My Mother is an Amazing Woman

I posted on facebook that my mother is the best.  And she is.  She's amazing in many different ways.  This statement is not a challenge, I really don't want anyone trying to one up my statement.  In the same way I love each of my children and think they're wonderful, there are multiple wonderful women that are fantastic mothers.

SO clam it.

Back to the point, my mother is the best!

A little background on my mom.  My mom was born in Pocatello Idaho, and stayed here until she turned 18.  Life wasn't easy.  My grandfather was a hog farmer that picked up produce that supermarkets couldn't sell anymore.  That's how he fed his family for many years and what was too spoiled or rotten to eat was fed to the hogs.  Hogs are smelly creatures that permeates your hair and your clothes.

Being a kid is rough.

Being a kid that goes to school after slopping hogs is cruel.  Kids are cruel.

Remember my girls learning disabilities.  Well those are inherited, my girls got them from me.  I can't memorize worth squat, never could but I was able to compensate in other ways, not needing the interventions my girls have needed.  My inability to memorize comes from my mom.

Schooling in the 1950's was very different then schooling now.  The disabled were stashed away, not to be seen.  Understanding of learning disabilities just wasn't there.  Kids, with real reasons that were unable to learn were labeled.  My mom called it the dummy chair.  Said she was always placed in the back, so she wouldn't disturb the smart kids.  Raising hogs, getting passed from grade to grade while being functionally illiterate, teased mercilessly and then being raised by a hard nosed father that didn't know how to give my mom credit for any accomplishments.  My mom left her home with no idea what her potential was.

To understand my grandfather, you have to realize he didn't mean to be cruel.  He lived a hard life, raising six siblings as a tender teenager in the heart of the depression shaped him.

He didn't know how to be anybody else.

Anyway, back to my mom.  Out of desperation, unemployed, living with her older married sister and desperate to do something, anything with her life, my mom joined the army.

That's where she met my dad.  Talk about opposite worlds.  My dad was the son of an Ambassador, son of a diplomat.  And when my dad met my mom, my dad saw something in my mother, saw her potential, saw her beauty, inside and out.  Saw her worth and fell hard for her.  She needed that.  He gave her confidence, lifted her up.

My mom was able to reveal her soul.  With my dad's encouragement, mom started learning how to read.  She started with children's books and worked her way up to classics.  She decided she wanted to be a nurse and took the admissions test three times before she passed.  She worked like hell in between, strengthening her skills, doing what needed to be done.  And she did it.  Tenacity, that's my mother.  Grabbing hold and not letting go.  Trying over and over even when it's hard.  So hard it hurts.

Having the four of us was no picnic either.  My oldest brother is non-verbal, his autism and OCD crippling.  Then there was me (haHA!) smart alec kid I was and my younger brothers, one with severe health problems as an infant and speech so severe he lived in a foster home for three years, in another town so he could attend another school, a special school that helped him learn to talk.  I can't imagine needing to make that choice for my child.

We weren't easy.

And when I as Kate's age, my mom was a nursing student to boot.

So maybe the background is the story.  My mother has strength.  The hog farmer's daughter educated herself, went back to school, loved life, raised children, raised hard children with medical issues, so draining, so incredibly draining.

Yet she still found time to teach me to bake.  Taught me, through loving my dad, what a real marriage looks like.  How to stick with a spouse through thick and thin.  She taught me how to persevere, how to keep going forward.  She taught me to be a better person, gave me a reason to be a better person.  Taught me to love my Savior.

When I say my mom is incredible, I'm not just saying that.  In my mind I'm thinking of everything I know about her, every obstacle she's overcome.    I'm picturing the uneducated farm girl that fled at 18 and comparing her to the refined, world traveler that educates herself in the gospel, in politics, in things that interest her.

I'm seeing the brave woman that didn't drop the photography and writing class she was a week into, when my dad died.  She took those classes believing my she would have my dad to help her.  She could have dropped them, she didn't know how she would pass, up to that point my dad always edited and helped her write her papers.  My dad was the photography buff.  When my mom passed those classes a mere 3 1/2 months after his death, she passed on her own.  The daughter of a hog farmer.

So let me repeat, My. Mother. IS. AMAZING.  I love her.