This Sunday is Mother’s Day and my nearest and dearest has been gone for almost twelve years. Dorie Kahler was a wonderful mother and we were very close. While I always miss my mom, I have a ridiculous amount of great memories of her or as I call them “Momeries” that keep me company. I think of them not just on Mother’s Day but throughout the year. Here are just a few warm remembrances.
Mom interrupting Wiffle ball games friends and I had in our backyard for good reason. She’d have us boys sample her latest makings of homemade jelly. (Plum, Strawberry, Blackberry, you name it, she made it) A large plate would be passed around with the freshly made jelly smeared over hot buttered rolls. She made plenty and we kept a downstairs pantry well stocked with those sweet eats. I don’t recall eating store bought jelly until I went away to college.
Dorie Kahler also canned peppers, relishes and incredible tomato sauces. Cooking was mom’s passion and she was great at it. Anytime I went to a ‘bring a dish’ party, mom would whip up some tasty treat for me to take and her food contribution was always the one that party guests would be asking and even begging for the recipe.
In college I hosted Fourth of July parties in our backyard and mom made giant vats of chili that I didn’t think anyone would get that into. Two years in a row the chili vats along with large side bowls of onions and cheese would be gobbled up til there was nothing left. We also drained a couple kegs of beer. One of those bashes had mom coming home late from work at Good Samaritan Hospital to find a guest throwing up on our front porch. I was sent to clean up that mess.
Dorie Kahler was a dedicated Little League baseball and hockey mom decades before those terms became part of our everyday vernacular. From age 8 to 18 I could count on one hand the number of my games she missed and still have a finger or two left.
Mine was one of the ‘Cool Moms.’ The parent who took a Chevy Caprice full of neighborhood kids to Honey Hill or Phil’s beach at Bangs Lake in Wauconda, Cub games at Wrigley Field, the batting cages in Maywood and movies at Yorktown Cinemas. She loved seeing me and my pals having fun at all these places and was always ready for the next adventure.
In high school, my parents let me host closely monitored beer drinking poker games and a really big yearbook holiday party just before Christmas of senior year. These days such gatherings would get adults in big trouble but it was a different time and nobody ever got hurt. Although there WAS the Easter Eve when some unknown poker playing guest stole our holiday ham from the kitchen fridge. Mom and dad laughed it off the next morning and we celebrated that Easter at Stein’s Deli in Lyons.
Dorie Kahler was into politics both national and local. In 1973 she ran for Elmhurst City Council and trounced her incumbent opponent by a huge margin. She was a conscious voice for those with little power or influence but four years of those uphill battles was enough for her. She turned down the chance to do another term but helped get other good people elected as aldermen.
It wasn’t all fun and games with my mother. There was her dedicated love and concern for others in bad situations. When my sister Marianne’s first husband Gary was stricken with terminal brain cancer, mom took weeks off from work to stay with Marianne and her ill mate in Sycamore to support them through such an awful time.
My parents divorced in 1986 and strange as it seems, they became closer with each other after the split. This was most evident when my father Ken Kahler had his own life ending battle with cancer in 1993. He stayed with us as our living room (complete with hospital bed and oxygen tank) became a peaceful hospice. Mom was with dad to the very end, cooking what he could eat, reading Bible verses and doing anything to make his last weeks and days as comfortable as possible.
Dad’s death early on a Sunday morning in August broke our hearts. We all knew his passing was inevitable but mom was devastated. She took comfort in knowing someday in years to come she’d be reunited with dad and reminded us of the same.
I hate to end this blog on such a sad note so I’ll share one more momory. One summer when I was around ten our family went to a drive-in movie in Addison. Mom volunteered to get us popcorn and soft drinks. She came back with all that and a large picnic cooler. How’d that happen? While at the snack stand, Dorie Kahler took part in a contest where you had to roll a frozen hunk of ice up and down your arms and legs and the first person to melt it all the way down would win the cooler. That was my mom; game for anything and bringing a smile to all who knew her.
Happy Mother’s Day to all!
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