My Mother

My Mother is one of ten children. Yes, I said ten. She is third from the oldest, she is one of three girls and is the oldest daughter. My Mother married young (18) and had me by the time she was nineteen. My brother came three years after that and my sister nine years after my brother (cause I asked for her).

My Mother and her brothers and sisters grew up poor. The older kids had to pick cotton and help take care of the younger kids. In spite of all of this they all grew up to be really wonderful people.

Now that you have some of the facts I will tell you a few things about my Mother. First of all, my Mother loves to sing.........all the time. Her favorite thing to do is to call you on your birthday and sing Happy Birthday! She makes sure that you are not home so that she can leave it on your answering machine.

Mother is scared to death of snakes. I don't mean she just doesn't like snakes.....I mean she is completely, totally terrified of snakes. She is scared of rubber snakes, pictures of snakes and snakes on TV, but most of all she is scared of real live snakes. One time me and my sister were in Mother's garage and all we could smell were moth balls. We looked and looked for the moth balls. We figured they had spilled out somewhere. The smell of moth balls was so bad that our eyes were watering. We ask her "Mama? Did you know that your garage smells like moth balls? and she said "yes".........."well Mama?.......why does it smell like moth balls?" She giggled and said "Well, someone told me that moth balls will keep snakes away.........so.......I put them all over the garage." It sounded pretty reasonable to us......through the moth ball "high" that we now had.

When my daughter was born, she was very sick and she was in the NICU in another town. I was there by myself because my hsuband was at home taking care of the younger two children. My Mother had called to check on us and I was having a very bad day. I was upset and crying. We hung up the phone. Next thing I knew my Mother was walking into the hospital. She had driven two hours to come and check on me and the baby. She stayed a little while and then drove back home. She does things like that sometimes.

When we were growing up my Mother would decide that she wanted to go somewhere. I don' t mean to the grocery store I mean on a trip. One time she decided that we would go to Disney World, which was about 7 or 8 hours away. Me, my brother, sister and my Mother all loaded up and drove all night to Disney World. We got there when it opened, spent the day and drove back home that night. We were exhausted but, it was fun!

One night, my Mother decided that she needed to go to the Post Office which was in a nearby town. It was late at night so she wanted me to go with her. I was already in bed with my blue and white striped long john p.j.'s (with feet in them) . She said "just put on a robe, we will only be gone a few minutes, and you don't even have to get out." Well, low and behold we go to leave the post office and the car dies on us in the middle of the road.....late at night.....I AM IN BLUE AND WHITE STRIPED FOOTY PJ'S!!!! All of these really nice......good looking......police officers show up to help. Well, I will just end this story now by telling you.....I WAS NOT AMUSED!!!

My Mother, at times was your typical Mother. She cooked, cleaned and even made our clothes. My Mother was also not a typical Mother. She went to the Post Office and to stores at odd hours and she took us on impomptu vacations. Our lives, needless to say have never been boring and we probably got to go places that most kids back then did not get to go to. All of this was because of my Mama!