My Mom

Today is my Mom’s birthday. She was born on June 5th and I think she would have been 82 or 83 today. I’m not sure what year she was born, I really think she would have been 82. But no matter, she passed away in 1996 on the day of the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympics. I can remember that day well. I remember that after we left the hospital, we stopped to eat, and watched part of the opening ceremonies on TV.

But I just want to honor her with this post. I don’t think that I have written about her since I have been writing. She was a good mom, and I remember her as being full of passion and also having a fiery temper sometimes. But this I do know, she loved us very much and would do anything to help us. Even in college, when I had papers to write. I could ask her and she would type them for me. That included proofing them and spell checking them. Yes, I did go to college before we had personal computers. So mom’s typing skills were very important.

I can remember her taking us roller skating. Back then there was only one roller skating rink in Atlanta. It was over off Ponce De Leon. That was about an hour and a half’s drive for us, but she would load all four of us in the car and we would go skating. I don’t know whether she really wanted to teach us, or she just wanted to skate; because she was a great skater and could skate backward and very gracefully. I enjoyed skating and eventually got my own pair of roller skates.

I’m not really sure how good of a housekeeper she was, because with four kids, the house was always in some state of disrepair. I remember that back then we had someone come in to do the ironing and help clean the house. That is surprising because we were pretty poor. I guess poverty is relative. While I was in grammar school, we lived on Murray Lake circle in Conley Ga. We lived on a dirt road, and I had a Dalmatian named Rocky. There was one time when Rocky disappeared, and Mom would go to the door three and four times a day. She would call and call. I really believe it was her calls that brought Rocky back to us after about 5 weeks.

One thing mom really got into was Christmas. I guess that is where I got my passion for Christmas. She would always take all four of us to get the tree for Christmas. I remember one year we were so poor we really didn’t have enough money for a tree. But she was determined that we were going to have a tree. For her Christmas without a tree would be totally terrible. So we all bundled up and went tree shopping. We were very frustrated. All we had was 5 dollars, and most of the trees were at least 10. But not to be shut out, mom came up with a plan. She found this tree that was split in half s she took the best half and the began to try and match it together with another part of another tree. Well, she did it, and she had the guy tie the two half’s here together and it actually looked pretty good. It was an extra special Christmas that year; we had a Christmas tree and all our gifts were more than enough.

So those are just a few of my memories of my Mother. I loved her dearly, and we had a code each night when I went to bed as a young boy. I would tell her good night, but until I heard from her these exact words: “Good night, I love you. Sweet dreams.” Until she told me those exact words, I was sure that something was wrong. So in closing tonight I say this in love to her; Good night Mom, I love you, Sweet Dreams.