Posted on 05/12/2018 4:36:33 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
That is sad. Sending you a hug from afar.
My mother would try to “receive” hugs from me, often in front of others. She’d hold out her arms and expect my devoted hug. I’d do it but I didn’t “want” to, and I am a naturally affectionate person. It bothered me as a teen that I’d would hug every extended family member with genuine love but feel fake hugging my own mom. Now I get it. Now I see I instinctively knew she had abandoned me. I wish too that she had just grabbed me for a hug, from her heart.
Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.
www.google.com
Ah. I didn’t know the date.
Thanks. I shouldn’t have asked, I should have googled.
Yea, it was a tough couple of years building up to that date.
My mom was great. She had her flaws, as we all do, but as a loving mom, she was the best. I miss her so much. I think there were times she just had a difficult time coping with us (six kids, all a year apart!) and when she took the belt to us, she put the fear of God into us because she seemed so unhinged. She was half Italian and half Armenian, and she had the heated passion and temper from both sides.
The poor woman, we made it so damned hard for her sometimes, and she often couldn’t maintain her composure.
But, as you can see from my freep page, she was an attractive woman, outspoken (She often bridled at having to play the “Good Naval Officer’s Wife” and occasionally would cause some problems for my dad by mouthing off at parties to superior officers she didn’t like) but she played her role well when she had to. She sucked it up and kept the family together all those years my Dad was away at sea, and when he wasn’t, figured out how to manage his alcoholism.
I was a pretty slow kid, and had a great deal of difficulty in school, particularly math. I had to go to summer school for many years. But while my siblings were out playing, I had to stay inside with my mom, and she drilled me over, and over, and over again on my times tables. I would put my head down on my arms on the table, and she would pull my arms away, make me sit up and do the flash card drills. 2x1=2...2x2=4...2x3=6, etc. She sat with me, chain smoking cigarette after cigarette, one hand tapping the ash into the tray, the other hand holding up the card. Instead of taking the time to lay down and rest on the couch and read a magazine or take a short nap (things she could have done (and needed to do) by sending me outside as well) she spent the time trying to teach me, the unwilling and sullen pupil.
I remember her teaching me the alphabet. She was so patient. And when I learned it and could recite the alphabet, she bought me one of the best toys I ever owned, “The Fighting Lady”, a huge (for me) gray US Navy destroyer on wheels that had lots of moving parts...perfect for my boyish and active imagination.
She and I fought long, hard battles of stubbornness over food, specifically onions.
I could not eat onions. They made me gag. But she tried for years. I would often sit at the table for hours after everyone else had gone and the table had been cleared except for my plate. My brothers told me later in life that they admired my dogged stubbornness and tenacity in holding out. My mother would take the plate and give it to me the next morning, and I still wouldn’t eat. I didn’t care if she made me sit there at the table for six hours, I didn’t care if I went days without food, I would do it as long as I didn’t have to eat the onions. At some point, I cannot remember when, she stopped trying and we made our peace with it. Today, how I love her for that.
I was bullied for a stretch of years by my older brother (now my best friend) and on occasion, some older kids his age. I was a bit bigger and muscular than most boys my age, though uncoordinated and saddled with the black plastic framed glassed dubbed “BCD glasses” in the military (Birth Control Device glasses). I absorbed a fair share of beatings, and when my mom would get out of me what happened when she saw me all beat up and disconsolate, she would hug me and say “Bobby! Sit on them! You are bigger than they are!”
What a lady. She probably wanted to beat my brother and those other boys, but she knew that would be the wrong thing, and that I had to work it out for myself. Which I eventually did. And I know how difficult that must have been for her, to make me fight my own fights.
You see, I was a preemie. I was born at 7 months, and was only 2 lbs, 11 oz back in the Fifties. My ears were pointed, I had webbed hands and feet, and the doctor held me in the palm of his hand. She had been taking an anti-nausea drug, and it had caused abnormal bleeding, forcing her to stay motionless in bed for weeks before I finally popped out ahead of schedule.
She would always say to me when we were out of earshot of my siblings, that I was her favorite. I knew she loved us all the same. But to this day, my brothers and sisters teasingly say to me “You were always her favorite!” I know I wasn’t, but she sure made me feel as though I was.
She has been gone now some years, and it seems like a lifetime ago that I noticed she had turned into a wisp of a woman a few months before she passed on.
God, how I miss her. But, at the same time, it is nice, because I can smile and feel wonderful when I remember her!
I never knew how hospitable she was until I experienced the lackadaisical hospitality of others. You never had to worry if a dish would be passed to you or a drink replenished. She would catch a person’s first glance or just simply notice everything. She knew the glance at the clock when someone’s favorite TV show was starting, or when to take out the new jigsaw puzzle. These things may sound minor but they weren’t; they were manifestations of a heart full of hospitality.
In the same boat. Passed just over a month ago. We lived a block away and talked every day of my life. We were real close and I miss the hell out of her. Still find myself starting to text or call her....
My Mother went insane when I was 3 or 4 years old. She’s been in the mental hospital at least a couple times, and I don’t really have anything to do with her. I’m grateful for the fact that she gave me life, but I just don’t feel the love for her that a man should feel for his mother. My paternal grandmother made a good substitute mother for me. She lives close by, and was always there when I needed someone to talk to. Sadly, she’s 91, and at the end of her life now.
