My mother

Yesterday, I completed reading my mother’s life history (it inspires me to start working on my own) and enjoyed reading it sooo much. It gave me new insight on my grandparents and how hard it was for them to raise their family. It also helped me to envision my mother as a little girl and young woman. I’m so thankful for her writing it. She has had many hardships, trials and challenges but she is a strong woman and came thro’ them with flying colors. She has been a widow for 39 years, and finished raising her three youngest children alone. Two of her six children have already passed on before her. That has to be one of the hardest trials there is. She started at BYU when she was just 17 years old. Her first teaching job was in Mexico and she taught children as old or older than she was. Her oldest brother died when he was 13 and she 12. I remember her telling me that it was quite traumatic to suddenly be the oldest child. (Since I have always been the oldest child I hadn’t tho’t that much about it. But as the oldest child one is expected to be responsible, set a good example and help out with the other children among other things.) Mama told of going to school and collecting her brother’s things and cleaning out his locker because she knew it would be so hard for her parents to do. So she started that roll almost immediately. And she has fulfilled that roll very well. I love her very much and really appreciate the many things she has taught me from being compassionate as well as responsible, to sewing and cooking. I could cook from the time I can remember and I started sewing when I was nine. I made most of my own clothes from age 12 on up. Mama taught 4-H so my sister, (who was only 8 at the time) and I could learn how to sew. She loves playing games (as her mother before her did) and has passed that love on to me.

This is what I wrote in a card for her

Altho' it is passed your birthday I want you to know that I'm thankful that you are my mother and that you are still here
with us. I'm thankful for all of the many things you taught me and the example you are for me. I just got thro'
reading your history today. I'm thankful that you wrote it for us, your posterity. It put a few things in a different light
than I imagined them. I'm glad you included your early life. I got a different picture of Grandpa, especially. He never seemed to have
very much to say from what I remember about him. I'm glad to know that he did have a testimony and that the Church and the gospel
meant much to him. I also remember your telling me as I was growing up that I needed to get a college degree and
to be married in the temple. Now I know where you got it from. It took a while but I did get the degree (altho'
it is only an associate degree) and I'm very grateful that I had it when K could no longer teach. I'm
not sure what we would have done had I not had it. I could have worked full time at minimum wage and we still wouldn't have
made it. With my degree, I was able to work only three days a week and that is all I needed to work with the earning power I had.
I'm thankful that my children and grandchildren got to know you as well. You have been such an influence on them.

I love you very much and am so thankful that I was sent to your home as your oldest child.