MOM

Sunday May 9th is Mothers Day.   I am so grateful for my mother.  She was an amazing woman!  She had so many gifts!

Raised in the Bronx, her German family did not believe in girls being educated past eighth grade.  However, she graduated from high school going at night having needed to work days to help support her family and somehow managed to enroll in Hunter College without totally alienating her family.  She was such a gifted writer that she was called on the carpet because they could not believe any student could write like that and she must have plagiarized.  She left and contented herself with helping her husband in his studies, as he received four degrees.  

The learning itch came back many decades later and she enrolled in Kean University in New Jersey.  As a Senior Citizen she left most of the other students in the dust, but just before finishing her credits she fell ill and could not continue but she was honored anyway for her great achievement.

My mom was my champion.  My Dad like most men was more distant and did not always understand me.  He was not always easy to talk to then (that changed later in life), but my mom seemed to really "get" me. She stood up for me, encouraged me, and was oh so kind.

She was a legal secretary who could type 90 words per minute on a manual typewriter letter perfect and knew three forms of shorthand and could keep up with even fast talkers like I am.  I still have piles of single-spaced typed letters she sent me at least one or more times per week giving motherly advice and showing interest in what was going on in my life.

While Rheumatoid Arthritus and the effects of that crippling disease took her in her mid seventies, meaning she knew our older son only through about two years old and never met our younger son, she had a heart for children with Bible clubs at our house and children loved being around her.

By the way, my mom lost her first two children at or just after birth.  In 1945, pregnant with my sister, the doctors said this one was a problem and pressured her heavily to have a therapeutic abortion.  She refused and was willing to die so that her child could live.  My sister lived and though she struggled with asthma, she became a celebrated doctor in New York City, receiving an award for Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention from Anna Quinlan of the New York Times and the Humanism in Medicine Award from Mt. Sinai Hospital for her incredible humane values.  Years later, when my mom was 43, I was born, a bonus baby.  If my mom had listened to the doctors not only would my sister would never have been here, but neither would I, as her ability to have children would have ended per the protocols on the abortion with an older mother.

I am so grateful for a godly, wonderful mom willing to even die so her child could live. I wish she had lived a lot longer but I will never forget her.