A Tribute to My Mom

Published by Claudia Meydrech 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.

Whenever I Garden, I think of Mom

Published by Claudia Meydrech under Gardening,Mom,Simple Pleasures on April 19, 2008

The weather has been beautiful the past few days, the sun is shining and it has been warm this week, earlier than usual this year. So today I went out and purchased a flat of Petunias to put in my hanging planters, and old wooden bucket that I use as a planter next to the front door, and planter on the deck.

Whenever I garden, I think of my Mom. She loved gardening, and still does though it is a little harder for her to work in the garden these days. She still always has something growing in her gardens, and something starting in the house under her “plant lights” on shelves.

When we were young children and lived in our home in Nixon/Edison area of NJ, she used as much of the property to garden as she could. In the back, our yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence. Before they decided to put in a shopping center, there were woods behind the fence at the end of the property. When we looked from the house, along the fence on the left was Mom’s rose bush garden. She had beautiful rose bushes, and our job was to go and tap the Japanese Beetles into a little jar that had Kerosene or some such thing in the bottom to kill them.

To the right, she had a wonderful vegetable garden with tomatoes, lettuce, pole beans or bush beans, and other goodies. Next to that, she had Concord Grape vines growing on the fence. And up against the house a honeysuckle vine crept up a trellis. Outside the picture window in the front, she had ivy growing up against the house, and grew Coral Bells and other pretty flowers and bushes.

I was to young when she put in those gardens, I’m sure with help from Dad, to appreciate how much work went into doing this, but I know she loved it, and has given me great memories in the process.