A Tribute to My Mom

Published by admin under Birthdays, Brothers, Gardening, Mom, Simple Pleasures on October 6, 2008

Yesterday we had the family here at our home to celebrate and honor my Mother on her on her 80th birthday with food, fun and a lot of love. My brother said it best when he stated that “80 years ago today, on October 5th, 1928, the world became a better place because you were born”.

Before I get sentimental, and share some of the wonderful things about my Mom, let me share a few things things that happened the year of her birth:

• March - Movie “Legion of the Condemned” with Gary Cooper opened on the 10th; there was record trading on Wall Street for the time on the 28th
• May - the Electron Microscope was invented; Shakespear’s “The Tempest” opens on Broadway; General Electric starts a regular schedule of television programs out of WGY in Schenectady, NY
• June - Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
• July - Television sets go on sale for the first time; Warner Brothers releases the first feature length talking movie “The Lights of New York”
• September - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
• October - Joseph Stalin’s 5 year plan is announced; the German Graf Zeppelin dirigible comes to Lakehurst, NJ. BUT BEST EVENT OF ALL, my Mom is born.
• November - Herbert Hoover is elected as President; Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willy”, the first synchronized cartoon with Mickey Mouse in the “Star” role, opens at the Colony Theatre in New York City.
• December -Boulder Dam Act approved by U.S. Congress, approving the construction of the dam in Nevada.

There’s just a bit of the history of the year of her birth, but let me tell you some of the things that I remember about my Mom that make her very special to me:

• She is a woman of exceptionally strong faith.
• I don’t remember a night in my childhood when she didn’t come in and pray with my brothers, sister and I before we went to bed, no matter how long the day had been or how tired she was.
• Mom is strong, yet gentle.
• She loves to garden, and still does, and always has something starting under her special plant lights.
• She had the challenge of raising a multiply-disabled son right up until a few months ago when he moved into a group home.  He was born when I was 12, with a brother and sister between he and I.  It took some maturing on my part, a lot of it, to realize how hard it must have been to divide her attention among all of us when she was faced with such a challenge.
• It was at my bedside after going to Vacation Bible School when I was just a toddler that I prayed with my Mom to receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.   I have found that I am never too old to learn some nugget of spiritual truth from my mother.
• Mom has always loved feeding birds, and has always had a feeder full of seeds…or when we were young, a tray that we would fill and lay out in the yard, and watch as Mom identified each bird.  When the Grackles were migrating by the hundreds, I remember her going out once with a LOT of bread, breaking it, and throwing it, and it was gone before much of it had a chance to hit the ground.  Thanks to her, I, too, always have a feeder full of seeds hanging outside.
• Mom never had a drivers license, and thanks to my father’s income and careful management of money, was able to stay at home and care for her children.
• During the last 5 years of my father’s life, years in which he was taken from Mom and all of us due to a series of small strokes, Mom sacrificed herself and her back bending over him to care for him; helping him to and from wheel chair to bed; taking care of his personal needs…yes, we did have help come in, but Mom did a lot. Dad passed 11 days after her birthday a few years ago…her words when I brought her into the room after he had passed (a phone call kept her from his bedside) were “my lover is gone”.
• Mom loves cats, she went from a woman who shot at them with a super-soaker when they came in the yard to stalk her birds at the feeder, to the owner of a series of cats, 3 of which she has today.
• Mom allowed us to explore the world around us, allowing me to keep all sorts of creatures in cages, jars and aquariums in my room as long as I took good care of them, and allowing my brother to study creatures smaller than the eye can see at a young age through a microscope, which I am sure is the foundation for his being the Scientist he is today.

I could go on and on, she deserves so many accolades, and I don’t know how to put my love for her into words.  She is a treasure beyond words! I love you, Mom.

Choosing Names for my Children

Published by admin under Birth, Birthdays, Children on July 29, 2008

My son will be 27 this week, tomorrow, in fact.  When my children were young, each birthday I’d tell them the story of their birth in great detail, but now that they are both adults, that doesn’t go over as big as it used to…oh I can get away with it now and then.  I was just thinking today about how we chose each of their names.

First we decided that if we had a boy and a girl, we would give each our middle name.  Then we had to settle on first names.  My husband had a baby brother who only lived a very short time after his birth, but he was buried with a name.  We decided to bring that name to life again by giving it to our son.   That decision was an easy one.  2 years later it was time to chose a name for a boy or girl…which turned out to be a girl.  I had a name picked out up until 2 weeks before her birth, when suddenly a name scrolled up on the credits on a favorite TV show that I couldn’t resist..it became hers, along with my middle name.

It’s kind of nice to shared a piece of ourselves with each of our children in more ways than one.

Happy Birthday to Me, 56 Years of Memories

Published by admin under Birthdays, Grandparents on December 27, 2007

I promise I’m NOT going to share 56 birthday memories, my present birthday is still unfolding, very peacefully and nicely, and I don’t remember my first few. I am often asked if I feel gypped because my birthday is right after Christmas, no, and I’ll tell you why.

I loved my grandparents very much. They moved from NJ to the suburbs of Boston when I was quite young. So every Christmas they would come and spend a week or so with us. This meant that I was the only child in the family that had the pleasure of having my grandparents at our home during my birthday.

October, Mom’s Birthday Month

Published by admin under Birthdays, Mom on November 6, 2007

This picture is of Mom and Dad at my sisters wedding, about 11 years ago on October 19th.

In October, my dear Mom’s birthday is on the 5th, she always liked birthdays to be celebrated “on the day” and that is what we did most of the time. She liked to be home, but I have a feeling she did most of the cooking on her own birthday…you know, my memory is really quite vague on that.But in recent years, I’ve taken her out to lunch “on the day” and let my brothers and sister do their thing when they wished. This year was different, we all went out together for dinner as a family last Sunday. It was nice, but I have to admit that I prefer just being with Mom, alone, without the distraction of others, just us, so I can focus all of my attention on her…she surely deserves it.

October would always continue the “birthday jamboree” as we used to call it when we were children. It would always start September 19th with my Dad’s birthday, and go right through until the end of January with my Aunt’s birthday…there were at least 8 of us in the family that had birthdays in that time frame…Thanksgiving and Christmas were mixed in there as well, with Christ’s birthday being the highlight!

Dad’s Last Birthday

Published by admin under Birthdays, Dad on October 27, 2007

This post was originally written on September 19th of this year, before I moved the blog to this new location:

It’s a little after midnight, so it’s officially September 19th. I’ve been thinking about it on and off all day, Dad’s birthday is today, and he would have been 83. Dad wasn’t much for having a fuss made over him, but Mom never liked a birthday to go by without some kind of celebration, and Dad loved Mom enough to go along with it.

I really don’t have big memories about his family birthday celebrations, but do remember his last birthday 2 years ago. Much of the Dad I knew had been slowly slipping away due to several strokes over a 5 year period, but he was sitting up in his chair when I went to see him. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt, probably one I had given him on a previous birthday. I gave him a bottle of his favorite aftershave with a balloon tied to it, he loved balloons, they had become a tradition. He tried so hard to communicate, but I was happy just to see him smile warmly at me. I’ll never forget that day. I didn’t know then that my daddy would only be here for exactly one more month to the day. Happy birthday Daddy, I miss you and look forward to celebrations to come in heaven!!