It Was The Rock Cakes...

…that made my mother stand out from the crowd.

Despite the name, Rock Cakes aren’t just overcooked hockey pucks. A good, old-fashioned staple, a batch can be whipped with (seemingly) half a cup of flour and the last dregs of the butter. Isn’t it funny the way time changes your perspective on things? When I was a kid, Rock Cakes were BIG treats. It probably didn’t hurt that we lived some way out of town and couldn’t just nip down to the local shops whenever we liked, so Mum learned to keep a stocked pantry. These yummy morsels were one of those ‘pantry recipes’ every housewife worth her salt could make blindfolded.

We would step off the bus, walk the looooong dirt driveaway and arrive at our farmhouse door to the most decadent smell of mixed spice, flour and sugar. We would devour those things before moving quickly on to more important matters, like building a fort around the base of the fig tree using discarded planks, or using a piece of old bacon tied on a string to entice our puppies - all from the same litter - to race each other. There were hills to climb, rocks (real ones!) to name and make pets, cows to chase, kindling to gather.

May is always a tough month for me. Lots of memories. Several batches of Rock Cakes. One particularly bad day to endure.

It really hasn’t been two years already, has it? Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that I was sitting on the steps at the end of the jetty madly trying to tap the ashes out of their little silver home? I hadn’t intended to keep the urn in our walk in robe for so long but every time I looked at it, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. And so there she stayed for twelve months until the first anniversary of her death, keeping careful watch over my dubious fashion choices and mismatched shoes. And here we are, another twelve months down the track, no urn at the house anymore, only memories of where her dust might have ended up when it finally entered the ocean after a particular hard thump to the urn against the pilon. Sorry Mum!

The day we scattered her ashes was just the strangest and coolest day, weather-wise. It had been cold and blustery all day but the sky was clear. As we neared the end of the jetty we could see a humongous wall of black - not just grey, but black-like-licorice - rolling clouds out on the horizon, just barrelling toward the shore. The wind picked up immediately. It was like all that silly footage you see in twister movies where the dumb guy is awed by the force of nature and is rooted to the spot and staring up at the monstrosity until a flying cow or oil tanker comes along to clean him up. It was so dramatic and so fast that I kind of turned to Talented Hubby and went ‘Woah. Did you see that?!!!’ The clouds kept advancing as a solid wall, almost as if an invisible curtain separated the peripheral effects of the approaching bank from us. It was so beautiful. Though the sight of the storm itself might have ordinarily made me hightail it out of there, this time I didn’t want to leave.

I could pause and connect Dot A to Dot B and say the clouds were a sign (woooo-ooooo!) but I probably wouldn’t go that far. I’ve simply understood it to have meant that I was meant to remember that day.

I don’t know yet whether I will make the trip in to the beach this year. I have no more urns to thump against the rotted wood of the jetty. I think perhaps that if I do go, I’ll simply sit with my feet dangling off a step and the taste of salt in the air around me.

I’d like to say a Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mums out there and to all the daughters for whom this Mother’s Day may be a great deal sadder. I am lucky. I have a ’second Mum’ - my mother-in-law. Last year I bought her a present just from me, and this year I think I’ll do the same.