I Called Her Mom

Tomorrow is another day....something I heard my mother say often. So...tomorrow is another day in 2013, but it is an especially designated day...Mother's Day. For some it is a happy day filled with visits from children and family. For others who do not receive that special attention, it may not be considered so special. And then for still others it could be a sad day missing, while still remembering, those they have loved but who are missing from their lives at this time.

For me, I shall remember fondly, my Mom. She is a very short Mom physically standing barely five feet tall, yet being seven feet tall to those whose lives she shaped. She is of Irish descent and lots of others, no doubt. However, our Grandfather Daugherty was around as she was being reared, thus she remembers Irish!

My Mom was a good cook as was her mother. She taught me how to cook and clean, do the laundry and to sew. Thus, I have no excuse for being a sorry example of all of those at this point in my existence. (I don't like to cook, clean, and I do not sew. I do the laundry because I must!) My Mom would not be very happy with my excuses.

When I was small I can remember a time when all of the window treatments in our home were made by my Mom. They weren't any shabby looking homemade looking jobs either. They were "So Fine!" Our home burned on December 18th one year and all of those things went up in flames. Those events seemed to have sucked a lot of "the life" from my Mom for a little while. Our experiences in life seem to color our thinking and our being and such it was with my Mom. Our spirit gets battered around a great deal in this life. Mom had rheumatic fever at age six, her father was killed when she was eight, she lived through what was known as The Great Depression and who knows how many more dreadful things. But her zest for life, determination, love of learning soon surfaced and off she went in pursuit of life and its new experiences, whatever! I loved that she never lost her interest in what was new and "keeping up-to-date!"

My Mother had five children altogether. Her first was stillborn, the second, a son, George William, lived but a few hours after birth. Then there was me! I was the only one for six years, then another son, my brother. Another five years passed and my sister was born. That completed our family. Three children had survived and as far apart as we were born we were afforded the attention usually given to an only child while being fortunate enough to have siblings. Three makes a nice sized family of children but then so would five!!

We loved our times together!! Gathering at their home as adult children with children we often bored our parents out of their skulls with our steady conversation and chatter about politics and education. At some point in our lives we have all been involved in the field of education. Sometimes our folks (Mom and Dad) would just leave us in the middle of deep discussion and migrate to their favorite places in their home as we continued those discussions.
Our Mom has been gone twenty-one years now. (1992)

We miss Mom....and we know she is happy now with Daddy! Happy Mother's Day ALL!