Guest column: A tribute to mom, and her celery tip

I was cleaning celery the other day and thought about my mom.

Growing up, she taught me to not just wash and cut the stalks, but to remove the strings from the backside with a paring knife. “Nobody wants the strings to get stuck in their teeth,” she would say.

To me, this seemed like an unnecessary step in what was an already boring kitchen task. After I was married, I would ask Mom what I could bring to family get-togethers, and she usually said to bring a veggie tray.

This was years before grocery stores stocked their delis and fresh produce aisles with ready-made vegetable trays. We had to choose, wash, chop and arrange the raw vegetables and dip on a platter. It felt like a lot of work for an unimpressive dish. I wanted to bring something more substantial, like cheesy potatoes or a nice dessert, not rabbit food. But people did eat it, so I brought veggie trays. With the strings removed from the celery.

My mom died recently.

She was 88, married to my dad for nearly 70 years. They had a good life. They worked, raised a family, traveled and retired to Florida where no one had to shovel snow anymore.

Sometimes mothers and daughters have relationships that can be complicated. Although we have a connection, daughters do not truly understand the lives our mothers had before we came along. They had experiences and adventures that had nothing to do with us. And mothers, who rocked us as babies and took us to the doctor for every sniffle, may find it difficult to relate as we grow up and pull away to become the women we need to be. They want to save us; we want our independence.

There may be bumps in the road. We are traveling together, linked by a familial bond, yet each of us needs to find our own way. Those paths may take us in dissimilar directions and that can be uncomfortable. If we are patient, we find that our routes will again criss-cross and our journeys, although different, always intersect.

As time passes, moms can listen and learn from their daughters; daughters can listen and learn from their mothers. Adult children and their parents pass through an initiation of sorts when the playing field levels and we are able to relate to each other in a more mature manner. Each of us wants what is best for the other; you make your peace with what is and move on.

Then the day comes when your mom needs you in much the same way you once needed her; to hug, to reassure, to assist, and to comfort.

So you don’t mind cleaning the veggies for the relish tray because it is what she asked for, and maybe she just wanted you to have a job that wasn’t as hard as everything else that she was doing.

And you realize that she was right.

The celery is better with the strings removed.

Thanks, Mom.

Karen Roth is a semiretired librarian/educator living in Ottawa. She can be reached at dbarichello@shawmedia.com.