Favorite Childhood Memory #5 (Counting down... As it were)

My mother was a single mom for a lot of my childhood.  I think she is an amazing woman and very very strong for having done life the way that she did.  Married at 18, me born ten months and ten days later, she did what she did the best way she knew how.  I still shudder at the thought of being married at 18 - Cripe!  Some days being married at 42 is tough!

As a single mom, and a working mother at that, she did what she could to make things fun with frugality always at the root.  Some of the most wonderful times I can remember of her were the nights she didn't have to work late and we could, all us girls (I had just a younger sister at the time), shop for our dinner that night.  The most special of treats would be Weiner Wraps, hot dogs, and those cookies you got out of the roll...  Mom would let us help, which for a harried and hurried mother of two was so very hard to do (I know this because letting my little ones help was often more work than I could stand...).  We would get the kitchen chairs up to the counter and mom would walk us through wrapping our hot dogs in the pastries and laying them out on the cookie sheets.  Then we would wait as mom cut the roll of cookie dough into slices so each of us could take turns placing them on another sheet.

I loved those nights.  They were nights Mom called "Girls nights" and I remember sitting across the tiny kitchen table from her thinking how amazing she was.  I wanted to grow up to be just like her, and I was going to dye my hair red so that we could match.

I love thinking back to those Saturday afternoons when Mom would crank up the stereo console unit with one of her records and mop the floors and clean house like no body's business!  I remember sliding across the basement linoleum floor in my socks after she mopped, giggling and dancing until I was breathless!  Mom would sing to herself from the records as she worked and I loved to imitate her by tying my own kerchief around my hair, just like her...

My mom was and still is in many ways my biggest inspiration.  She is a strong woman with strong opinions and fierce love for her kids.  I love that about her.  I have taken much from her and I call them strengths.  My mom seldom reads my blog anymore...  There are parts of me that are hard for her to read about.  I understand that...  But I hope that if I do nothing else in this lifetime, I truly convey to her how much I really love and admire her.  She taught me to be exactly who I am and I love her for it!