The Good Memories

With Mother's Day coming up I have been remembering things about my mom that are both sad and happy. My birth mom (her daughter) could not take care of me because of having MS. So, my grandmother adopted me, after paying off my Dad to not fight the adoption. I have two brothers but I was raised as an only child because they lived with our Dad and his new wife. They are between 10 and 13 years older than I am. I don't know why she didn't take them in as well. Since I am not close with my brothers I may never know about that and other things that only they could tell me. So from the age of 3 my Grandmother was my Mom.

I do remember my mom loving to fish. She would take me to her favorite places to fish early Saturday mornings. We would bring sandwiches for when we were hungry and of course chum for the fish. She usually fished, I usually played with whatever was handy. I had a fishing pole but sitting and being patient was not something I was good at when I was younger. I remember one time she caught an eel and we brought it home and she was going to skin it when my older brother Corky (nickname she gave him) came by to visit. He was in his 20s and a marine, and had served in Vietnam. But, when he saw that eel on the table he screamed. Apparently he was scared of snakes - even dead ones. It was so funny to see this big grownup man yelp because of something so small. :-) Another time she had caught some blue-shell crabs in a crab trap and we were getting ready to boil them. For those of you who don't know, you have to boil them alive. Well, one did not want to be boiled so it jumped out of the pot and knocked over the others that were in a box onto the floor. So we had about 6 crabs crawling around the floor. Both my mom and I were on the chairs at the kitchen table because we had bare feet. My Dad had to come in and gather them up and put them back in the box. :-)

I have so many great memories from when I was young. We lived in a "mother-in-law" house on property owned by another family. My Mom had a garden in the back where she loved to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. I have never seen a tomato since, that is as big and red as those were in our backyard. My Mom also loved to sew. She used to make all of her dresses for when she and my Dad went out in the evening. He was a fireman and she belonged to Eastern Star so they went to a lot of parties. She would get her hair done, put on her pearl white nail polish, get all dressed up and wear perfume. She always wore Charlie. To this day if I smell that scent I think of her all dressed up ready to dance the night away.

She quit her job as a real estate agent to be a full time Mom to me at the age of 50. She made extra money by selling chocolate. She would start in January and mold chocolate for Easter. Dark, milk & white chocolate was in our house from the beginning of January till Easter was over. She did baskets full of chocolate figures, chocolate eggs that were decorated with icing, etc... She would make extra molds because she knew me and my Dad would sneak some - and if we did she let us know that she was not happy about it!

It's amazing all of the memories that come flooding back when I sit and just think back. I had a good childhood and a good Mom. She wasn't perfect, she made mistakes - but I think she did the best she could under the circumstances. Which I think is something that she taught me without knowing it. She taught me many life lessons and left me with a lot of good memories. Which is what a mother is for.