The A2Z Blog Team prompt for M is Music and Memories, but I am straying and writing about my Mama.
Mama is the strongest woman I know. She is a product of the Great Depression. Her Daddy was a migrant worker and Mama and her siblings lived in Tent City. When times were at the worst, they had to leave school to pick cotton for a nickle a day--and they had to fight to be paid that nickle.
Because she didn't have much, she learned to make do.
I was born six weeks premature in the days prior to premi-clothes. Mama deconstructed a dolls outfit and made a pattern for my clothes and diapers. For a good part of Daddy's career in the US Air Force, Daddy's pay put us below poverty level. Mama and Daddy refused to go on welfare or get food stamps, so Mama took a job at the Levi Stause factory sewing jeans.
When Mama didn't sew our clothes, she bought seconds from factories or at secondhand stores. When she didn't have money to pay for car maintance, she did it herself. Every year she and Daddy climbed on top of the trailer to reseal the roof.
After she and Daddy divorced, she bought her first house and decided to install ceiling fans. She couldn't afford an electrician, so she installed them herself. And she climbed trees to trim limbs hanging over the house.
When she retired and moved into the country, the County told her she had to have a drainage ditch. They said they couldn't help. She began digging by hand. After a week of digging, they got wind of her efforts and someone with a backhoe showed up.
That's my Mama in a nutshell--she's a tenacious can do woman.
Growing up her frugal country ways embarrassed my bratty self. Now, I appreciate all that she sacrificed for my Sister and me.
Every time I find myself doing or saying something she has done or said, I smile and tell myself, I'm just like my Mama. There is no higher compliment I can receive.
I don't tell her nearly enough, but I love my Mama dearly.
I'm gonna stop writing now, so I can go tell her.
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