Let's Hear It for Mom

I'm a long-distance Mother's Day giver these days. Oh, there's a phone call and a present (this year it was a DVD player), but it's just not the same.

Mother's Day was always heralded with flowers when I was a kid: not many florists' bouquets, because I was allergic to flowers. Occasionally my dad got my mom some roses, her favorite flowers, but then they would have to stay on the porch.

No, Mom's beautiful pink azalea bushes usually managed to bloom just around Mother's Day. They flanked each side of the front door and gave the house a cheery look. But behind the house was something I loved. Our neighbor on the other side of the chain-link fence had an errant lilac bush that always grew into our yard. My dad hated it, but I reveled in it. In May it would bloom in rich lushness, dangling thick bunches of sweet-smelling lilac blooms over the fence. Allergy or no--and I paid for it later--I buried my face in the flowers, breathing in that heavenly smell. It's still my favorite scent and, had I been able to manage it, I would have had live lilacs at my wedding.

Mother's Day was an occasion to go out to eat in those days, a luxury for us. Oh, we dropped in at the occasional hot dog place or Arby's and later McDonald's on summer Sundays. But going to a "real" restaurant was another story. It was time to dress up: skirt, nylons, good shoes instead of Hush Puppies, the whole nine yards. Dad wore his suit and we squired Mom to someplace that had white tablecloths, cloth napkins, clean menus, and waiters in suits. Our usual early venue was Venetian Gardens, on the way to Oakland Beach. We ate all our Thanksgiving dinners there as well. Then one of them discovered The Inn--now Bassett's Inn--on West Shore Road. We went there to fill up on salad and baked stuffed shrimp.

One Mother's Day--I think it was Mother's Day--we tried that epitome of Rhode Island restaurants, Twin Oaks. Twin Oaks sits on the shore of Spectacle Lake in Cranston. (We lived not far from the opposite shore of "Spectacle Lake," which we always called "Speck's Pond." I nearly laughed myself silly when I found out this tiny body of water was actually called "Spectacle Lake.") It was a legend in Rhode Island, one of those restaurants that gets written up in newspaper food guides and tour books. They took no reservations and people waited two and three hours to get in. On the day we went--and it couldn't have been Mother's Day; it would have been SRO--we went at an "off hour," after two on a Sunday afternoon, because we didn't think any restaurant was worth waiting in line so long for. We only waited about 45 minutes at this odd hour.

The place was nice and the food was good (although the portions were pretentiously small like those served at famous restaurants). We had a good time. But we emerged thinking that we had eaten just as good food other places, like the Inn, and never went again. Twin Oaks still marches on and I still haven't figured out what people see in the place.