remembering Mom...

 Today, March 10, was my mother's birthday.  She always thought March was the most hopeful month.  She was born in 1910 and lived life to the fullest.  She went to the senior prom first when she was a freshman; wore the style of the 20s, above the knee skirts and high heels, to high school.  Longed to become a nurse but went to college and became a teacher because her parents (a pastor and pastor's wife) didn't think that nursing was a proper career for a young lady.  She taught for several years, with interesting summer jobs, dated a lot but never seriously.  Drove a spiffy little Aston Martin and took flying lessons.  One of her best summer jobs was chaffering a professor and his wife to the Chicago Worlds Fair and then farther west. When I was young she fired my longing to travel with tales of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and especially Carlsbad Caverns.  In 1942 she was accepted to Nursing School at Johns Hopkins.  While there she met my father, a dashing Army Master Sargent, six years her junior, they fell in love and married, ending her nursing hopes because nurses weren't allowed to be married in that school, in that era.  They married and he was deployed to Brazil. While he was gone I was born and my mother moved me and all our worldly possessions (in ten footlockers) from Havre de Grace, Maryland to Fort Wayne, Indiana.  She told me that the train car was full of soldiers heading home, eager to see their families.  Those soldiers took turns holding me all night long.  The war ended, my father came home, my first brother was born and life rolled on.  Eventually we moved from Fort Wayne to an old farm house on five acres near Woodburn, my father's home town.  In 1955 my youngest brother (you know him as my west coast brother) was born.  My mother called him her serendipity baby.  She was 45 and he was definitely an unexpected pleasure.  When he was five years old she went back to teaching.  She was a wonderful teacher (as many of my younger friends have told me) and a fun ride to school.  She taught us songs like "How Much is that Doggy in the Window" and "Yes, We Have No Bananas" as we rode along.  Sadly, like both of my grandmothers, she died in her fifties.  Despite colon cancer, she was able to attend my college graduation in 1965 and see me begin my teaching career.  I recently came across a letter she wrote to me during that first year of teaching, possibly the last letter before she died.  It was full of chatty happy news about the good things going on in our little home town and with my little brother and our extended family.  There were no references to how she was feeling.  She focused on the good things in life until the very end.  My greatest regret is that she never knew her grandchildren.  She would have loved them so much.  One of my great selfish joys is that I have lived long enough to know and love my grandchildren.  I like to think, that however such things work, she is happily looking over all of us.  Happy Birthday, Mommy.