Very Belated Mothers' Day Greetings!

I must apologize.  But I was so excited about our visit to Italy that I forgot that while I was gone, Mothers' Day would occur.  May is the month when mothers in the US and some other countries are traditionally honored.  Spank me with a wet noodle, please, because my very special sisters, aunts, daughters-in-law, other in-laws and friends who are mothers did not receive ANY special greetings from me on The Day!  For shame!

At the very least, I could have programmed in some trusty - and enjoyable - Jacquie Lawson e-cards for my loved ones.  I first discovered Jacquie Lawson some years back after reading an on-line article describing how her e-cards were giving the more established greeting card companies fits.  Curious about this, I stopped by for a look at her website and have since become a faithful subscriber and an enormous fan.   In my opinion, she is far and away the best there is in the e-card business.  She is worth an entire blog post herself.  Another time, perhaps.

In this post, which comes not just a week but nine years late, I would specifically like to remember my own mother, who was born, raised, and educated in Montana, raised five children there, and, with the help of my father, provided college educations for all.  Yes, we all helped by earning scholarships and working part-time while we were students, but it was the expectations that she and my father had of us, in addition to their financial support, that assisted us in accomplishing our personal and professional goals.

The earliest photos that I have of her date from the early 1920s.  She was born in 1920, right after the Great War but before the Great Depression.  Unusually for the time, she was born in a hospital, my grandfather having been quite solicitous of his wife's health.  She was my grandmother's fourth child, but only the second for my grandfather.  Grandma was a widow with two sons when she met and married my grandfather; he adopted both and gave them his name.  Here is Mom with her older sister, my Aunt H.

Grandma gave birth to nine children who lived: two sons and seven daughters in all.  Grampa tried mightily for sons of his own but it was not to be.   While the children were young, the family lived outside their little Montana town near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in a minimally outfitted homestead where Grandpa and his brother, Great-Uncle F, had a coal mine.  "The Mine" became the setting for many a tale of my mother's childhood with the mine ponies, Dixie and Brownie, and Birch Creek - the stream flowing through the property - featuring prominently.   Here she and five of her sisters - the youngest not even born yet - pose on the rocks near Birch Creek.

After graduating from high school, Mom attended a two year teacher's college and became an elementary school teacher.  Here she poses in her college dorm with a favorite stuffed animal.

She met my father in her home town while he was filling in at the local newspaper there during the illness of the regular publisher.  His own home town was about 60 miles east of hers and the newspaper publisher there had literally taken him under his wing and taught him the printing trade.  Mom and Dad dated for a time and then my father travelled to Alaska to work for a newspaper there.  That might have been the end of the story for them except that on 7 December 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and my father returned to Seattle, WA in the Lower 48.  He was lonely there, knew that it was only a question of time before he enlisted and received orders, and asked Mom to join him in Seattle where he would help her find a job.  So, after her teaching obligations for the year had been fulfilled, she and two of her younger sisters, my Aunts L and J, went to Seattle where they were rapidly hired to work in industries gearing up for a wartime economy.  Dad enlisted in the Navy and he and Mom were married in Seattle.

After that, Dad was ordered to report to San Diego for training.  Mom joined him there later on and was once again quickly hired to work in a wartime-related industry.  From most accounts, that period of their lives was quite a happy one.

When Dad was shipped out to join the fighting in the South Pacific, Mom, having discovered that she was expecting yours truly, decided to return to her parents in Montana.  In due course, I was born and accepted quite easily that my father must be a picture because that was all that I ever saw of him in those early years.

Mom returned to teaching in her home town while Dad was in the South Pacific.  Here she is with her first grade class.

Fortunately, Dad made it through the war safely.  After he returned, we moved back to his home town where he was co-publisher of the local newspaper and my second sister was born.  Here is my mother with my grandmother and my great-grandfather, together with me and my younger sister, Artist Sis.

Ultimately, our family grew to include four girls and one boy, planted firmly in the middle with two sisters on each side.  The poor guy never stood a chance!  Mom proudly pinned his Lieutenant's bars on him after he completed his OCS training to become a US Marine.

My brother survived the conflict in Southeast Asia, but was brought down at a much too-young age by a stealthier enemy: colon cancer.  Neither Mom nor Dad ever quite recovered.  Most parents are never the same after the death of a child, no matter how old the child.  But they still managed to take great joy in ALL their grandchildren, including my brother's daughter, Princess E.  This is one of my favorite photos of my mother, with her youngest grandchild, Princess B.

Mom's fondest desire was that we all take a family cruise together - and so we did, in December 2000.  It was not the happiest time for our family because we were all terribly upset by the stolen election that year.  Mom, my sisters and I, and Princess B, grown older, may all seem a bit dazed in this photo.

We are still very happy that we did have that time together, however.  It was only a scant year later that Mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  After that, it was only a question of time even though she believed, right up to the last, that she would somehow win out by sheer indomitable force of will.  We lost her in August 2002, a few short months after she posed (on the left) with two of her remaining sisters, my Aunts H and L.

I feel certain that she was just as happy not to be here for the illegal invasion of Iraq and its aftermath and especially not for the 2004 Presidential election results!  But I am sure that she would be very proud of the results of the 2008 election!  For all the Mothers' Days when we had you, for those since we have lost you and for all those to come, please know how much you are loved.  And how greatly you are missed.