When I was a kid, I really liked the idea of having a Bestemor. Bestemor is Norwegian for grandmother – literally best mother – which I thought was much more friendly than grandmother. As a child, of course, I didn’t really understand that “grand” in the British sense really meant “splendid,” “great,” “wonderful.” So I found it a bit imposing. Best mother fit better. Your real mother was more likely to swat you on the butt for doing something naughty; your best mother was more likely to sneak you a really decadent butter cookie (that she had baked herself) when nobody was looking.
Not surprisingly, many of my memories of my Bestemor have to do with food. She kept a lovely garden from which came strawberry-rhubarb pie, gooseberries and other yummy produce. There was usually a cat that liked to live in the garden and get handouts on the back porch. At holidays, we had Norwegian appetizers – exotic cheeses and little bits of herring – on quintessentially American Sociables crackers. We served ourselves with elegant little pewter forks and knives.
As I got older, my Bestemor developed more dimensions. I remember how she cared for my grandfather (a.k.a. Bestefar) singlehandedly over a decade as he became more and more debilitated from a series of strokes. In her 70s, she learned to drive. After he died, she and her friend Evelyn took road trips together, to Virginia and other places.
When I decided to become a historian, I remember repeated attempts to get her to talk about her own history. After all, she lived through World War I. I had pictures of her in flapper dresses and hats. She has witnessed the beginning of the petroleum age and the beginning of its end. However, she really wasn’t that interested in talking about the past. She made it clear to me, without actually saying so, that the “good old days” were not always so good; that there is nothing particularly glamorous or memorable about being one of nine children growing up in a cramped home in Oslo, about impoverishment or having to leave one’s home for economic reasons. Her present was more palatable and she preferred to live in it. And I had to respect that. And I became a little more aware of the boundaries that historical subjects might impose on overly eager inquisitors.
However, I have picked up snippets over the years. I know about her and my grandfather’s peddling bootleg whiskey in the Bronx; how she birthed and fed her babies (sample diets for a six month old included “half a strip of bacon – broiled”); about dealing with rationing and working at a fish market during the second World War; that, unlike her friends, she refused to destroy her wedding china just because it had been manufactured in Japan. I have material artifacts – her mother’s krumkake iron, her cheese plane, pewter serving pieces, photos, an embroidered tablecloth, a traditional Norwegian dress, and the infamous Noritake china. But there is a lot I don’t know and never will.
One of my fondest memories dates from when I got divorced. When I first told her, she was shocked, as I expected, and I braced myself for disapproval. Instead, after a measured silence, she began to tell me stories of friends of hers that had been locked into bad marriages for decades. For them at that time, the only out was widowhood. Without saying so directly, I felt that while she might not have entirely approved, at least she understood my choice.
I remarried and Bestemor attended the wedding, looking magnificent, in her late 80s, with her erect carriage and fancy pink dress. (For my first marriage, she had been unable to find anything that didn’t look too staid and ultimately bought a very flattering dress in the juniors’ department!) When I had my first child, Bestemor became “Oldemor,” or Old Mother to my children. But she will always be Bestemor to me.
I have moved away, so my children don’t know her the way I did, except when they look in the mirror and see her features imprinted on their faces. And when they eat her traditional recipes which I make during the holidays. But as we celebrate her birthday with her, I hope they will be able to appreciate, if only in a small sense, the magnificent woman she is. Not just the “old” mother, but the many women she has been during her life.
