Mother’s Day – 2020

A Mother’s Day when world wide many mothers will not be able to be with their children, at least not to hug and pinch a cheek. It is sad, but we are lucky to be healthy and will enjoy the sunny day thinking of all of the mothers and wishing them well.

I have know many a mother over the years. All sizes, shapes, all different temperaments.
Images swirling around my head, memories, from recent and many many years ago.

These three sisters were captured in a favorite photo taken in March 1953. All mothers. Marietta, my grandmother we called Nanny, and Aunt Bombi, known as the Bomb by some.

Another mother, my grandmother in her backyard garden where I imagined I was in a jungle and would play on the brick pathway all the way to the gate which gave access to the mysterious alley we were forbidden to play in.  Also in this backyard which you cannot see was my grandfather’s fig tree which he somehow miraculously kept alive over the winters in DC.  The photo was probably taken around the same time as the photo of the three sisters.

Grandmother (my mother) and grand daughter (my daughter) both mothers in the family dining room in McLean, VA December 1986. My mother is gone and the house is sold, and now my daughter is the mother of two.

Wishing all of the mothers past and present, maternal and the ones who have stepped up to fill the role, a Happy Mother’s Day to all in the year of the Corona Virus.

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

"Mom"

Born in 1921, my mom will be 90 years old later this year. Her parents were immigrants from Sicily and the legend goes that my mother was held back in kindergarten so that her English could improve. Her loving, but over protective parents were hard working and instilled in my mother a love for life,  family, and hard work, and not letting the little things bother you. My grandfather was fond of saying, “Eat it now and forget about it.” Meaning enjoy the moment before it passes. My mother and her two sisters shared the same room and even the same bed until they left home as young women to marry. They are still very close.

The above photo of my mother was taken in 1939 as she was graduating high school. Europe was in turmoil and Hitler was on the move. The US would be in the war in two short years. My mother worked in retail and office jobs after high school. She said how the office she worked in slowly became an all woman office. All the boys went to war. There are photos of my mom and her girl friends during the war in parks, in front of monuments, all smiling, arm in arm, wearing their fur coats. The war ended and all the boys came home, at least some of them.  She married one of those boys and had 5 children. That seems like another time.

But then the world continued to change. The internet, remote controls, cell phones, wireless connections, more war, more things have happened that my mother could never have imagined as that smiling young woman in 1939, just about to enter into the world with her whole life ahead of her.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there.