When Sept. 7 arrives each year, I think of questions I wished I had asked my mother when she was alive.

Today is her birthday and were she still here, she would be 102.

I’d want to know, for instance, where she was on Sept. 7, 1940, when she was 18, the day Nazi Germany launched its air attack on London as part of what became known as The Blitz. The campaign lasted eight months and killed more than 40,000 civilians.

Where was she and what was she thinking? Was she afraid? Afraid for the country and for the world?

Mom died at 92 in 2015. That was nine years ago, a long enough time for me to have pondered her life, the part of it I got to spend with her, and all the time missed since her passing. As I grow older I imagine what she thought of as she aged.

Did she reflect on her childhood a lot, recall the hard years during World War II, grieve when presidents died, suffer angst over political battles?

I remember snippets of stories she told me, such as when I was 7 in 1963 and she was crying while watching John F. Kennedy’s funeral procession on TV.

During the Great Depression when she was in high school, people were forced to be frugal, she told me. When the soles of her school shoes wore out, she traced her feet on cardboard, cut out the shapes and used them as shoe inserts.

Her family grew most of their own food at their summer home in Cornville and preserved it for winter use. Her mother churned butter, made jam from local berries and crabapples and baked bread and other necessities. Buying gasoline for the car was considered a luxury.

What did she remember, particularly, about presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower?

We don’t get to ask, once our parents are gone, questions about what they saw, felt, feared and hoped for. We can only consider, imagine, surmise, suspect.

I was 10 and 13, respectively, when my paternal and maternal grandmothers died. My grandfathers died before I was born. I wish I could speak to Dad’s father now, ask him about his experiences in World War I when he was mustard-gassed and died at a young age because of that.

Mom’s father was an academic; intellectual, introspective, literary. How wonderful it would be to discuss life and literature with him now. He died two years before I was born, from Parkinson’s disease.

It’s interesting that as we age, we become more interested in, and intrigued about, those who preceded us. We know who they were from stories passed down to us, but what did they think about in their everyday lives? How did they view the world? Do we carry in us some of their personality, curiosity, temperament?

As I go about my daily routine, I often say or do something exactly as my mother would. I can imagine how she would react to the awful events happening in the U.S. and around the world — the mass shootings, war, genocide and political turmoil. And I think I can pretty much gauge what her common sense ideas for resolution would be, however elusive they might be to world leaders.

I can hear my mother’s voice in my own as I go about my life and work, expressing horror, disappointment, fear and disgust at the bad things.

And yes, joy at the good, and optimism that things will get better.

That, perhaps, is the most memorable thing I carry with me about my mother: She was happy and hopeful and keenly cognizant of the fact that life is short.

It is a gift she gave me, and one for which I am most grateful, on the anniversary of her birth.

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 35 years. Her columns appear here Saturdays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com.