Happy Birthday, Mom!

This past weekend my two brothers and three sisters, along with our extended family, celebrated our mother's 90th birthday. Ninety years of living, wondrously filled with the peaks and valleys of everyday life, seasoned with the joys and sorrows that come into all our lives, but one lived with grace, honor and love. Married at age 15 to my father, ten years her elder, delivering two stillborn babies by the age of 18, and dealing with the greatest economic depression of our time, most people would not have given the union much of a chance of surviving. It only lasted 64 years until my father passed away in 1998 at the age of 90!

Mom's life never got to be too glamorous. It dealt more with survival on the farm and all too often consisted of hard work and hard times. I can't remember many details of their early years, having come along in the middle of the birth order when times had become somewhat easier. But, I recall enough to know that we didn't have a lot, but we always had food on the table due in part to Mom's resourcefulness. Big gardens meant survival with food through the year, but it also meant plenty of work; growing, harvesting and canning the fruits of her labor. I recall chores of picking peas, harvesting okra (a hot and itchy job that I hated) and shucking corn. She made the best creamed corn ever, but the kitchen was a mess for a couple of days with corn "milk" splattered over everything in sight.

Hoeing cotton was also a "biggee". While daddy plowed, we kids and Mama hoed cotton. It was always hot and the rows were always too long, but I wish I could go back and experience it again, but not for long! We took a break after lunch (after Mom fixed something to eat) and would lay down in the floor in front of the evaporative cooler and take a nap, knowing all too well we had to go back to the field when it cooled off to a comfortable 100 degrees for a "few" mores rows later that evening.

Mom inherited her sewing and quilting skills from her mother, my MawMaw. Mom saved every scrap of fabric and turned them into quilted works of art with names like Log Cabin, Double Wedding Ring and Little Dutch Girl. We still use many of those quilts today and they are still warm and comforting. She even made me a red blazer for my high school choir group. Someone later borrowed it and it was never seen again. It's probably just as well. I don't wear much red, unlike my Daddy!

Ninety years seems like a long time in some ways. But when you think back on those growing up years, it seems to have flown. We lived in about 6 or 7 places growing up and they all hold special memories because of family. I miss my Daddy, but I am thankful to still have Mom around to remind me of my heritage (she's a big genealogy buff, too). We had a great celebration of her life complete with old stories (mostly true), laughter, food, and her favorite time, church service together and all of us together singing a lot of "church songs". Her favorite song has always been Farther Along.

Happy Birthday, Mom!