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Lorraine Sauber’s 15 children loved her apple dumplings. Even white-collared priests came from hither and yon to watch her pull them from the oven.
She made breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for her children, from scratch, every day. Pies, three at a time. Chickens four! Potatoes always at a boil on her stove.
She prepared elegant Sunday and holiday dinners, often by candlelight, dressing up her eight-leaf dining table with starched tablecloths, china, linen napkins, and vases of just picked flowers from her garden.
And the priests, they came, and played their guitars and banjos after dinner, while everyone sang, and Mrs. Sauber served dessert and coffee.
“What?” I exclaimed to Anne Almburg, sitting at her kitchen table a few weeks ago in Malta. “How did your mom manage all that?”
“With complete ease. She was never overwhelmed or yelled or said an unkind word. Ever.”
“Not once?” I exclaimed, again.
“No, Janet, not once.”
On Mother’s Days, Mrs. Sauber’s youngest ones ran throughout the yard of their country home looking for wild geranium and dandelions to bestow upon her in a jelly jar.
The bigger kids tried to get her to put her feet up, to let them prepare dinner, but she winked and said she would rather celebrate them.
They all had jobs: Anne, who was among the youngest, kept the houseplants free from dust. But it was Mrs. Sauber who made certain their two-story home in Virgil, Illinois, was spotless.
“Spotless?” I exclaimed, yet again.
“Yes, spotless,” said Anne.
And those apple dumplings? They took a minute. Mrs. Sauber cored and peeled apples, wrapped each in a rolled-out square of fresh pie dough, topped them with a cinnamon syrup, and baked them to a golden brown. Her biggest batch ever was 42, which happens to be a peck-and-a-half of apples.
When Mrs. Sauber’s nest emptied, she borrowed one of her husband’s old shirts and took an oil painting class. Before long she set up an area under the cellar stairs and began painting all the beauty in nature she had beheld all her life.
She became a student of the well-respected Cora Meiner, later Joan Darflinger, and finally Tony Carnesecchi. They invited her to display her growing collection in prominent art shows.
I sat back in my chair. “So, after you kids all left, your mom went on to become a gifted artist?”
“Yes, and as easily as raising all of us,” Anne said smiling.
“Where did she show her work?”
“She said no. She was uncomfortable with recognition of any kind.”
“Wow,” I whispered. I was done exclaiming.
Two hundred paintings later, Mrs. Sauber ascended the cellar stairs one last time, closing the door behind her, leaving an unfinished picture on her easel. And the priests, they came.
It was just after Mother’s Day in 2005 when she ied from a lung disease, not a bit afraid to go. Surely the robins were nesting and her peonies in bloom.
Mrs. Sauber’s children believe the picture below is her self-portrait, which their mother would neither confirm nor deny. “But it would be just like her to not include her face,” said Anne.
Anne is an artist too. Watercolors. The Christmas card she sent took my breath away. It was an original. Mrs. Sauber’s blue paint shirt, with all her smudges, is Anne’s.
Before I left her home, Anne showed me the linen napkins her mother had ironed so many times that the creases remain even after Anne uses and washes them.
Mrs. Sauber has been gone twenty years. I never met her. But she is a part of me now. And I made her apple dumplings. They are divine.
“The moment she left us, the wrinkles on her face did too,” said Anne. “We all saw it. She was eighty-four, but our mom looked young again.”
Recipe for Mrs. Sauber’s Apple Dumplings
Peel and core 6 apples. Sift 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and ½ tsp. salt. Cut in ½ cup shortening. Add 2/3 to ¾ cup milk. Stir together to make a soft dough. Roll dough thin to make six squares. Put apple in center. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon sugar and dash of cinnamon and pinch dough up to seal over each apple. Put
In a 9x13 jelly roll pan. Bring one cup water, 1-1/2 cups sugar, and ¼ lb butter or margarine to a boil, add a dash of cinnamon. Pour over dumplings. Bake 15 minutes in 400-degree oven and then 45 minutes at 300-degrees. Serve warm.