Happy Mother’s Day!
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of my traditional Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]
Okay, who are these three dark beauties?
A hint: one of them is one of the very first pictures you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.
My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-eight years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.
Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.
The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.
Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.
We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).
My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.
I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.
So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?
3 Lovely Ladies.
Happy Mother’s Day to all wherever they are.
My mother lived in three centuries. Born in 1898 and died in 2001. She was a source of real history for my kids who all knew her well even though she lived in Chicago and we in California. We visited several times a year. I took her to see “Titanic” when it came out. She was 14 when it sank.
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/2000-mules-watch-the-full-movie/
Almost like a Mother’s day gift, eh?
Beautiful girls on photos <3
Happy Mother`s Day!
Neo: I love your stuff, especially stuff like this, where you frame and comment on what we humans share: motherhood, history, Time, memory, love.
Happy Mother’s Day, and many more to come.
PS: your Eye Story is absolutely riveting. Glad at the progress through Part IV but keeping fingers crossed for the “final” resolution.
Happy Mother’s Day to one and all.
neo, have you seen this? Arabian Dance AcroDuoBallet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vEPU8VTkAA
I confess to finding the ‘man bra’ a silly woke gesture to asexuality. But the dancer’s move @ .45 is something I’ve never seen before. To this layman quite impressive.
Happy Mother’s Day to all….
…with a special shout-out to the mothers of jockey Sonny Leon and partner Rich Strike, who are no doubt kvelling in their respective abodes.
And what a race it was….
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/kentucky-derby-2022-results
(Scroll down to the video.)
Happy Mother’s Day to all … uh … “birthing people”!
Doing my spouse’s current favorite food for dinner. Deep Dish “Chicago Style” mushroom and sausage pizza.
Blessed Mother’s Day Neo.
And to all you other Mothers.
Even before I read the story, it really wasn’t all that difficult to tell who each of the pictures were, it being Mother’s Day and all. The fashion styles and especially the technological improvements in photography made it easy.
Pretty ladies all.
Mother to be, mother who is, and to mothers ever after… The hardest job you will ever love. Happy Mother’s Day
Among the many contradictions on this day are the advocates for unrestricted abortion. I wonder what they say to their Mothers today–if they acknowledge them at all.
I have much to be thankful for on this special day, but tinged with lingering sorrow. I have a wife who devoted her life to family. She nurtured two daughters, who are now productive professionals and who, with her as a role model, exerted exceptional effort to being good mothers in their own right.
On the other hand, I lost my own mother before here 46th birthday. She was all that one could ask. Loving mother, firm disciplinarian; and as I matured valued friend.
I believer that Mother exemplified the woman of the day. Before her children came, she worked in a semi-professional capacity–it was the depression. Once we arrived, family was her priority. She held us together during the extraordinarily difficult years when Dad was away for World War 2. Her life had to be very hard, but it never impacted our sense of well being. I never heard a complaint, either then, or in later years when she was racked by increasingly debilitating illness and pain.
I so wish that she had had the chance to know her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She could be proud of her legacy.
My own wife is justifiably proud of her legacy of daughters and grandchildren. An exceptional student, and accomplished in many ways, she could have pursued a profession. She made a career of what is now not so fashionable. She devoted her life to her family; and nurtured them through my long absences at sea. During those many months, she dealt with whatever issue or crisis that life invariably presents. She picked up and moved at the whim of the USN, and established a warm and secure home environment wherever we set down. Our daughters reward my wife regularly by reminding her that she was the role model for providing a loving and nurturing environment.
I really don’t know when Motherhood became a part time job on a large scale. Sadly, it has always been a necessity for some. For others, particularly in later years, a choice. Many of the latter expend great effort to fulfill both roles. Others opt out of motherhood altogether for their own reasons. Ok. But, I do not understand women who spurn motherhood to the point of disrespecting the institution. There is some sort of disconnect that is incomprehensible and disgusting. They profess, publicly at least, that their own lives are more fulfilling and, in some cases, that society would benefit if more women supported their position. Presumably, their selfishness did not apply to their own mothers..
In every known language, the term “Mother” has engendered a special reverence throughout the ages. If this erodes, the human race will suffer.
Geoffrey Britain:
I’ve never seen anything like that acrobatic move you pointed out, either.
I’ve never been a big acrobatics fan, though. Kind of creeps me out.
Happy belated Mother’s day to you, Neo.
I was only 30 min late to send wishes for my daughter, mother of first grandson (who had exchanged greetings with her mother earlier.)
We share 50% of our DNA with each parent and, on AVERAGE, 50% with each sibling….but we can be genetically closer to a sibling than to a parent because of ‘recombination’ during meiosis. The reason is that it’s a little easier for the chromosomes to split at some places than at other places.
I wonder if, say, we had never met our mother, could we make a good guess as to who she is if we were all introduced in a crowded room (say one kid and 20 women, one of whom is the mother). Is there some animal sensing going on?…as in penguins? How about our fathers?
What has the highest correlation coefficient?: the longevity (life span) of the children vs the longevity of the mother? Or, the longevity of the children vs the father?
I think the mother because we inherit her mitochondrial DNA. The father’s
mitochondrial DNA is not passed on, because the gamete only has nuclear DNA, not cytoplasmic.
Note: in IVF, we can avoid passing the mother’s mitochondrial DNA to her kids by using only the nucleus of her egg and not the whole egg. They do this if there is a known mitochondrial disease. They simply pipette the nucleus out of the cytoplasm and toss the cytoplasm.
All women are mosaics, ie, they have two varieties of genomes in each cell. To understand, look up the Barr Body. This allows some cells to be female and some to be male. Very rare in some chromosomal situations.