The picture on the left is of my mom when she was in college. In this picture she’s between five and ten years younger than my earliest memories of her. This is much the way she looks to me as seen through the eyes of memory and far, far different from my last memories of her.
Over the last few months as I’ve had the opportunity of talking at length with my niece I have been very much impressed by the differences in childhood experiences between me and her mother, my youngest sibling.
My mother was a young woman with a husband with whom she was very much in love and who loved her. She took care of the house and children, made her children’s clothes, was a den mother. Despite the time and energy that all of this took she and my dad always took time for regular weekly date nights. They’d go to dinner or the movies or go down to Gaslight Square for live entertainment.
She lived in a small house in a rundown (to say the least) neighborhood in which we were the most prosperous family on the block. She dreamed of a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood, poring over pictures in magazines, going antiquing. She was my mom.
Her mother was a still relatively young widow who taught school full time, attended graduate school, and struggled to make ends meet. Although there were older kids in college (and graduate school), those older siblings rarely visited. Most of the time it was just my mom, my youngest sister, and her twin. The twins took care of the big house in the nice suburb while my mom worked. They were probably the least prosperous family in the neighborhood.
She was my friend.
And yet these two very different women were really one woman. I miss you, Mama.
I have often wanted to compare stories with you, since I have always figured that yours would be a very different perspective of childhood than mine. Being an identical twin, I have the good fortune of sharing my experiences and memories which pretty much insures that my memories are accurate. I always share these memories with my twin sister, in great detail. As we approach the holiday season, today we remembered 12/25/68. Tough. Even tougher for you, I imagine. Today was hard too.
Remembering a loving family… and their mother who sang like an angel!
I miss her, too. Life seems kind of confusing and out of joint without her. She was a wonderful woman, all sides of her, thanks for the post and the beautiful picture.
I experienced the same mother you remember. But our first home and neighborhood is only vague in my memory, whereas it was a more significant part of your early years. It was nice to be able to share Mama’s birthday with Ann, and be comforted by being together and keeping Mama and Daddy alive in our memories.