Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate Mother's Day and Show Us Some Photos

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so it was to be expected that Randy Seaver would have that as the focus for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.  (Today's topic revisits the same one from 2018, with updated social media links.)

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Sunday, 11 May, is Mother's Day in the USA.  Let's celebrate it by showing some of our photos with our mothers.

2.  Extra credit:  What did you call your mother during her life?  What did your children call your mother?

3.  More extra credit:  Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother?  If so, please share a link if you have one.

4.  Share your photo(s) on your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to help us find your mom photos.

1.  I remember that the last time Randy challenged us to share photos of ourselves with our mothers, I could only find a couple.  Since having received the photo bonanza from my sister, however, I have many, many more!  Here's a small selection.

This is the earliest photograph I have found of myself.  The photo was developed in October 1962, and I was born in April, so the oldest I can be is 6 months.  The shadow on the skirt of my mother's dress has to be the head of my father, the person likely taking the photo.

I've estimated I'm about a year old in this photo, so it's probably from 1963.  I was told by my cousin Beth (who is in a different photo with me in the same location) that this is Disneyland.

I like the whimsical nature of this one, which had to have been taken by my father.  It's June 1964, and my mother seems to be pregnant, so the absolute latest the photo could have been taken is June 16, and then only if she gave birth to my sister Stacy later on the same day.  This photo might have been taken in La Puente; I'll ask my sister Laurie if she recognizes the house.

This photo was taken in June 1969, when my mother took all three of us kids to Florida for our cousin Gail's wedding.  From left to right we are my brother, Mark; our mother, Myra; me; and my sister, Stacy.  My brother looks miserable for some reason.  I look happy, though.

This photo was developed in June 1973 and was taken at the trailer park where my family lived in Niceville, Florida.  I believe, from left to right going into the trailer, it is me, Mark, Stacy, and our mother.  I'm pretty sure my father took this photo, but I can't imagine why.

This is me and my mother standing on the porch of my Aunt Dottie's house in Niceville.  I'm about 16, so it's roughly 1978.  We're obviously dressed up to go somewhere (I remember that dress!), but I don't remember this at all, so I don't know what the occasion is or why we were having our photo taken at my aunt's.  I'm going to be asking my brother, my sister, and my stepfather what they recall.  If my aunt were still alive, I'd ask her also.

I find it interesting that the three photos I'm pretty sure my father took are black and white.  That means he probably developed them himself at home.

2.  I called my mother Mommy her entire life.  My stepsons never met my mother, as she died young.

3.  I have written a tribute to my mother, as a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post in 2017.  I have also written about her many times for Mother's Day separately from SNGF posts.

Celebrating My Stepmother for Mother's Day

Today, May 12, is Mother's Day.  By coincidence, May 12 was also my stepmother's birthday, so I decided to write about her this year for Mother's Day.

Virginia Ann "Ginny" Daugherty (if I remember correctly, she pronounced it "dockerty") was born May 12, 1932 in Cuyahoga Falls, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.  Her parents were Clarence Elmer Daugherty and Clara Margaret Petro.

My father was her second husband; she was my father's third wife.  They were married December 4 (my father's birthday), 1980 in Niceville, Okaloosa County, Florida.  Their marriage lasted longer than my father's first two marriages combined.

She and my father lived in several different places — many cities in the Florida panhandle, Ohio, Texas — but their last residence was Mary Esther, Florida.  That's where they were living when my father passed away in 2019.

Ginny could not live by herself at that point, so after he died, my stepbrother Don took her to Texas to live with him and his wife.  She died a year and a half later, on December 18, 2020.

Ginny was a sweet, caring person who was a joy to be around.  We all miss her very much.

When Did That Happen?

It definitely took me by surprise.

I have brown hair and brown eyes.  When I was little, I was always told that I resembled my father.  Some people even told me that I looked like his mother.  No one said that I looked like my mother, who had blonde hair and blue eyes.

I also looked like my sister, who had the same brown hair and brown eyes.  And my half-sister, from the same father — same brown hair and brown eyes.

For a while I even looked like my stepsister (yup, brown hair and brown eyes), but that's a whole different story.

Growing up, the story was the same.  There was no question that I took after my father.  Tall, skinny and leggy, brown hair and brown eyes (full of it up to there, as my father often told me, even when I pointed out that meant he was also).

