Happy Birthday Momma

Today was my mom's birthday, she was born in 1917.    She was beautiful and tough.  She made it through the Depression, a first marriage to an abusive spouse, birthed 5 kids before she was 20.  And then she married my dad and they had my sister, me and my younger brother.

She barely made it through 6th grade, but she was smart.  Reading was required in our house, if you said you were bored, you got a book and read or went outside. She taught me to draw, to cook, to garden and to dress well on a shoe string budget.  I shopped thrift stores way before they were cool, learned to sew and make my clothes.

She had olive skin, rich brown eyes and dark hair.  I was her polar opposite, blonde, blue eyed and fair skin.  When I was small, I watched  her put on red lipstick and Evening in Paris perfume.  She wore high heels until she was in her mid-eighties. When she died, she still looked so young that even the undertaker asked me if her birth certificate was correct.

We could fight each other like demons, but I loved her with all my heart.
I miss her every day.