Memory Objects

Soon after photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she discovered that items from her mother’s wardrobe would prompt her mom to share anecdotes of the past. With this in mind, Barron began shooting her mom’s clothing, shoes and accessories, and the result is a 100-image visual biography, My Mother’s Clothes.

There’s something haunting about the way the way a dress can lay across a bed, suggesting warmth from recent wear, or the stillness of a nearly-empty bottle of fragrance, a spritz perhaps still  lingering in air. The way these objects are photographed depicts absence but expresses joy.
To see more of Barron’s work, click here. Or to purchase the book, click here.

Ten More Bad Mothers

Bookfinder.com posted a list of mothers who aren’t just bad, but who are arguably the ten worst in literature. Visit here to see if you agree.

If you had a happy childhood, these books may send you on a thrilling exploration of the matriarchy gone awry. If it was rotten, this list may direct you toward catharsis.

You’ll Really, Really, Really Like My Mother

I imagine my mom and my friend Mike sitting in the shade of my imaginary garden, surrounded by roses, hummingbirds, chocolate mint, tomatoes, a prickly lemon bush and rusty lawn furniture plumped with striped cushions in Martha Stewart colors. There they are, Mom and Mike, Diet Cokes in hand, challenging each other for the “I Had The Worst Mother” championship.

Unfortunately I can’t take the fantasy much farther than that because they could go on for hours, and I have stuff to do. For starters, I need to eat a half-jar of Skippy Creamy (the Costco size), lament the fact that I ate so much, and then spend hours working it off.

I lucked out — my mom is everything her mother wasn’t, and if that weren’t enough, she makes the world’s best pies. But in honor of offspring everywhere who deserved a better start in life, I’ve posted several entries about books that might make you look at your own mother with increased gratitude. Or not.

You’ll Like My Mother, Naomi Hintze

After her army husband is killed in combat, pregnant widow Francesca Kinsolving travels to Duluth, Minnesota to meet her mother-in-law. The heavily pregnant widow becomes stranded by a blizzard, but that’s just the beginning of Francesca’s troubles. Soon she uncovers dark secrets, including the fact that her husband’s brother is a psychopath who has escaped from a mental ward, and that her mother-in-law is hiding him in the basement. I can’t believe my own mother let me read this suspenseful, heavy-handed potboiler when I was a kid. (Thanks, Mom, for always encouraging my love for books!)

The Lucky-You-Survived Mother

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

The novel is ostensibly about the title character, Oscar, a 300-pound “lovesick ghetto nerd,” and his multi-generational family struggling under a Dominican curse, but his mom, Beli, nearly steals the story as an angry, abusive mother who doesn't know how to back down.

A Real Mother Of A Mother

Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford

The relationship depicted in Mommie Dearest between Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter, Christina, is the reason why I hate using a toothbrush to clean anything.

Runaway Mother

Loving Frank, Nancy Horan

A fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s relationship with Mamah Bothwick Cheney, the wife of client Edwin Cheney. She was an educated sufferagette and mother of two; Wright was an architect on the rise and married father of six. They ran off together, which ruined her reputation although it didn’t seem to make much of a dent in his. Mamah was vilified as a bad mother and then bigger tragedies ensued.

A Mother Who Can Throw Her Weight Around

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge may not be a character you’ll like, but she’s someone you may like reading about. She’s overbearing, passive-aggressive, aloof, moody and sharp-tongued, but she’s also the one woman in town whose acid-drawn words and irritable wisdom provides the kind of dead-on insight that can make you squirm.

The Mother Who Won’t Hesitate To Kill Her Young

Lithium For Medea, Kate Braverman

A junkie named Rose copes with addiction, the boho squalor of Venice Beach, an impotent boyfriend who loves Star Trek, a father who’s dying of cancer, and a mother who’s a complete narcissist. From the first line, when we encounter Rose shooting up in the bathtub, until the last line, which offers a new kind of beginning, Lithium for Medea is poetry.

Medea, Euripides

The tragic tale of Medea, whose husband, Jason, dumps her for a real princess. In retaliation or grief, she kills their children.

The Wicked Stepmother

Cinderella, Charles Perrault

A gorgeous waif, a handsome prince, a mean stepmother, and two jealous step-sisters that had to have been horrible to have such big feet in the days before there was a Nordstrom stocked with women’s shoes up to size 14... Cinderella dates back to 9th century China, and it first appeared in print during the 17th century in a book by French author Charles Perrault, which means there has been plenty of time to work out the story’s details.

So what I want to know is this: Where was the father when his new wife and her mug-faced daughters were making Cinderella’s life miserable? No “World’s Best Dad” mug for him.

One Crazy Mother

The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold

Helen Knightly, an artist model and mother of two, smothers her mentally ill mother. Then during the following 24 hours, Helen washes and drags her mom’s body to the basement; goes to her job at an art school, where she poses nude; has sex with her best friend’s 30-ish-year-old son; gains the assistance of her ex-husband, Jake; and thinks about her beloved, long-dead father. You might hate The Almost Moon, but you won’t forget it.