Now, when I was with my mother, especially as I got older, people could tell that we were related, although they often asked if we were sisters.  Considering that there was a 21-year age difference, I couldn't figure out if they thought my mother looked that much younger or if I looked that much older.  But even though they said we looked related, they didn't say we looked like each other.  Along with having blonde hair and blue eyes, my mother was short and, um, "chubby" (or zaftig, in Yiddish).  Very different from what I looked like.

And then it happened.

I had started working a regular full-time office job, which meant that I was sitting down most of the day instead of running around.  I now had a "sedentary lifestyle."  And that meant that I wasn't quite so skinny anymore.  I started putting on a little weight.

I looked in the mirror one day and was stunned.

I was looking at my mother's face.

When did that happen?

I found it interesting that when I gained weight, my face no longer looked like my father's but instead looked like my mother's.  Logically, that means I had aspects of both present to begin with, but the added weight must have emphasized those that resembled my mother more.

And to think, when my mother saw me after I had put on the weight, she complained!

She's been gone for almost 30 years now, but happy Mother's Day, Mommy.

Mother's Day 2022

For Mother's Day this year, here is my maternal line in photographs.  I have five generations.

My mother Myra with her three children:
me, my sister Stacy, and my brother Mark

My mother Myra, her mother Lily (my grandmother),
and *her* mother Sarah (my great-grandmother)

My great-great-grandmother Rose Dorothy on the left

And somewhere I have a photo of my great-great-grandmother with my great-grandmother.  I really need to find that.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Three Things about Your Mother

It's the day before Mother's Day, so of course Randy Seaver has us thinking about Mom for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) Sunday is Mother's Day in the USA, and usually a time for memories and gratitude to our special birth person.

(2) For this week's SNGF, tell us three things about your mother that are special and memorable  to you.

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

My mother was Myra Roslyn (Meckler) Sellers Preuss (1940–1995).  She was born in Brooklyn and lived in New York, Maryland, Florida, California, Australia, Florida (again), Texas, and Florida (redux).  She may even have stayed for a while in Chicago.  She married my father, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935–2019), in 1961 in Miami, Florida.  I am her oldest child, with a younger brother and sister.

1.  Like Randy's mother, my mother was also very smart.  Even though she flunked out of Florida State University her one semester there (her only passing grade was in Physical Education), I think she was going through an "I'm out of high school and on my own" party phase.  She was conversational in more than one language, she was a whiz at crossword puzzles, and she was great at bookkeeping.  She was big on learning and also was knowledgeable about history, literature, geography, sports, and many other subjects.

2.  My mother was big on family history way before it became popular.  She knew both of her grandfathers and one great-grandfather (everyone else from those generations had passed away before she was born).  She and her mother told stories about family members all the time, so I grew up knowing everyone's names, birthdays, and marriage anniversaries.  I knew who her favorite (Harvey) and least favorite cousins were.  She kept track of my father's relatives better than he did.  If it hadn't been for her, I probably would not have gotten into genealogy.

3.  My mother was a force of nature.  Serene?  Oh, no, not my mother.  She could get incredibly angry about something, but then she vented and it was done.  She told you how she felt, but she didn't hold grudges.  She could be blunt, but you didn't have to wonder about where you stood with her.  (I might have gotten that from her.)  She was also very giving and forgiving.  She took people in like stray animals and gave them a place to stay.  (I might have gotten that from her also.)  My half-sister and her mother (my father's first wife) lived with us for a while; how many women would do that?

Twelve Mothers

Motherly Career Advice

My mother on her
wedding day,
October 21, 1961

For Mother's Day I like to try to post stories about my mother, not only because I enjoy remembering them but also as part of that concept of recording our own lives while we do research on the rest of our families.  For some reason this year what popped into my head was different pieces of advice my mother gave me about work.

The earliest thing I remember is when she convinced me that I should take a touch typing class in high school.  I had been thinking about it but hadn't really decided whether it was going to be worthwhile.  She told me that it would prove beneficial to me later in life.  She didn't have computers in mind, because at the time they were still huge room-sized monstrosities used only by really big companies and the government.  I'm pretty sure what she was thinking of was being able to work as a secretary or something like that.  But it did prove to be excellent advice.  Not only did I make a lot of money in college typing papers, touch typing skills have proven to be extremely valuable now that we are in the age of computers.

Another good piece of advice was to keep all my receipts for taxes, just in case.  Mommy was a bookkeeper, and she was always annoyed when one of her clients didn't have receipts for some important expense.  So I got into the habit of keeping pretty much everything, and it has been helpful once I had a mortgage and was able to claim enough in deductions on my tax returns.  I don't know how effective that will be in the future, of course.

