Unearthing a life.....

FossilGuy with Mother, ca November 1934

Dead mothers get pretty short shrift on the Sunday celebration. So I am naming the Monday following Mother's Day as Dead Mother's Day.and hereinafter follows a short Dead Mothers' Day tribute to my own Dead Mother. I almost referred to her there as 'my own dear Dead Mother', but though she was many things, I'm not sure that the word 'dear' fits her. My Dad may have called her 'dear' from time to time. He may have. I don't recall it, but life is full of things I don't recall.

I remember my mother with great fondness .... as a woman who saw to it that I never missed a meal, never went hungry, never had embarrassing holes in my trousers, and never got punished for something I didn't do. She enforced the work assignments; ie., bringing in buckets of water from the well, hods of coal from the coal shed, armloads of wood from the woodpile, chunks of ice from the icehouse, washing or drying the supper dishes and that very work intensive time, the Summer Canning Season. She was slow to criticize, but quick with the switch or belt at any sign of 'disrespecting your elders' .... which included any and all forms of 'backtalk'. She was a good country cook and could make divine lemon meranque pies and divinity (white candy). She was a coyote trapper, a mother of six, a rockhound, a storekeeper, a postmaster, a gardener, and after retirement became a skilled candy maker (chocolates, etc.). And one of her greatest delights was to sit late at table with a handful of her visiting kids and listen to them tell tales from their versions of their childhood.

Happy Dead Mothers' Day, Mom!