This is a photo of my mom, Joanna, when she was a happy little girl.

My sister just reminded me that today is the anniversary of Mom's death, five years ago.

It's perhaps a measure of her integration into my everyday thoughts that I hadn't remembered the date this year. I do think and speak of Mom nearly every day. Just today in the "battery store," A.J. and I were getting him a new battery for his cell phone, and we laughed together about his Gramma Nana, my mom, who had a deep mistrust of all things electronic. Her distaste for electricity extended to lamps, cords, VCRs, you name it, and she was famous for saying, in all earnestness, when plugging something in:
"I don't trust that outlet!" She never became accustomed to modern-day technology. When she moved from New York to Minnesota, she was delighted to hear that "the same woman who does the message on John and Carmen's voice-mail phone does it on mine here!" I tried to explain to her that it was a computerized recording of a woman, not a real woman sitting in an office somewhere plugged in to a switchboard, but Mom would have none of it. "I recognize her voice!"

She was also a deeply feeling person, compassionate to everyone, fussy and rather impossible to please when it came to food, a lifelong flirt, a lover of nature and especially early spring flowers, the ocean, and Lake Superior. A talented cellist and pianist. Very intelligent, with dreams that never ended. She used to talk about moving to New Zealand, or becoming a speech therapist, or adopting a special-needs child when she herself was past the child-rearing stage. She had this cute little skip in her walk, and she was devastatingly beautiful. All of my guy friends had crushes on my mom when I was a teenager. She was the best listener in the world, and growing up, our apartment was a place of music, poetry, late-night talks, and sincerity.

Mom taught us girls to look for the good in everyone and focus on that.
Joanna would find the kernel of good in someone and then hold onto it like a dog with a bone. My friend Joe, who knew Joanna when he and I were teenagers together, has a saying: "As Joanna would say, Hitler had nice eyes."

I make her sound a bit daft, but she wasn't. It's just that she didn't quite fit into her place in the century. My aunt Carmen says that Joanna was born in the wrong era. I like to think that heaven has turned out to be just right for Mom and that she's very happy there, still finding the best in everyone.