Opinion : Women and Mothers Past, Present and Future

Mom

Helen

Sadie

Lt. Colonel

No horsing around with this woman

This Mother's Day, I spent a lot of time reflecting. This year it feels like I've been taking a walk down memory lane of women in my family and those that aren't. All have passed away but each left an impression on my life.

Some of them I knew, and some I only heard stories of. Starting with my mom, I of course remember all of the things that she taught me. I spent many hours in the kitchen helping to can vegetables and helping to make gallons and gallons of grape juice, pints of jelly, and too many hours snapping beans and shelling peas, peeling carrots and helping to can anything else that could be canned. She taught me to sew, and put up with my endless desire to create crafts, needlepoint and etc.

Then there's my aunt Helen. She was a sister to my mom and we spent a lot of time together. The two sisters and the husbands hung out before they were all married and then later after they had families. She felt like a second mom. She always laughed, and I always got in trouble for laughing, so I had a natural affinity for this lady. We had the same sense of humor and we always made my mom say, "Not EVERYTHING is funny!" In her final few years, she had trouble seeing, so I was able to help her balance her checkbook and do some of the finer things that she needed to done. She's responsible for nagging me to attend the church that I now love.

Then there is a grandma that I never knew but was just fascinated with her name. Sadie. I loved that name, but never used it for any of my girls. I knew nothing about her other than seeing her picture on the shelf. She died at the ripe age of 53 of an apparent heart attack. And that's all I really know about her. If my research is correct, she had nine children, and of those one set of twins. I happened to be born on their birthday, so I had two great-aunts doting on me simply for joining in on the birthday fun.

Then there are the women that aren't blood relatives. But the ones who also made an impact on my life. One was and aunt-in-law. She dutifully sent the family $20 every Christmas for us to "do something special" for our family of eight. Now don't get me wrong, it was much appreciated. But I had to chuckle. I also helped her balance her checkbook toward the end of her life because she too had trouble with her sight. That's when I discovered that millionaires really do live like paupers. This woman also earned herself the title of Lt. Colonel in the Air Force and invested well throughout her life. She could have gone further in the military, but she said there were things that she would not do to become a Colonel. She had character. I talked to this women more than an hour every week. We laughed, we settled all the world's problems, and in the end, she said she wished I were her daughter, and I couldn't disagree, I would have loved that kind of mother. She was an awesome lady.

Then there's the great-grandma in-law. I've always held this woman in high esteem. She raised nine children as well, and married a Pony Express rider, who had also been cut out of a pretty great inheritance before marriage. She was mesmerized by a guy that gave it all up so that he could go chase the circus, yes a real circus. It seems to be a theme in this family. The thing I loved the most about her was the story that I heard about how she handled her drunkard husband. He would get paid from his government job, which back in the day was probably a good sum for that era. Then he would arrive in town, stop at the saloon and drink it all up. I'm guessing whoever was left standing threw him in the back of the wagon. The horse arrived home with the drunk spouse in the back.

This woman had had enough. He made his last trip home passed out in the back, after she applied the horse whip to him. Another story about this guy is that he had a bullet removed from his back by Jesse James. That seems to be collaborated by other families in the area as well. So I gave this women all the high fives for not putting up with that nonsense. In the funny corner of my mind, I'm just picturing the perfect Mother's Day gift would have been for her, an engraved horse whip. It did cure alcoholism on that tiny corner of Benton County.

All of these women are gone now. But each one is part of the way I see women now.

This weekend I spent a lot of time looking at the women that are still here that I appreciate. My own daughters and daughters-in-law to start with. These six women make me sit back and realize how fortunate I am. I got to spend a long day with one of these gals, and less time with a couple of the others this week. In conversation, she mentioned that you never think about all of the things you'll worry about when you're holding your newborn. She was just talking about a concern with her elementary-aged children. I reassured her that it doesn't stop until they get married.

But really, it never stops even after they marry. I imagine that moms worry until they die about their children.

When it comes to this generation of ladies, I can't say that there's any of them that I wouldn't bet money on.

Then there are the in-laws of my children. All of these women help to influence my grandchildren. They poured themselves into the generation raising my grandchildren but as grandparents, they are still pouring into the next generation as I am. I'm eternally grateful for all of them.

Then I look at the youngest generation of girls. Out of a dozen grandchildren, there are nine girls so far. I'm expecting some powerhouses to come out of this generation. I have a picture of one of the younger granddaughters, elbows resting on her mama, chin in her hands and she's just hanging on every word that her mommy is telling her. I see all of them listening to their moms like this. That's a good thing. Soak it all up girls. Until you hit 16, then of course, we know that you will become wiser, for a time.

Women influence a lot of things in this world. (Not that you guys aren't great too, but I'm just talking about the women today.) Women seem to put a lot of thought into so many things, and then they implement them. The world expects us to wear ALL the hats, juggle ALL the things, have a career while raising the kids. Then we run the household, make the grocery lists, plan the menus and plan for the future. As one gentlemen said, all while wearing heels.

And we do. Most of the time. We balance the checkbook, we pinch the pennies, we bargain shop, we stock the medicine cabinet and bandage knees. We rock sick babies and clean up the results of a sick baby or toddler or teen. It seems that women do it all so well. And if you do it well, no one realizes how much you really do. If you're really good, no one sees it as "work." If women really did stop all that they do for a week, the world would be in serious doo doo, literally and figuratively.

We bring babies into this world, something that men can't do. From the time that baby arrives, we've added responsibility to our shoulders that we don't mind carrying. But we're always scanning the crowd for our "babies." We always cheer for them. It doesn't matter how old they are. We're invested in these special lives.

Now I expect that the generations that are following me will continue to exceed all that I could imagine for them. I'm hoping there will be some that leave a mark on the world. And when they do, it's because of the generations above that influenced them.

Of course, the mark they leave might be because they had to use a horsewhip. If that's the case, I pray their aim is sure and it accomplishes all that it needs to.

Here's to the women in the world!