As the oldest in a family of five children, Mother Anne apparently learned early to assume her place as the competent and graceful, always on-top-of-it-all woman. She was a conversationalist, a given ”bell of the ball”, the gracious ”hostess with the mostest”. She often outdid herself and others. She was “always in charge”, as a friend of mine has recently said of her. In fact, she was “in charge” until the very end of her life.
As a young mother, she was a master of crafts. I didn’t think that any of the kids on our block in Wellesley, Massachussetts, had the hand-knitted sweaters, the handmade costumes for Halloween, the dresses, that we had. She was the one who taught my sister and I how to knit and gave us an appreciation for all sorts of handicrafts. She gave us beautiful linens, cutlery, high quality cooking utensils... long before the yuppy was ever invented. Her high school graduation present to both of her daughters was a Singer sewing machine. (That we both became amateur singers is another story.) Mother Anne wanted to equip us for life, for the kind of life she and many of her peers had enjoyed as a wife and mother.
But she wasn’t just the typical mother of her generation. As a child, I also remember her sitting at the typewriter, writing letters to a friend in some other country, or a column for a local newspaper. As I grew older I could also picture her behind the easel, painting a classical still life, struggling to capture the frost on a decanter or the reflections on a river. It’s in the same spirit that I can see her practicing calligraphy or shifting the budding branches in some Japanese minimal flower arrangement.
”Your mom has style before others", a friend would say. Her dinner parties were planned with meticulous attention to details, especially when it came to setting the table: starched linens, imaginative flower arrangements, tapered candles, and well-prepared and aesthetically served food. Mother Anne was also an excellent cook. I remember her practicing Japanese cooking on us (classes taught by Benedictine nuns in Tokyo!) when we still preferred hamburgers. Nonetheless we were proud of her ambition. It wasn’t just something she did for the big dinner parties that were a part of her obligation, but every day. I remember often coming home from school hungry and smelling something on the go. I could always look forward to sitting down to one of her well-prepared meals, served every evening at 6 p.m. sharp.
While mother Anne might ”hang out” in shorts and sneakers around the house she would never leave home, never be seen out, without being impeccably dressed, elegantly coifed and made up, with the accessories and jewelry to match. Even when she was out in front of her house washing her car in later years she’d be dressed to kill for the occasion. Egg yolk yellow tights and a blue silk scarf wrapped around her hip, sunglasses and a brimmed cap to match.
Mother Anne was also proud of her heritage as an ”original” San Franciscan (she left San Francisco with father Kreigh during the war and didn’t return until just before he died in the 60s.) She grew up steeped in medical lore as her father was a pharmacist and all of her paternal uncles were physicians. Her paternal grandfather was a physician (Hund) who immigrated from Germany, and set up practice in Marin County (His property is now Marin County College). Her maternal grandparents (Pollard) were wealthy merchants and shippers, primarily of redwood. While her own family lived comfortably during her early years in Saint Francis Wood in San Francisco, they virtually lost everything in the stock market crash in 1929. The death of her sister Carolyn during the polio epidemic of the early 30s, coupled with her mother’s chronic illness then, were other blows to the family in the 30s.
She met father Kreigh in 1934 (at the SF Yacht club on a blind date), and they were married in 1938. Mother Anne told us that she ”grew up” with father Kreigh, that he taught her about the world, about life and love. Life with father Kreigh apparently brought her out and away from the tragedies of her own family...first to South Carolina, then back to San Franicsco during the war, to Japan just after the war, to Boston, to Louisiana, Kansas, back to Japan again, and then Utah.
When I asked mother Anne only a few years ago what she thought were characteristics of her that I had inherited she said: ”I loved your father.” At first I wasn’t really sure what she meant, and wondered if she was trying to avoid my question, but when I thought about it later it seemed clear to me that her love for father Kreigh was…from the very start… the truest story of her life, and it was to that love that I owed my very existence. The last night I saw her she said ”Your father would have been so proud of you.” That was the ultimate expression of love from mom. In answer to my question she then added with some afterthought ”assertiveness and independence". She was indeed assertive, and independent. We could have talks like that over the phone between Sweden and the US. Often comforting and wise.
My last few weeks with mother Anne in April last year had many sweet moments, like when we had taken farewell of one another as I was returning to Sweden the next morning, and had said: ”I have to go now mom” she responded: ” we all have to go soon, dear.” Just a few hours before her death she said to my older brother: ”Can I let go of you now?” While his answer was No, that he’d be back tomorrow”, she remained assertive and independent to the very end. She didn’t want us to tell her what to do or when to go. When her time had come she went.
Her daughter,
Sue Anne
ps. Mother Anne also loved words and sunshine. A voracious reader, she was always a mistress of the word, i.e. ”perspicacious” was one of her favorites. She loved to sit and read in the sunshine, later in the sunlight of her bedroom or sitting room. Yet I’ll always remember her buried in some other world (even have painted her as such), hovering over a book in her lap, in the shade of a wide brimmed straw hat.
*My eulogy to mother Anne, Saint Agnes Church, San Francisco, June 29, 2007
