Some Things About My Mother

Alison over at Ask A Manager wrote a fun post today with some fun tidbits about her mother, and I thought I’d follow suit by sharing some favorite memories I have with my mother:

We had fun watching TV shows together. In particular, I remember watching Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and Rescue: 911 (ironically, she later became an EMT), and America’s Funniest Home Videos .

She bought me a box set of the “Anne of Green Gables” books for Christmas one year and it remains one of my favorite Christmas gifts ever. I read and re-read those books until they fell apart.

She wrote in my baby book that she was glad I was born in the morning so she wouldn’t miss Dallas.

One time she made a casserole she called “Souper Rice.” It was basically condensed soup and white rice mixed together. Looking back, it was probably one of those “it’s the end of the month and we won’t have money to go grocery shopping until next week” meals, but at the time I just thought she wanted to torture me. My brother and I waited until she’d left the room, and then we use our spoons to launch bits of the casserole to the ceiling — and the bits stuck there like glue. Mom was none the wiser until the day we moved out of that house and she noticed a gritty white substance all over the kitchen ceiling. She made my brother and I help scrape it off.

Occasionally, we would take road trips from North Dakota to Wyoming to visit her older sister. During one of the trips in the springtime, just after we crossed the Wyoming border, she suddenly yelled out, “Rushing water! Rushing water!” We thought she was saying she needed to use the bathroom, but it turned out she was just excited that the river next to the road wasn’t covered in ice. We kids spent the rest of the trip yelling, “Rushing water!” at random intervals, to her chagrin.

She made me the coolest wedding shoes ever out of a cheap pair of plain white canvas tennis shoes from Wal-Mart, some lace appliques, and seed pearls:

When my daughter was a toddler, her daycare center asked parents to make and bring in a Valentine’s Day box. Since I’m hopeless with crafty stuff, I asked my mom if she could make one for her. “Just a shoebox with some paper hearts or something will be fine,” I said. Instead, my mom made this:

My mom was present for the births of my oldest two children, and I’ve always been thankful she was there to share in those special moments with me. (She was one heck of a labor coach, too!)

What is your favorite memory of your mother? Share in the comments!