Five years, now. We can't say anymore "It happened a year ago" or "She passed a couple of years back." Now, it starts to be a marker. Five years, half a decade. Her Mother left her to be raised by the grandparents in 1922 when she was two. When her Mother met a man, she had to call her Mother by her name instead of Mom. No one was to know that her Mother had a child.
Her father tried to kiss her in a car when she was fifteen. He had no idea she was his daughter. She told him there in the car. He pounded his fists on the steering wheel of the car yelling her Mother's name. Over and over.
Her husband (my Dad) claims to have married her because he thought she would inherit the family farm. She graduated high school at sixteen. Yes, the proverbial one-room schoolhouse. All grades taught by one teacher. She graduated at sixteen in 1936. She was supposed to go to college but didn't. Her Mother had died in 1930 giving childbirth. My Mom was ten years old.
She had eight children. Her husband drank - heavily. He ran around on her. He hit her. She never drove a car. She worked for six months outside of the home sometime during the 1950's, but with four children at home, discovered it was just too difficult. She stopped going to the dentist because her husband (my Dad) accused her of having an affair with the dentist. She suffered toothache after toothache. I can remember her giving me cloves out of the home canned pickles to kill the pain on a tooth and she would cut aspirin in half so we could hold it on our tooth when it ached. To this day I can dissolve an aspirin in my mouth without water. (But of course, I don't!) She knew all the home made remedies since she couldn't go to the dentist.
She would read four books at a time. She would put one down and just pick up the other one. Her first baby was the second baby she had ever held in her life. She loved crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles and solitaire.
She smoked "roll your own" bugler cigarettes. She used a cigarette roller liked the one pictured here. She used bugler tobacco. When we were kids we all took our turns trying to roll cigarettes. We didn't do very well. I never tried smoking one of these. Puh-leeez! You got tobacco on your tongue and everything. Disgusting!
She was my Mom. She was my hero. And, there is so much more.
1 comment:
What a great memory page. Your mom lived through some very hard and horrific times, she deserves to be your hero. Her perseverence got your through to where you are now, and that is a testament to a mother's love. I have many good memories of my Dad, but can't find the strength to write them down, he will be gone 5 years in May, it still hurts so much. My mom is still here on earth, an dI speak to her daily. A few years ago I asked her to fill in the blanks of this memory book, so that my kids could know more about her, she still has it, and it is blank. She is blind now, and can't fill it in herself, and won't let me do it with her. Stubbornness also runs in that generation, the ones who lived through the depression and the "Great War."
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