Thursday Thirteen #865

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 80 years old today. Here are 13 things about her.

My mother as a young girl.

1. She was madly, fiercely, and desperately in love with my father.

2. By the numbers: She had her first child when she was 18 (that would be me) and her second (my brother) when she was 21. Mom was 38 years old when I married. She retired in her late 40s (I can't remember exactly how old she was), and she passed away at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer. I was 37 when she died and my brother was 34.

My mother bringing home my brother.

3. Mom could sew well and up until I was old enough to pitch a fit and ask for store-bought clothing, she made most of my clothes.

4. She followed my father to live on a farm that was adjacent to the property on which her father grew up. She diligently canned green beans, helped kill and pluck feathers from chickens, and kept a fire burning for heat, all while working a 40-hour week job that was a 45-minute drive away from home and taking care of her husband and two children.

5. Mom had a button box that was full of glittery things that I liked to play with. It wasn't a box, actually. It was a metal fruitcake tin. But it certainly had a lot of buttons in it. I wonder what happened to it.

6. She could be very creative with arts and crafts. She painted small houses to use for Christmas decor and made mushrooms out of some kind of plaster that she painted up nice.

7.  She was a great cook, although not necessarily with breakfast. (I think that was because, like me, she just wasn't an early morning person.) I remember Dad on Sundays (when Mom wanted to sleep in) would start yelling, "Hungry!" and then he'd get us to join in until we were all shouting, "Hungry" one right after the other. She would stomp into the kitchen muttering and start throwing stuff onto the skillet. She liked to try new things to cook, including a mud duck that tasted like . . . mud. She made a pumpkin pie once that we called pumpkin pudding because it did not set up properly. But most of her meals were delicious.

8. She was always well-dressed and her hair perfectly coiffed. She wore her hair the same way all of her life.

9. She was pretty in a traditional way, though she had freckles and she disliked those immensely. My paternal grandfather used to call her "Liz" because he said she reminded him of Elizabeth Taylor.

Does she look like Liz
Taylor?

10. She was a wonderful grandmother to her grandson before she passed away.

11. She was not afraid of mice. Once during a party, a mouse strode out into the kitchen and Mom took off her shoe, whapped the mouse dead, and then scooped it up with some paper and tossed it outside.

12. She had a decent singing voice but never really got the hang of playing an instrument. She could accompany herself a bit on the organ, though.

This is the way I remember her.

13. She was loyal to her friends and family.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 865th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.