When Mom turned 80, us kids threw a big party for her at her senior living community. The theme was “A Life Well Lived”. She commented to me how she didn’t really do anything with her life. She joked when Dad retired from the railroad that she never gets to retire from cooking and cleaning. Before she married, she was a secretary at an insurance company and continued until she became a mother. Her children were her life. We had a large display of things about her life well lived. Her yearbooks, old photos of her family, her awards, her ribbons from county fairs she had in scrap books, objects she had sewn, and I got a Barbie doll with a poodle skirt to represent her youth graduating high school in 1957 to be part of the display. She played the clarinet in the school band, participated in 4-H complete with a trophy that she won but could not accept in person because she had the mumps. Her sister had to accept it for her. She had Order of Rainbow Girls pins displayed in her home. She babysat, taught Sunday School, taught craft projects to junior high kids at my school, sang in the church choir, participated in ladies church groups, help count the offerings after church services, was director of crafts during Vacation Bibe School with me as her assistant, organized a town-wide garage sale with a friend where several families in Milo had garage sales the same day, sewn quilts and t-shirt cloth diapers for World Relief, she was the treasurer to our high school’s music boosters. She joined the town quilting club, the town's 4th of July committee who gave her an award for her service, and the our county genealogy club. She spent years researching family history visiting cemeteries and courthouses. She spent years trying to find a connection with Mary Todd Lincoln and, happy to discover her great-grandmother turned out to be cousins with the former First Lady. She even worked on my Dad’s family history tracing ancestors as far as she could to the 1st immigrant who came to America and found a relative had rung the Liberty Bell. My Mom did plenty with her life.
Mom’s life began in her aunt’s farmhouse near Dexter in 1939. She was the second child following a brother and eldest daughter of who lived on a farm. Two more sisters came later, and one shared her birthday. At first, she wasn’t sure she liked this human birthday present, but she gladly told everybody that they were twins born seven years apart. She learned to play the piano and when she had her own house she enjoyed playing an electric organ. She tried to grow a vegetable garden for a 4-H project, but the vegetables were eaten by grasshoppers. When she had her own family, she was a leader in her elder daughters’ 4-H group. Mom loved her flower beds that she said came from the prior owner. My Mom made many of her own clothes and even sewn her own wedding gown and tiara veil that now sits in the town’s museum under the label “homemade wedding gown”. Mom also made clothes for her children and grandchildren. She made doll clothes for her daughters and Halloween costumes for her granddaughters. That was something special I cherished about my Mom. A trip to the fabric store where we looked at pattern books for clothes we wanted, picked out the fabric and buttons, and she would make it for us. The last item she made for me was a quilt from her Aunt’s scrap fabric pieces. All those homemade things that took weeks or months to complete were not just a hobby, but an act of love. Many items she made went to charity through the church. One project she joined through church was making burial clothes and blankets for stillborn babies. A few years she entered a doll clothing contest at a bank whose dolls were donated to charity after the contest. I’m certain she won at least once and received a prize. She entered the county fair with her sewing projects and was proud of her ribbons. Later she entered items in the genealogy section too and won more ribbons.
She took us out for trips in a pull-out camper and forbade television until Dad came along to watch a small, black and white, travel television set. We swam in lakes and campground pools, enjoyed playgrounds, read books, played card games, and took walks on nature trails. Mom appreciated learning about history and viewing nature. We learned patience when Dad had to read every sign in a museum. Once we took a cross-country camper trip to visit her brother who lived in Washington. It was quite a sight seeing our camper in their driveway for a week. Later, she took her granddaughters camping. We traveled by camper across the country visiting national or state parks plus historic houses and museums because Dad would never fly us anywhere until the family went to London and then we had to fly. When we went to Paris on the chunnel, I took a boat tour with Mom while the rest of the family went to the Louvre Museum. Mom didn’t want to walk that much, and I kept her company. We had lunch by the Eiffel Tower from a food truck. Once she became a grandmother, she was proud of every little accomplishment her grandchildren reached from first learning to walk to dance recitals, softball and baseball games, and graduating college with honors. She was certain to show visitors her photos of her grandchildren and later great-grandchildren. We all were her pride and joy. Like her mother before her, Mom would bake food dishes from scratch. There were no TV dinners in her house. When we had school Christmas parties, I brought Mom’s homemade fudge because that was one thing nobody else brought (and it was delicious). She was astonished that kids nowadays don’t know what fudge is. Every Christmas she would ask us what treat we wanted her to bake, and I always said English Toffee. That was something she passed on to her daughters and granddaughters who bake holiday treats from scratch, sew, and make crafts.
Once Dad left us, she moved into a senior living community to be around people and at the age of 72, learned to play poker with nickels and dimes. One thing the residents noticed was that widowed Mom continued to wear her wedding ring. After 45 years of marriage, she wore it for years simply because Dad gave it to her. Dad always joked he was tricked into marrying Mom. She went away on vacation with her family to California. When she returned, he had missed her so much that he blurted out a proposal after a date while sitting in the car taking her home. She received her engagement ring along with chocolates and roses later, on her birthday at her parents’ house. We kids teased Dad that Mom could have met a Hollywood star in California and left him behind. It was a miracle they got married at all. When they met at a YMCA dance, Dad asked Mom to dance, and she turned him down. He said he was a railroad man, and they were known to be skirt chasers which encouraged her to reject him. Later they met again in a round robin circle dance and Dad was not happy to see her. Mom was a proper, gracious lady and smiled to dance with him to learn that he was no skirt chaser, so she gave this shy guy a chance. Then before their first date, Mom got sick with pneumonia and ended up in the hospital. Her boarding house roommates commented that some guy kept calling for her and were unsure what to tell this stranger. She insisted they tell this guy where she was. Dad came to the hospital saying he was about to give up on her. And as they say, the rest was history. Life wasn’t perfect with Dad working on the railroad and Air National Guard to be away a lot. Mom was often alone with four needy children. Thank goodness Grandma was a few blocks away and did much babysitting so Mom could grocery shop in peace. He was also sweet picking flowers from Mom’s flower beds so she could have pretty flowers on the kitchen table to look at. At dance receptions, Dad would slow dance with Mom even though she said he had two left feet. At least my family has comfort that Mom is with Dad now and I know they are dancing together in heaven to the songs of angels
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