growth, sorrows and happiness are sandwiched in Lorraine's Picture Books. She was our historian while looking at us through rose colored glasses hoping we could live up to our potential. Lorraine provided a backdrop for us to observe our growth as we tentatively faced the trials and triumphs of life.
One day during my early years of marriage I visited her while she was doing spring cleaning. This meant the drawers under her bed, although nearly empty, had to be wiped on the inside and on the outside. Inside one of the drawers was a collection of old magazine pages about a woman's most glorious traits, illustrated by models dressed in formals from the early 1950s. I don't remember the exact categories but they were something like grace, hospitality, charm, dignity, character, fidelity, loyalty, etc. I was immediately struck by how these traits were the epitome of Lorraine. Long before the notion was popular, Lorraine had created herself, defined herself by her standards and by what she wanted to leave behind. Lorraine was a beautiful farm girl from a large family with heavy responsibilities. Early in life she learned never to shrink from work but bent it to meet her own ambitions and goals. Lorraine was a Lady.
Her standards were high for herself. She worked very hard to elevate her family and encouraged them to pursue talents, gain an education, marry well, be happy and optimistic. Her remarks would sometimes be construed as criticism but were usually laughed off or put into a collection of Grandma B's stories brought up later to amuse or gossip about. When she complimented you, it was generous, enthusiastic and in front of others.
From what I observed, Lorraine's perception of her relationship to God was humble and honest. There was no pretense that she was special to God or any messages that she was holier than anyone else. She just seemed to live the best she knew without worrying about some details like "coffee". She told me once she prayed regularly but didn't want to bother Him with silly problems or insecurities. Surely He had more important things to worry about. But I observed her worshipping daily with her gratitude. She was always very grateful for her many blessings and acknowledged them openly.
This developed into what I feel is the most prominent of all Lorraine's attributes, her positive attitude toward life. Life was the most glorious of all opportunities and wherever she was, she was grateful for what was around her. She noticed birds, deer, hawks, butterflies, grasshoppers, blooms, clouds, the sky, sunsets and even precocious weeds as part of the wonder and beauty of this earth. Every conversation contained some comment about an element she had noticed and enjoyed, part of nature not man-made but gifted from God as part of the tender mercies we receive so generously.
And she smiled. She smiled when we came, she smiled when we left, she smiled when she drove down the road as if the pavement somehow pleased her. Having a pleasant countenance was part of her beauty and charm, scripted by her as part of her life. Lorraine lived her life wisely with purpose and decisiveness.
There are three tangible images that will always represent Lorraine to me. First is the porcelain Lladro Roy bought of a dancing woman who resembles Lorraine as a young woman. Her figure is slim and alluring taunting the observers with the twist of her hips, position of her arms and style in her grace. Lorraine was that kind of woman. A woman to reckon with so to speak.
The second is a video I saw once of her coming out of the house to hang up her laundry. She and Roy may have staged this to show off her lovely legs in the shorts she was wearing and her confident attitude as she cast one last beguiling look at the camera before going up the stairs and into the house as a young wife.
The third one is the little figurine she put on her kitchen table most frequently. A little scrub woman dressed in a blue house dress white polka dots and matching kerchief, bending over accentuating the woman's prominent hips as she holds flowers in a vase at her feet. She talked to me about this once, how she sometimes felt in life like all she did was the cooking and cleaning, etc. The little scrub woman was her salute to women's work, she said, and for me a salute to her . Lorraine worked so hard while striving to keep the grace, style and loveliness of the porcelain Lladro woman she really was. One of her legacies to all the women in our family is that she has succeeded in keeping her loveliness all her days.
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