Mothers on Mother's Day

Dorothy Herron on right with her friend Estyline Hill take on trails of Glacier Park on horseback circa 1933

She walked faster than a cheerful pony. She moved with the determination of sprinter in a 100-meter dash, pumping her arms while leaving my father empty-handed in the dust.

In the kitchen, she threw dough like a hasty pizza chef, although her pies were sweet, not savory. Sugar was her friend, a constant companion in and out of the kitchen. She stashed black licorice in her purse and milk chocolate in her top drawer. 

Her theme cakes were her specialty; large rectangular creations whose frosted toppings told her stories. On my sixth birthday, when I was deeply into the TV cowboys, my mother built a culinary Western scene complete with a fort, cowboys on horses, a village of teepees and Indians riding ponies, all on a bed of brown chocolate frosting.

I can still taste the creamy sugar frosting and the chewy chocolate cake. She always let me lick the bowl.

Baking was only a small part of a deep inventory of talents owned by my mother, Dorothy Katherine Herron Samson.

She was a registered nurse and working mom. She was well-read, often two or three books at a time, in addition to her many magazines from which she culled recipes.

She was a dynamic woman, especially for her day. She enjoyed an active single adult life that she shared with her friends Estyline Hill and Myrt Hunter. She and Myrt attended the 1938 World Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in their long tight skirts, trim jackets with padded shoulders and wide brimmed hats. 

She didn't marry until age 33. Together, she and Myrt loved to paint the city red. Myrt had a beautiful little cottage in leafy Piedmont Hills above Oakland.

She met my father, Frank Cameron Samson, for the first time while tending to him a hospital in Conrad, Montana. She was born in Havre, MT, a railroad town on the early Hi-Line. Her parents, George Herron and Katherine Courtney, were married at nearby Fort Assiniboine, where her grandmother, Mary Larkin Herron (an Irish immigrant), started a dairy to supply milk to the U.S. Cavalry. 

My father had been hospitalized after being nearly crushed to death by a runaway bailing combine. Dorothy nursed him back to the living. They reunited several years later in Oakland while my father was in the Navy during WWII. When the war ended they met in Seattle, married and had two children, my sister Mary K. (Samson) Fotheringham and me.

I didn't realize it until lately, with the passing of my matriarchal mother-in-law, Bettelu Beverly, that my mother, who died three days after my 60th birthday in 2007, was also a matriarch for her family.

She was the one who kept her far-ranging family together. This was true for especially the family members who migrated farther West from Montana. Dorothy had seven brothers and two sisters. She was the second youngest, born on January 1, 1912. 

Following her passing, the kin with whom she kept in touch, slowly faded into the new world, a diaspora of Catholic and Protestant folks scrambled across the landscape whose only shared connection  was through my mother. Her family was Catholic. My father's Protestant. She kept track of them all.

My mother took some cousins into our home when they needed a place to stay.

Where did they all go? I know a few from Facebook, but a very small percentage. Many of them I never knew except through stories my mother loved to tell.

This Mother's Day I am thinking of her. I bet there are others in the family who are thinking of her, too.