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….?
Happy Mom’s Day all y’all moms… we owe ‘it all’ to you.
Ahh… for the days when girls were girls and boys were boys, eh
Happy Mothers’ Day to all mothers.
Here is mine in her heyday of the 1920s.
She lived in three centuries. Born in 1898 and died in 2001. She was considerate enough to die three weeks before 9/11 so everyone could go to her funeral.
My older daughter was born on Father’s Day. I was at sea, but my wife’s family rallied around in support. The attending physician, a family friend, had been the Anesthesiologist at her own birth.
That has little to do with Mother’s Day except that by coincidence, that daughter is now a hospital delivery nurse and will be on duty tonight. Perhaps she can help make future Mother’s Days as memorable as Father’s Day is in our family.
We lost my mother when she was just 45. She had a rough row. Newly married and starting her family during the depression followed by my Dad’s absence for WWII, and years of increasingly debilitating medical struggles. I wish she could have known her granddaughters, and they her. It is such great fun watching grandmothers spoil grandchildren. “Who me?”, they say.
My mother pierced my sister’s ears (age unknown) and I pierced my daughter’s before she was one.
As for pictures, you’d have to talk with my daughter, keeper of the family’s historical stuff. I know she has some of my grandmother as a teen just after coming from Nebraska to KC on a buckboard. I, however, have nothing. Which is the way it should be, seeing as how I’m very bad at keeping stuff.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers at Neo’s place.
My mother wand two grandmothers were all wonderful mothers and had a great influence on my life.
My wife is also a terrific mother. We spat the day lounging in our backyard enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and were taken out to her favorite restaurant by our daughter. Life is good. Mothers are special.
A sweet sharing. Thanks