Our mother was an only child, and grew up in a multi-generational female household. Oh, there seemed to one member of the opposite sex resident occasionally, her grandfather; in the family album, there exists only one picture of him, an interesting face barely imprinted in passing. Her own father existed in a remote periphery (remarried) and under the cloud of shame caused by the D-word.

Thus, the control of this domestic domain, the one who possessed power over the tiniest of areas, the preparation of meals, the whitest of white laundry, and most unfortunately, who supervised (suffocated) our mother, was bitterly contested. Because most ladies did not work back then, she and the hearth became the dominant battlefield. It is surmised that the sole male of the family died quietly from the dual stress of work place and home. When our mother reached her early 20s and was still not allowed to drive alone and still had to take her mother on dates (with a male beau), her patience reached a boiling point. She ran away from home, hopped a sea plane to Bermuda; having somehow managed to find a job with the US Air Force (in spite of the intense hovering) at the just built Kindley Air Force base. As luck would have it, the Second World War broke out; no-one was allowed to return stateside and she met our father.

And there she was, no idea how to cook, no idea how to sew or keep house, no idea how to drive, but an absolutely fantastic executive secretary. Our Dad was a Bermudian private in the BVRC. Soon, they married and set out along life's pathway to work together and raise a family. Shortly, there were more of us children than you could count and the world's foremost authority on simple living a la Martha Stewart (back then it was called scrimping and saving) rose to the challenge.

Our mother became a survivor, blessed with a keen sense of adventure, imaginative and innovative, she dug in, inventing along the way almost all of those "really good things that Martha Stewart is paid millions for today''.

Truthfully, didn't most of our mothers already invent the rest of Martha's repertoire? If there was a bargain to be had, she was first in line. If it was free, all children around were marshalled out to capitalise on the generous gift. As she was a great cook, and as the benefactor ultimately received some largesse in return for having hordes of us descending upon the property, they usually were very gracious in allowing us access to bay grapes, banana stands, loquat trees, and so on.

Jam making routines followed the seasons, several early winter weekends were spent picking bay grapes in unspoiled areas of Grape Bay, long sunny days walking the side of roads and anyone's hedge visible loading up on Surinam cherries, climbing loquat trees and pelting each other with the fruit. One particularly fruit-filled day ended with several of us re-depositing vast mounds of discernible cherries next to our beds that night, because we could not control our intake. You never know it until it is over, but those were happy times. Even the smallest child felt useful.

Once back at home, heavily bogged down with pails of fruit, the jam and jelly production went into full gear, because not only was our mother determined to produce enough for us all, she also turned out over the years thousands of jars for friends, neighbours and our annual school fair. Her loquat hot ginger jam was superb, slathered on warm Crow Lane bread already heavily dosed with real butter. Even relatively modest homes could afford butter then, shipped from Australia and New Zealand, just as it is today; we didn't understand that preferring "the high priced spread'', was the only snobbery we could afford.

Of course, this also meant begging for used baby food jars constantly, as our mother made her own baby food, then the jars were recycled into jam production; we also recycled all cooking grease to an elderly neighbor who in turn made homemade soap and shared it with us. These days, homemade soap is marketed as an upscale item with price and cachet to match. Our oldest brother caught mackerel in the annual run up the harbour into Crow Lane, after the paper route delivery in the morning, which we fried in tons of bacon grease for breakfast. Fish cooked, filleted open, lift out the skeletal structure intact, and presto, breakfast kippers and bananas, Waterloo House, look at us.

At Easter, every child was dressed in matching homemade outfits; our mother became expert at copying patterns. During the years of the hated school uniforms, we formed production lines with two or three of the children sewing while our mother cut out school blouses from her adapted patterns. One weekend, we assembled from start to finish twelve identical blouses in different sizes; for a large family, the savings over store-bought were huge.