One thing she recommended that I didn't find useful for work purposes was joining Mensa.  She thought it would help me get jobs.  I've found over the 40 (!) years I've been a member that is not the case.  Oh, well, nobody's perfect.

One significant piece of advice she gave that I didn't follow at all was where I should work.  She really, really wanted me to work for the CIA or the United Nations.  She figured that with my language skills either one would be a great career choice.  Somehow, with my sarcastic nature, I just didn't think I would be a good fit for the CIA.  I actually did think about the UN, but what they really wanted at the time (and probably do still now) was interpreters, which is not my strength.  Interpeting requires that you be able to come up with the translation right away and keep up with the pace of a conversation.  I'm much better at translation, where I have time to think about the words.

My languages have proven useful in my genealogy work.  My mother passed away before I started doing genealogy for a living, but I think she would have appreciated what I've been able to discover about my family, on both sides.  She used to tell me I could do anything I set my mind to, so I guess that's another piece of advice I did take.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate Mother's Day - Show Us Some Photos

I anticipated that for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun the day before Mother's Day, Randy Seaver would choose that as his theme:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music) is:

(1) Sunday, 13 May is Mother's Day in the USA.  Let's celebrate it by showing some of our photos with our mother.  

(2) Extra credit:  What did you call your mother during her life?  What did your children call your mother?  

(3) More extra credit:  Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother?  If so, please share a link if you have one.

(4) Share your photo(s) on your own blog post or in a Facebook or Google+ post.  Leave a link on this blog post to help us find your Mom photos.

1.  I am surprised that I can find only two photographs of me with my mother in my collections.  I need to ask my father if he has any others.  Concidentally, the only photos with me also include my two siblings.

a.  This is my mother with her three children — me, Stacy, and Mark — obviously not long after Stacy was born, which was in June 1964.

b.  And this is on my high school graduation day, June 1, 1979 (we look very 1970's, don't we?).  Back row:  my mother, Stacy, my grandmother (my mom's mother); front row:  me, Mark.  I had forgotten that my grandmother came to my graduation.

2.  I always called my mother Mommy, although I'm sure there were a few exasperated "Mother"s at times.  Only my sister had children while my mother was alive, and I believe they called my mother Bubbie, which is Yiddish for grandmother.

3.  I wrote a short tribute to my mother last year for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

My Mother and Cars

Maybe a car my mother drove?

Don't confuse the title of this post with "My Mother the Car", which was an entertaining television series starring Jerry Van Dyke (notwithstanding what later critics had to say about it).  For Mother's Day, I wanted to share the saga of my mother's love-hate relationship with cars.  Maybe it was because she grew up in major urban centers where it was not common for everyone to have a car, but my mother and cars didn't always seem to get along.

The reason my parents met is because she was in a car that broke down.  I don't know if it was my mother's car or her best friend's.  The story is that they were going to a party and the car broke down.  My mother was fretting that they'd miss the party, but her friend said, "Don't worry, I'll call my uncle.  He can fix it."  It turns out my mother's best friend was my father's niece (so she's my first cousin).  I never heard if he fixed the car, but my parents married soon after.

When I was very young, my family lived in Southern California, where cars were a necessity.  While it was possible to get around without one, it took forever to do so.  I can't imagine my mother trying to go by bus with three small children; she didn't have the patience.  She had a horrible sense of direction, however, and got lost all the time.  The amazing thing is that my brother, who was not quite 8 years old when we left California, was often the one who gave her directions to get home again.  (And just to prove that it wasn't something about driving in Los Angeles that caused her to lose her sense of direction, she even managed to get lost in Niceville, Florida, which is about as small as it sounds.)

Another memorable car breakdown my mother experienced was on the Grapevine, the twisty, turny highway that goes through the Tehachapi Mountains and is the connection between the San Joaquin Valley and the Los Angeles area.  Apparently she and a friend (not my cousin) were driving from Los Angeles to Modesto to a party (yup, another one).  The car broke down on the Grapevine.  Rather than miss their party, my mother and her friend left the car where it was, headed to Modesto some other way, and left it to my father to retrieve the car.

