Her Irish Soda Bread Lives On

It starts with flour and baking soda...no, scratch that. It started with a steamer trip across the Atlantic on the RMS Queen Elizabeth. Born in Paisley, Scotland, of Irish decent, she traveled alone at the invitation of relations abroad to make her new home in America.

While living in the town of Kearney, NJ, she met and married an Irish-American piper, moved to the suburbs and began growing her family of five children, dogs, rabits, a cat, turtles and innumerable gerbils. She was a stay-at-home mom while we were all young, often volunteering in our Catholic grammar school to lower our costly tuition. As we got a little older she got a job driving a small school bus so she could still be there when we got home from school. My mom, Cathy, was the most tireless woman I've ever known, and being a mom and being there for her kids was her greatest calling.

Both my parents grew up with little means, but they worked hard to give us kids all the things that made ours the best childhood a kid could ask for. We had an above-ground pool in the backyard, and a 23' travel trailer for vactationing. We had bikes to ride, woods to explore in, and they let us keep the animals we brought home.

We grew up with home cooked meals and fresh baked treats. Not a gourmet chef or fancy baker by a long shot, my mom's simple fairs were the best in the world to us. No one can beat her Ritz Cracker and ketchup meatloaf! But this is a story about Irish Soda Bread...

Being the picky eater that I am, I never really appreciated her Irish soda bread because it contained raisins and I never liked fruit in my baked goods - I guess it's a texture thing. But others in my family loved it, and so did her friend Marge up the street who asked for her recipe. Not much to it, just a mix of flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, butter, egg, buttermilk, raisins and that love ingredient all moms throw in.

Fast forward to 2001. It was a hell of a year for many in this country. It was definitely my family's hell of a year. I drove to my mom's after my sister called to tell me about the planes hitting the towers. I sat with my mom and watched the towers come down on the TV, relieved that my brother didn't have to work that day and his life was spared. I knew in that moment that our lives would never be the same, but I didn't know just how upside down my world was about to turn.

A month after 9/11 my mom was admitted into the hospital with a cough she couldn't get rid of. It took two weeks for the cancer diagnosis and only another two weeks, on 11/11 for her to depart from this world. As shocked and devastated as we all were, we knew it was a blessing for my very active mom to not have to endure a long, drawn-out illness. We'll never get over losing our mom, our rock.

My mom was well-loved by a lot of people. Friendly, outgoing, funny (my dad always called her an accidental commedian), my mom had a lot of friends and aquaintences and the line of mourners at her wake was out the door and down the street from the funeral home. All those people may never know how they lifted our heavy spirits that day and the next.

Holidays after that were extremely hard to bear. Mom did every holiday up big with decorating, cooking, baking - she made the holidays. My sister-in-law stepped in and took up the holiday mantel for a while to our great relief, because the rest of us just didn't have it in us.

St. Patrick's Day rolled around and brought with it a special surprise. My sister's and I never took the time to learn to bake, and I wouldn't know what to do with most of those assorted baking tins still in my Dad's kitchen cabinets. But my Mom's friend Marge had continued to bake Irish soda bread with my Mom's recipe and she surprised us with a soda bread she baked for my Dad. What a great gift to see that fresh baked bread sitting on the table! It was like a part of my Mom still living on and blessing us.

Nineteen years have come and gone, and my dad's still here in the house we grew up in, and Marge and her husband Don still live up the street. And since Marge's health has declined in the past few years, Don has continued the tradition of making my Mom's Irish soda bread and bringing a loaf to my Dad every St. Patrick's Day. I wonder if they'll ever truly know the value of the gift they bring us, a gift far greater than the simple ingredients lovingly mixed together and baked to perfection. That loaf of Irish soda bread is a little gift from heaven delivered by the hands of the two angels who live up the street.