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Meet My Mom

My mom was the last of four children born to a poor farming family in middle-of-nowhere, Mississippi.
She grew up picking cotton and diggings sweet potatoes during her “summer vacation” months. They didn’t have indoor plumbing. Mom used an outhouse, which caused her to develop a life long fear of spiders.
In her tiny rural high school (graduating class of eight students), Mom was both a cheerleader and a member of the basketball team. I saw her yearbook once and she was also nominated “Who’s Who?”; I forget the exact category, but maybe it was even more than one!
While in high school, mom took one of those career aptitude tests that tells you what kind of job you are best suited for.

Mom’s results were, “Forest ranger or X-ray Tech.”

So, she went to x-ray school and became a tech.

My mom was 27 years old when she gave birth to me (that is her arm, pictured left, handing me my first birthday cake!).

I was her first child, and she was so proud to have a baby girl.

As my dad told me years later when I was a teen, “She was the one that wanted ya’ll.”

(I don’t think he meant that he didn’t want to be our dad; I think he was trying to say that mom was the one who wanted kids in the first place.)

Mom dressed me in ruffled dresses and even entered me into some sort of baby beauty contest where I reportedly won the “bluest eyes” category.
When I was about one year old, we followed a job and left our home in Florida and relocated to Texas.

I was two years old when mommy lost her own mother to cancer, followed by her brother later that same year. Mommy and I traveled to Mississippi together during the final months to bring comfort to my dying grandmother (pictured at left, with baby Can Can).

When I became a mom myself, I had so many questions for my own mom. I didn’t know anything about mothering, and I wanted to get it right!
Not only that, I craved my mom’s approval. I wanted her to see me with my baby and affirm to me that I WAS a good mom.
She did.
I know that mommy still misses grandmother, and it brings tears to my eyes right now as I imagine what a long list of questions she has had for grandmother over the years that she never got to ask.

I am grateful to my mom for many reasons. She stayed in a tiring job so that our family could have health insurance.

She ignored her misgivings (after only a few protests) and allowed me to get married at a relatively young age.

She hugged me and cried the evening I left for my first long trip away from home (three months in a hut in Belize) and said, “It’s the hardest thing I have ever had to do, to let you go!”
The unexpected was scary, and we wouldn’t have contact by phone or email, but she did let me go. And it was great.

The next year, I worked in China. My mom and my brother came to visit me, in China!

The following year, she came along with my father and brother to meet me in Thailand.

When I gave birth to Jojo, I spent half of my pregnancy living with my mom. And we stayed with her until Jojo was 7 weeks old. It made my heart swell with joy to watch her interact with her first grandchild. She rushed home from work to see him, lovingly bathed him, and found carefully preserved outfits from my brother’s babyhood to dress him in.

Though she misses us when we are away, my mom has been very supportive of our untypical lifestyle of traveling.

I hope that as my boys grow older, that I can allow them to make their own choices and follow their own paths as well.

Thank you, mom, for “mothering without smothering”!

Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy!

This post is part of a world wide blogging tribute to Moms led by TheBlogFrog

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