Through all of this my mother had been driving automatics.  When my family moved to Australia, however, my father told her that she was going to have to learn to drive a stick, because there just weren't that many automatics in Australia, and they were extremely expensive.  So it was drive a stick, rely on public transportation, or stay at home.  That was enough to motivate my mother, but she was never great with a stick.  She definitely believed in the phrase, "If you can't find 'em, grind 'em."  (Unfortunately, I think she taught my brother to drive, and for several years he ground gears with the best of them.)

To some degree my mother recognized her limitations, and sometimes she chose not to push it.  When we were living in Florida, she had taken my siblings and me to a theme park (sorry, don't remember which one), and on the way home we experienced one of those lovely heavy Florida thunderstorms, where it's almost white-out conditions.  Rather than try to drive through the storm, my mom pulled over to the side of the highway, and we waited it out.

Perhaps the most eye-catching thing my mother did with a car was the time she hit a deer.  I don't know how common it is, but she rolled the car.  Luckily, she was fine.  My stepfather told me he drove past the rolled car on the other side of the highway and didn't realize my mother was in it.

At least she wasn't hit by lightning in a car.  That happened to her twice while she was on the phone.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Tribute to Your Mother

Well, it is the day before Mother's Day, so I should not have been surprised to see that Randy Seaver chose mothers as the theme for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you:

(1)  This is Mother's Day weekend, and I have been thinking about my mother — the family times, the hard times, the wonderful times.  

(2)  For SNGF this week, write a tribute to your mother.  It can be any length.  What do you remember about her, and what did you learn from her?

(3)  Share your tribute or memories in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or other social media.  Please leave a comment on this post if you post something elsewhere.

I learned many valuable lessons from my mother.  I learned tolerance and openmindedness, because my parents had friends of many different backgrounds — black, Hispanic, Indian, Vietnamese, gay — in a time when that was not common.  I learned forgiveness and love, because my mother welcomed my father's first wife and my half-sister into our home, and they lived with us.  I learned intellectual curiosity, because my mother always encouraged her children to read, study, and expand their minds.  I learned to appreciate language, because she played games with it and made it fun.  I learned fearlessness, because she always told me I could do and be anything I wanted.  I learned to be adventurous, because she emphasized that we should be willing to try almost anything once.  And I learned so much about my family, because she and her mother talked about relatives and let me know who they were.

There is no tombstone for my mother with numbers on either side of a dash, because she chose to be cremated.  But I don't need a tombstone to remember her.

These Are a Few of My Mother's Favorite Things

I was thinking the other day about my mother's favorite baseball team.  She was a New York Yankees fan through and through, even though she was born in Brooklyn before the Dodgers left.  The Yankees used to be my second-favorite team (after the Montreal Expos), but I don't root for them as I did when my mother was alive.  But that got me to thinking about what other favorites of hers I could recall.  So I decided to celebrate her favorites this year for Mother's Day.

I've mentioned before that my mother was a big sports fan overall.  Along with the Yankees in baseball, her favorite football team was the Oakland Raiders.  I don't remember what she thought of their move to Los Angeles, but she was probably happy when they returned to Oakland.

Even though she watched any and all sports on TV, I can't think of a favorite basketball or hockey team for her.   She might have been a Boston Celtics fan, but I'm not sure.  She had three favorite college football teams:  USC, UCLA, and Notre Dame.  She rooted for them all equally, and if any of them played against another, she rooted for a tie.  She strongly disliked Alabama, though.  Her all-time favorite sportscaster was Howard Cosell.

My mother liked almost all kinds of food, so picking out favorites there was a little more difficult.  I think Chinese was probably her favorite ethnic food, although her tastes leaned heavily toward the very Americanized versions.  Her most preferred food item was definitely lobster.  When I was younger she liked Scotch, although I can't remember a specific brand (when she worked as a bartender, she deplored customers who came in and ordered Scotch and milk), and my stepfather told me that later her favorite alcohol was tequila, though it was really too strong for her.

Mommy's absolute favorite movie was Stalag 17.  The two actors I remember her liking the most were William Holden and Hal Holbrook. I think her favorite singer was Tom Jones, who was born just a few months before she was.

Even though she never lived there, my mother loved Las Vegas.  My family used to visit there on a regular basis because my mother's parents lived there.  She enjoyed going to the casinos and the all-you-can-eat buffets.

While in Vegas, and when she gambled at all (which wasn't much), I think my mother's favorite casino game was the slot machines, coincidentally my grandmother's favorite also.  Her other preferred games were Scrabble and pinochle.

