Happy Birthday MOM!

She won't read this but today my mom is 75. I know that you must find it so hard to believe that someone so youthful as I has a mother that old but I do. ;) For all of her little quirks, I have to say that she is one of my heroes. She lost her husband her husband, my father when she was only 43 years old. He died of lung cancer and although he smoked, it was not the type of lung cancer that you get from smoking. My mother had at the time of my father's death four children all under the age of 10. Our ages ranged from 9-4, me being the oldest. I remember that first Christmas when she asked me if I wanted to write a letter and place it under the tree for my father, I don't know now what my response was but it mustn't have been good because she never asked again.

My mother was a stay at home mom and she continued to be a stay at home mom until my youngest brother went to high school. I never thought that we were poor but we must have been. We lived off of Social Security and my father's pension. We never went on fancy vacations but we never wanted for anything. Christmas was always a big affair where the presents that surrounded the tree came out half way across the living room.

Somehow, she paid for my sister and I to go to an all girl private high school. This high school today is now 11,000 a year, so back in the day, it still must have been extremely expensive for us to attend. She thought that it was important that we all have the best schooling possible. High school was a wonderful experience for me. Some people have fond memories of college but for me it was high school. College was always a means to an end. It was what I was supposed to do to get myself prepared for being a teacher.

She was able to send all four of us to college and get degrees. We received a lot of student loans but it is a testament to my mother that all of us went, finished, and got degrees.

My mother never went on a single date after my father died. She had no desire. It wasn't like that she didn't have any opportunities, she still is an extremely attractive woman. She had to raise her children and to her that was her full time job.

So today, I say Happy Birthday to a wonderful woman!

Peace Out,
MRD