Sunday, May 14, 2006

"M" is for the many things she gave me . . .

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. I'm blessed to still have my mother around. My mother, Jean Graves, grew up in a poor sharecropper's family during the Depression era. Her mother died when she was eighteen. She was one of thirteen children, the first of her family to graduate from high school.

She married at eighteen and moved to Birmingham with my dad. Later they went to North Carolina while my father was in the Army during the Korean war. Every step she took was a new and daunting experience for a country girl from Alabama. But she persevered, expanding her world beyond the cotton fields of her Blount County childhood.

She taught my brother and sister and me about strength, honor, hope and endurance. She has been my cheerleader, my support and my dearest friend for over forty years. I hope I have many more years with her in my life.

And now I have to stop before I get all weepy.

2 comments:

Gina Black said...

Well, you got me all weepy. :sniff: Happy Mother's Day to your Mom. :)

Jennifer McKenzie said...

What a fabulous tribute. Isn't it amazing the stuff our Mom's went through? My mom supported my Dad through, not one degree but two. She taught school forever and then got to stay home with the kids. It must have been so tough to have been the sole breadwinner for so many years and then been a stay at home Mom in the seventies. It was still "not a job" back then.
Your mom sounds like stuff that books are made of. I'm lucky to still have mine as well.