Happy Mother's Day

[lovecraft68]

To all the Mom's step moms, grandma's, foster Mom's and mom's to be.

My wife lost her mother last July, they were very close and already had the shared grief of losing my wife's sister at 37 14 years ago, so today is a tough one, and seeing how hard it is on her makes me see how we need to appreciate our loved ones while they're still here, so call your mom and anyone who has been like a mom to you and make their day. You don't know how many they-or-we have...especially these days.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I have posted this before, so please forgive my indulgence, but I'd like to share something I wrote several years ago on my tumblr:

I wish I were a painter. I have a picture I want to paint. A vivid image in my mind that I long to share.

I wrote recently about my mother, and all the things she did to provide for our little family when I was growing up. It brought back a strong childhood memory.

I was 7 or 8. My mother was making some extra money digging clams. The thing about digging clams is that your schedule is set by the tides. If low tide is in the middle of the night, that's when you go to work on the clam flats.

My mother woke up my brother and I one night. I don't know what time it was , but it was a cold starry night. She bundled us, still in our pajamas, into our coats and hats. With sleep still in our eyes, we carried our blankets and pillows out to the car. We had an old station wagon, and we made beds in the back. I drifted off to sleep while we drove. When we got to the shore, she woke us again and told us to stay in the car,that she would be back in a while, and I went back to sleep.

I woke up some time later. My brother was still fast asleep. I had to pee, so as quietly as I could, I climbed out of the car and shut the door. The sky was beginning to lighten.

I shivered a little in my pajamas and coat,nothing on my feet but my slippers. There were some low bushes nearby, where I squatted and relieved myself. When I finished, I wandered around a little. We were parked just off the side of the road, just above a short rocky drop to the beach. I carefully climbed down, hoping to find a sand dollar or a glittery piece of sea glass on the muddy flat.

After a few minutes I decided it was too cold, and climbed back up to the road. When I reached the top, I turned and saw that sight I wish so much I could share.

The sun had broken the horizon and a band of rose colored light stretched across the bottom of the sky. Silhouetted in the light, a figure was walking slowly towards me. I watched my mother, waders to her hips,trudging back from the flats, a bucket filled with clams in one hand, her hoe and headlamp in the other. Her shoulders were slumped with fatigue, but her long hair rippled like ribbons in the wind.

Maybe the image has grown more beautiful,more magical in my memory over the years. I don't think it has, but I am alright if that's the case, because it's the way I will always see her.

I wish I could paint, so others could see it too.

 

[Comshaw]

I have posted this before, so please forgive my indulgence, but I'd like to share something I wrote several years ago on my tumblr:

I wish I were a painter. I have a picture I want to paint. A vivid image in my mind that I long to share.

I wrote recently about my mother, and all the things she did to provide for our little family when I was growing up. It brought back a strong childhood memory.

I was 7 or 8. My mother was making some extra money digging clams. The thing about digging clams is that your schedule is set by the tides. If low tide is in the middle of the night, that's when you go to work on the clam flats.

My mother woke up my brother and I one night. I don't know what time it was , but it was a cold starry night. She bundled us, still in our pajamas, into our coats and hats. With sleep still in our eyes, we carried our blankets and pillows out to the car. We had an old station wagon, and we made beds in the back. I drifted off to sleep while we drove. When we got to the shore, she woke us again and told us to stay in the car,that she would be back in a while, and I went back to sleep.

I woke up some time later. My brother was still fast asleep. I had to pee, so as quietly as I could, I climbed out of the car and shut the door. The sky was beginning to lighten.

I shivered a little in my pajamas and coat,nothing on my feet but my slippers. There were some low bushes nearby, where I squatted and relieved myself. When I finished, I wandered around a little. We were parked just off the side of the road, just above a short rocky drop to the beach. I carefully climbed down, hoping to find a sand dollar or a glittery piece of sea glass on the muddy flat.

After a few minutes I decided it was too cold, and climbed back up to the road. When I reached the top, I turned and saw that sight I wish so much I could share.

The sun had broken the horizon and a band of rose colored light stretched across the bottom of the sky. Silhouetted in the light, a figure was walking slowly towards me. I watched my mother, waders to her hips,trudging back from the flats, a bucket filled with clams in one hand, her hoe and headlamp in the other. Her shoulders were slumped with fatigue, but her long hair rippled like ribbons in the wind.

