Mom ...

Mom was one of 10 kids.

Mom's mother lived in Portage Des Sioux, a farm town not that far away from us. Grandpa died in 1956, 10 years before I was born. Mom was the youngest of 4 girls. I always brag on the fact that she was so smart, she skipped 1st grade, or maybe kindergarten. She graduated high school when she was 16 years old. I am not quite sure but I don't think all of her siblings finished their schooling. Families that lived on farms didn't always have all the young-ins finish school. Many of them just worked and then married young and started their own families.

My Mom though had a different calling in high school. She went into a convent and lived in that order for I believe about 19 years. During her years as a nun, she worked at a hospital in their office or billing area. The convent or the Archdiocese paid for her to go to the university and receive a Bachelor's degree in one of the business related degrees. I don't know for sure which one. After Vatican II she left the convent, and went on to work at a construction company as a payroll clerk. It was there that she met my Dad. It was only a short time there after they got acquainted with each other, Dad as the bookkeeper, that they started dating (courting as they called it back then).

I never really asked my Mom why she decided to leave the order and live as a lay person and then get married. She was 37 when she married, and 38 when she had me...and 41 when she finished having all 3 of us. One of my memories of some of this was recalling that when I asked how old she was (I was under the age of 10) she always said she was 33. When I was 12, I figured out that was not possible. By then I figured out how old she really was when I was born, and confronted her and said she had been fibbing to us all our lives, she never was 33 during my lifetime. Funny how women lie about their age. I have never lied about my age, I don't care if anyone asks, man or child. It's a number. You're really only as old as you feel at heart.

When I was in high school, one of my classes involved writing an answer to an essay question on a final for the semester. Probably my Composition class. I wrote about my mom. I was proud of her and looked up to her as far as taking care of us kids, and taking care of my Dad after his Bipolar diagnosis. And I wanted so badly to follow her footsteps and go to the university. That never happened. It was somewhere during the next few years after graduating from high school, that I lost that pride to call my Mom, MOM. I think it had to do with meeting new people, meeting their parents and seeing how different a life these people had...that I didn't have. I felt gypped out of something....and I felt that for a very long time. And that fed into a disproval of my Mom's reasons for saying no to me a lot of times over the years on a lot of things. I just never got close to my Mom. And I kinda regret that now. So often I will ask her stuff now and she doesn't remember much from that long ago. I feel I missed my chance to understand what was going on back in my childhood that she was the Mom who said NO so many times?

.... when we get older, sometimes we appreciate our parents, read on, there's more on this.