My best friend’s mother, Jacqueline, died on Sunday. I call her my second mom.
I met Jacquie when I was eight and I was in awe. She must have been 33 although I didn’t know it then.
Beautiful, confident and capable, she always had a white wine spritzer in hand. She was about 10 years younger than my mom and I thought she was so glamorous. (So did Mum.)
She worked as a caterer and was a MasterChef before there were such things. Her kids refused to drink Milo with meals (yum! I couldn’t believe it) and the cat got leftover lobster (lobster! Mum couldn’t believe it).
Jacquie and her husband worked like Trojans to provide a better life for their kids. She with her catering that took her to the very top of a corporate kitchen, and he with two jobs as a butcher and cleaner.
Before there were celebrity chefs and the food revolution and eating out was a luxury, they’d often take us kids out to restaurants of a weekend. We’d usually go to Chinatown and they’d order exotic things I’d never heard of like steamed whole snapper, hot sour soup and green tea. It was strictly lamb chops and gray beans at my house.
As I slurped on a fire engine and tucked into my first honey prawns I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was all so delicious and exciting.
When I got older I’d ask her for a recipe and she’d rattle off 20 ingredients and wander off while I was still rifling through my bag for a pen. I was kitchen challenged and can remember trying to cut crusty bread with a non bread knife at her house and her scoffing.
She had a wicked sense of humor and was always telling some outrageous story with a rude ending.
She was the ultimate interrogator, asking endless questions, and I have picked up that trait from her. Handy for the journalist I became. The white wine worked its way in there somewhere too.
Now when I come to work I think of her working, full time, for all those years, and hope I am giving my child the same access to all that life has to offer, that she gave her children.
I will miss her. And when I meet my child’s friends, I know that I might have the chance to spoil them with honey prawns, confound them with long recipes, and teach them to be master interrogators too.
And if all the stars align, I might even be called second mom.
Sophie