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Mom's Birthday
Almost ninety years ago on this day, which is almost a hundred years from this day, not far from where I have 12 acres of totally unused, highly taxed land, in Bastrop County, outside of Austin, TX., my mom was born.
Some stories say grandpa was a womanizer--he did disappear and is non-existent in family stories--and grandma went sick (in the head). No one much speaks of the heart. Mom grew up with an aunt and uncle.
You have all heard of or known people with names that can be either boy or girl, like Tracy, Leslie, Alex, etc. but there is no rhyme or reason or story behind the reason my mom was named Clifford.
Despite the unusual name she has done pretty well for herself. She was a country girl who went to college when not alot of country girls were going to college, in the late thirties, and received a journalism degree from the University of Texas, in Austin. She was a glider pilot instructor during WWII even though she had never flown a glider herself.
She married, had six kids--not all of whom cause her hearthache--and raised us in a fashion that I can honestly find no fault with. And she would never criticize me for ending a sentence with a preposition. She cried a little when I dropped out of college and went hitch-hiking cross country but once she realized I could survive even my most ridiculous choices she grew into an honest appreciation of my lifestyle.
All my other siblings have produced progeny and so my mom has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty grandchildren and I think four great-grandchildren. She lives alone though, ten years ago my father was in the best health of his life when cancer ravaged all of his internal organs, at the age of eighty. She doesn't want a stranger living in the house assisting her and she doesn't want to go to that assisted living facility just up the road, where many of her old friends from church are now living. They try to get her to join them but she doesn't want to and anyway suspects their intentions are partly based on the fact that they get perks for bringing in new clients.
She worries about me being alone and I worry about her being alone. She once hinted that she wouldn't mind it if I lived with her even though she has scoffed at invitations at living in another brother's converted garage. "I am not living in a damn garage."
Unfortunately, that's the way I would feel about living in Dallas, or maybe just living in Dallas with my mom.
With all of us boomers getting old these are the questions that will face us. What do we do about ourselves? What do we do about what we love?
Happy Birthday Mom.