When I was about nine, our father brought home tiny ducklings, dyed pastel Easter egg colours. We raised them, did them in, and ate them, one duck every Sunday, forever it seemed. My job was to pluck the pinfeathers out, using old tweezers and hating every minute of it. I eventually grew to loath roast duck.

People did not believe us when we would say we never went to a restaurant as a family, but it was true. Years later, in a "sophisticated dinery'' seeing "Duck a L'Orange'' on the menu, it occurred to me, that why, we even had gourmet palates way back then. That was not enough to convince me to try roast duck again.

Many times, this goal to save and pinch everything three times drove us children crazy. We were not allowed to buy or have soda in the house, no friends wanted to visit because we couldn't buy chips either (try sharing a bag of chips with seven kids and three friends). Today, excess soda consumption is contributing to the onset of diabetes in children as young as seven years old. Sunday school picnics became a source of real worry over public notice as we had to ask for all of the left over watermelon rind (as in not eaten) so that watermelon pickle could be made, later virtually for free.

We served the proverbial brown drink, as in my fiance m (husband) visiting at the time declaring: "What on earth is this stuff.'' Humiliated, we had to explain that brown drink consisted of left-over cold tea, one 8-ounce can of frozen orange juice (our mother could not bear to buy a larger quantity of something so expensive) and enough sugar laden Kool-Aid to make up a gallon.

Today, Snapple beverages and their imitators have made billions selling the same thing.

Access to Grape Bay and many other favourite childhood haunts is no more as lots were developed and homes with security gates were built. Those areas stand now, quiet, silent, almost seemingly unoccupied, as the invisible presences living there conduct their business elsewhere. The free fruit bounty falls untouched and unnoticed, to the ground, a bonus for a few birds.

Mackerel runs, too, are gone, the challenge of living simply so that others may simply live is more important than ever.

Once I asked her why she had so many children, because at the age of 16, I was appalled and like, so embarrassed because our mother (who in my mind was totally over the hill at age 42), was pregnant again. She replied that she always knew that with many children she would never be alone. And she truly thought we would all be there with her, forever, but children are like kites, they sail up, up, up, the string snaps and they are away. Our children are tied to us, forever, whether they know it or want to or not, with an invisible umbilical cord of DNA.

A generation later, the same process came full circle, as our own children grew up and left home. Only then did I have the maturity to understand how terribly, devastatingly lonely she was as a young child herself. And that being surrounded by her own large family was tremendous validation of her personal worth.

Martha Stewart shrewdly understands how to package what our mothers did out of necessity, and in the process has made simple living skills upscale, trendy, and very, very profitable. But our mother who could be just as manipulative and controlling as Martha (if the media are to be believed) knew something way before Martha did; our mother was committed to investing long-term in human capital. Analysts for publicly held companies today understand this concept only too well by quantifying and measuring human capital in financial terms.

Pfizer Drug Company has the highest human capital to net earnings ratio in the public company industry. There is a statistically proven correlation between investment in human capital long-term in a company and the performance of public stocks. So it is no that Pfizer has the highest stock performance for all companies in its sector.

Conscientious mothers are an amazing lot. It is said that women are good at multi-tasking and detailed projects. It isn't easy looking good, feeling good, sounding good, and affirming everyone you meet with your wit and intelligence, while baby is drooling all over your best suit, and your three-year-old has to go to the bathroom "right now''. Yet today, married mothers, single mothers, stay-at-home mothers, grandmothers, and working mothers rank in a job well done on the home front, on the lowest rung of the respect ladder, yet they perform tirelessly at a "CEO'' level.

Mothers, today, still have the greatest influence over generations to come and the future of this planet. Tomorrow, let's celebrate us and celebrate the memory of all those great women who have gone before, mothers or not.

Written in memory of Anna Clarine Sawyer Harris, 1918-1997 Early Marthas: Berfore Martha Stewart started making millions out of home decorating and great cooking, women like Martha Myron's mother were doing the same things as a matter of course.