Happy Birthday Mom - (A little late.)

I had the best of intentions: To post a story about each of my siblings on their birthday. As Mom's birthday approached, I realized that I need to write a story about her, too. But Mom's Birthday is the same day as Michelle and Charity's Birthday and to be honest, I got a little depressed thinking about it and I put off writing anything for several weeks. But now it's April and the sun is out and I've made it through both Michelle's Birthday and the anniversary of her passing and I must get back in the saddle, so here goes...

I can’t iron a shirt without thinking about her.

First the collar, then the yoke, then the sleeves, then the front left. Rotate the shirt on the ironing board until you finish on the front right.

“You’re going to learn to iron a shirt! You’re going to learn to take care of yourself! Don’t you EVER make your wife iron your shirts!” She gave me this lecture, one morning, when she had become particularly frustrated with the fact that she had married a man who could barely dress himself, let alone do laundry. You never knew what would trigger these episodes of activism, but Dad’s morning refrain of “Gail!Where are my socks!” never helped matters.

Mom was a closet feminist. She never marched for equal rights, but she quietly worked, to instill in her boys, a respect for Women. It was not the first time Mom gave me the don’t-you-ever-treat-a-woman-like-that speech and it would not be the last.

By my calculations, Mom was just seventeen when Douglas Paul entered the world, and she was thirty-three by the time Howard Everett was born sixteen years later. She had ten Pregnancies in sixteen years.

You do a lot of living between Seventeen and Thirty-three. Mom told me later in life that by the time she had me, at the age of twenty-six, she had learned to relax. That’s why I turned out so good. She did all her practicing on you older kids.

I have many stories to share about our remarkable mother, but you have only limited time to read so I will save, for later, the descriptions of how she kept order in the VW micro bus and why the Blue Goose had a round dent on the front bumper.