Maybe the image has grown more beautiful,more magical in my memory over the years. I don't think it has, but I am alright if that's the case, because it's the way I will always see her.

I wish I could paint, so others could see it too.

Aw, my dear that is a fabulous description of a nugget of a memory. No matter how hard our lives have been, there are still some of those diamonds hidden in our lives.

I was lucky enough to have two mothers, my birth mother, whom I got to know after I was grown (or nearly so) and my grandmother, who my siblings and I called mom because she raised us. We lived way the hell and gone out in the country, 12 miles from town. When I entered Junior High school the bus ride to school and home was an hour and 3/4 each way on a good day.

Of all the days of the week we returned from school, Wednesday always sticks in my memory. As I said it was a long ride on the bus from school and when we got off it was a half mile walk to our house.

My grandparents didn't have much. My grandfather worked for a local pulp mill until I was 10, then retired. It was hard for them, raising 5 kids (me and my siblings and an uncle who was only 4 years older than me) so everything we ate was homecooked.

Wednesday was bread baking day. She'd bake loaves of bread and dozens of rolls to see the tribe through the next week. I can remember walking toward the house on a late spring day, all the doors were open and I could smell that heavenly fragrance of fresh-baked bread from 100 feet away. Of course we would race each other to see who got the first roll.

As we stormed into the front door, pushing, shoving and elbowing each other to be first her voice would come from the kitchen, "Wash your hands before you touch anything!"

Another round of good-natured pushing and shoving to see who got to finish washing first, then into the kitchen we went. Mom would be standing at the huge kitchen table we had, flour and bits of dough coating her from mid-chest to knees. Half the table was covered in flour and raw dough waiting to be tucked into her old blacked bread pans. The other half was covered in light brown fragrant ambrosia.

"Butter's in the icebox. Don't make a mess." She'd say.

We'd pull out the bowl of homemade butter, slather a warm bun with it and happily munch away.

Mom, her head down as she kneaded a mound of dough would mutter, "Damned kids."

But I could always see the tiny smile curling her lips and hear the love in her voice.


Comshaw

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm going to share a story that people find funny or kind of disturbing depending on your sensibilities. But this exemplifies my childhood, family and a taste of that good old seventies/eighties "parenting"

My father had a serious drinking problem until I was 12, by then I'd been in and out of foster homes, then back with them then out again etc...

He was sober for over a year and doing well, I was back with them, he was trying to make amends but whatever not boring anyone with that train wreck. The important detail was he was on probation for 5 years for something he'd done, and if he got into any more trouble they could hit him with the remainder of that time.

There was a family down the street that was trouble, the youngest brother was year older than me and a real punk, he was outside our house and my father told him to go home, and he mouthed off, my father told him again to get off our porch because the kid was following him, the kid swore and my father and swung at him with a stick, my father pushed him away

The kid ran home told his mother who called the cops. Cops come asked what happened. My mother's scared because if he gets arrested it could be bad. Fortunately the cops knew the family and knew the kid and let my father off with a warning to stay away and if the kid came around again just call them. Again, this is in another time and in an area where there was enough serious trouble that they didn't need stupid shit like this.

Later that night the kid comes back, I'm on the stairs he says something to me, spits at me, tries to hit me with a damned stick, so I get up, get the stick away from him and deck him, he runs down the street

My mother from the second floor yells. "Chase that little shit, and hit him again!"
I run the kid down, shove him against a tree and punch him a couple times(I was not exactly sane at that age myself) but stopped because he wasn't really fighting back and already bloody

Mom top of her lungs "Hit him! Hit him again he could have gotten your father arrested, hit him again!"

So I hit him a few more times and walked away with the entire street out on their porches...some of whom were laughing and clapping.

My mother's downstairs waiting for me, puts her hand on my arm and says "That's right, no one fucks with this family."

Yeah, that was my mom.

She's 74 now and because they found a Pentecostal church a couple years after that incident, doesn't cut her hair so its always in a bun and always wears skirts...she's a card shark, shoots pool (we call her Minnesota Pats) and goes to the range with my father once in a while and still hits center mass with almost every round from her tiny little .25.

I think this story explains a lot about me.

But when I tell it now most people find it funny because they only know "ma and pa kettle" which is who my parents resemble.