My Mother

These two photos are my favorites. The one was taken when she was about 18 and the other was taken when she was in her early 50s.

Before she was my mother, she was a lovely, slender, dark curly-haired, brown-eyed young woman who came from a large family. She married my father and they had three sons. Ten years later they had a baby girl - me!

My mother could always walk faster than I. Even when I went to college and learned to really hustle, she could still out-walk me!

The slender young woman turned into my mother who was short and plump. She said she was 5'2" but I think she was probably a little over 5'. She was always interested in hearing about everything I did, the clothes I wore, etc.

When I was growing up, she was forward looking - as much or more so that my friends' mothers - and she was about ten years older than most of them.

She wrote a weekly letter to me from the time I went away to school until she moved to Colorado to live with Bill - that was probably about 1990. I always looked forward to those letters. She always took great pride in her spelling. I began to notice in her later years that she mispelled words she never would have mispelled when she was younger.

She attended high school one year. The next year she couldn't attend because she was bed-ridden with rheumatoid arthritis. So she never went back to school. I didn't know this until I was 35 years old. She was really amazing. She read magazines more than books and taught herself many things just by reading.

She was a tough little old survivor. She was widowed at 53, never dated or remarried even though she had the opportunity. She raised me alone from the time I was nearly 15. I think she did a pretty good job of it. Bill helped her after Daddy died.

How lucky I was to have this kind of lady for my mother. She always told me how proud she was of me. She told one story that I just loved to hear. When I was born, she was in Grace Hospital in Hutchinson. She would come out of the anesthetic (or whatever they gave her) and she'd ask Daddy, "Was the baby a girl?" Daddy would tell her that the baby was a girl. Then Mother would say, "Oh, I am so glad!" Evidently, this happened each time she came out of the fog. So I always knew how much I was wanted and loved. What a blessing!