Our relationship blossomed as an adult as she was busy raising four kids on her own after my dad died. We had great childhoods nonetheless and good memories we all still laugh about today.
We were poor but never knew it...she was a master economizer and creative to the hilt ....something we never appreciated fully until we were adults. Even today we are in awe of how she managed to pull it off. There were reasons why the kids in the neighborhood wanted to be at our house....she was stern when needed but never sweat the small stuff. We were free to be kids
I miss her......I always will.
Yes!
My mom was a Navy wife who did a lot of entertaining, and she was an amazing cook. She had this weird ability to have just enough food to feed everyone, even if people showed up unexpectedly. And she cooked things for us as kids ranging from peppered steaks in flaming brandy to deep fried whole smelts with only the head missing.
Heh, when she ate, she would pirate things from our plates. She used to broil chicken wings, and they came out with the tips of the wings crispy and crunchy...she would eat all the tips off before she gave them to us, or if she missed them, she would lift it from our plate and crunch off the tip before handing it back to us! We would despairingly cry “Mooooooooom!!!”
She had all kinds of things that we kids would really get grossed out by. She would eat raw hamburger as she was making food. She used to eat pickled pigs feet. To this day...there are few things that seem grosser to me than that! (Though I suspect they probably taste kind of good once you get past the concept.
My mom cooked some strange stuff. She served us tripe in red sauce one time when I was a kid living at the Naval Base in Yokouska, Japan.
As a kid, there are few foods more alien looking than tripe. It looked like they peeled off an alien’s skin and sliced it into strips, boiled it to a rubbery consistency, then served it in a red broth that looked exactly like blood. We looked at my mother as if she were mad...as the Blue Danube china tureen came around the table.
Not a single one of us touched it. My mom was so pissed!
But my favorite Mom cooking story took place later in her life...I was out of the Navy and in college, living at home and a sister and brother of mine were still there.
As the five of us sat down at the dinner table, she and my dad were having a fight. There were ill feelings in the air, not really a pleasant environment at all. My dad was an alcoholic who had not yet recovered in those days, he was French, Irish and Scottish ancestry, a very quiet drunk.
My mom was Italian and Armenian. VERY loud, vocal, emotional and hot tempered, putting up with my dad’s alcoholism. Two polar opposites. So the arguments were pretty much one way, with my dad just sipping his drink...
Anyway, my mom is making the dinner, banging the crap out of the pots and pans, making spinach and rice, a family favorite. Very tasty, rice and spinach sauteed together in garlic and olive oil.
She is still steaming mad, and me, my dad, my brother, and my sister are sitting around the table when she comes over with the tureen of spinach and rice and slams it down angrily on the table. We all help ourselves and as I take my very first bite...
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
This is completely disgusting. The food has sand in it. I look up, and everyone has momentarly paused after crunching on the sand with their first bite, just like me. We all look at each other, not moving, and my father is still slowly chewing with an audible crunching sound. (Hehehe...I think he may have been concerned that if he had complained, she might have brained him with the frying pan!)
My mom had been so upset she forgot to wash the spinach, and boy, was it dirty!
She looked at all of us and said “What? EAT! YOU HEARD ME! EAT!”
So we all took another mouthful...Crunch...Crunch...Crunch....you could actually HEAR it.
She sat down, took a mouthful, and...Crunch...
She looked up at everyone who was just meekly looking back at her, and said “OH FOR GOD’S SAKE!” And jumped up, grabbed the tureen and threw the whole thing, tureen and all in the trash.
Then she just statrted to giggle, and it turned into a roaring laugh, after which we were all laughing, even my dad...:)
The infamous Spinach and Rice Dinner...
Good for you! And, your dear mom :-)
Mother’s Day should also be National Caregiver’s Day.
What a thankless job, if ever there was one, being a caregiver.
Here’s to all the nurturers, unsung heroes, day in and day out, expressing selfless mother-love, often without much or any appreciation at all.
Every decent person who knows my mother loves her.
30 years ago her second husband had just died and left her penniless and desperate. At the time I was early in my career, and we had not been in one another’s lives much for a few years.
The day after she buried her husband her phone rang - it was me, driving east with my small family from Colorado to take a new job in Central Florida. My wife and I told her to pack her bags, she was going south with us.
Over the next 30 years she overcame alcohol and tobacco addiction, and raised three grandsons from birth to adulthood - and filled their lives with love.
She’s almost 80 now, and sleeping soundly in the next room. We had a nice pre-Mother’s Day yesterday, and I’ll be spoiling her more tomorrow.
The great lesson her life teaches is that one can be at one’s lowest, most desperate and depressing hour, and be just a phone call away from a joyous new life. Her life also demonstrates that few situations are hopeless, and horrible addictions can be overcome by even the weakest among us.
I still look to her wisdom for advance on most things. She remains a valuable and contributing member of our family.
(”advice”)
My mother was nuts.
My godmother was awesome, she should be a saint. Auntie Pauline...will love you always.
It was nice to read about everyone’s awesome Moms.
Prayers for those who lost their Mothers and prayers and hugs for those who didn’t have it so great.
She was the best. Could do anything. Passed in 2003.
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