The other things I remember are kind of random bits of information.  Of all the pets we had when we children were young, my mother liked our snake the best.  Her favorite author might have been Mickey Spillane, or at least that's who she was reading when she gave birth to me.  Her favorite president was Richard Nixon, and her favorite cousin was Harvey (whom I was able to meet once).  And my stepfather pointed out to me that her favorite color was purple.

Putting together these random memories doesn't come close to giving a complete picture of my mother, but I smiled as I thought about how she enjoyed them all.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A Favorite Photo of My Mother

Because Mother's Day is tomorrow, it wasn't much of a surprise to see what Randy Seaver had in mind for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

1)  This is Mother's Day weekend, so please go through the photographs you have of your mother and share one of your favorite photographs of her.  Just one.  Oh, tell us why it's one of your favorites, and tell us something about your mother, too.

2)  Share your photograph and story in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or on social media (e.g., Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, etc.).

The problem with repeating this type of request is that if you've participated in the past, you've already shared your favorite photo!  And that's what I did last year.  So this year's photo will have to settle for being my second favorite.

This is a photograph of my parents on their wedding day, October 21, 1961.  The wedding was in Miami, and several of my mother's relatives attended.  My father's mother was there, and maybe an aunt, and that was it for his side of the family.  Very soon after the wedding my parents piled their belongings into a car and drove across the country to Whittier, California, where one of my maternal grandmother's best friends lived.  My mother always complained that it had taken them three entire days to drive across Texas.

A Favorite Photo for Mother's Day

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun this weekend was to post your favorite photo of your mother:

1)  This is Mother's Day weekend, so please go through the photographs you have of your mother and share your absolute favorite photograph of her.  Just one.  Oh, tell us why it's your favorite, and tell us something about your mother, too.

2)  Share your photograph and story in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or on social media (e.g., Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, etc.).

It wasn't very difficult for me to choose my favorite, because I'm a sucker for multigeneration photographs.

The photo is not dated.  I don't know what the occasion was for the photograph, and the three people in the photo have all passed away, so I'll probably never learn.  I can make an educated guess that it was taken in Miami, because that's where my grandparents lived, and my great-grandmother moved there after my great-grandfather died, which was May 2, 1955.  I suspect my grandfather took the photo; he took most of the photos in the family.

My mother, Myra Roslyn Meckler, is on the left.  To me she looks to be about 20 years old, which would mean it was taken around 1960, the year before she married my father.  In the middle is my grandmother, Lillyan (Gordon) Meckler, and on the right is my great-grandmother, Sarah (Brainin) Gordon.

This is a great photo for Mother's Day, because I can honor three generations of mothers on that side of my family.

My Many Mothers

Things My Mother Taught Me

Most parents teach their children; it's part of the job, after all.  But along with the things they consciously set out to teach you -- potty training, how to dress yourself, the manners you need to get along with others, responsibility, respect for others -- there are the things you learn by observing them and what they do.  Some of those lessons can be profound, while others just help make you the unique individual you are.

I learned a lot about tolerance and acceptance of others from both of my parents, but I think especially from my mother.  When I was about 5 years old, my father's ex-wife and my half-sister came to live with our family (my parents, my brother, my sister, and me).  Not exactly what most women would be willing to do!  But we all got along fine.  My mother worked a graveyard shift, so my dad's ex-wife would get us up in the mornings and ready for school, and my mother would get home in time to see us before we left.  My half-sister and I even went to the same elementary school for a while, and the administrators sometimes got the two different Mrs. Sellerses confused.  Even after they moved out to a place of their own, we visited often.

Long before multiculturalism was talked about, our family had a wide range of friends -- black, Hispanic, Indian (from India), and even gay.  We children were taught open-mindedness and acceptance, and that people are just people.  And I grew up knowing that Rock Hudson, Raymond Burr, and Montgomery Clift were gay, though I've never figured out how my mother knew.

My mother always told me I could do anything I wanted to do and be anything I wanted to be, from the time I was little.  She told me I could succeed on my own and didn't need someone to help me.  I believed her and have carved out my own unique corner of the world, first as an editor and now as a genealogist.  (When I did follow my own path as an editor, though, she couldn't understand why I didn't want to work for the CIA or the UN, and why I wasn't rushing to get married and give her a granddaughter.  So not every lesson is perfect!)

My mother loved to watch movies.  She taught me how to listen to the actors' voices and recognize them, which gives me a nice party trick today.  She explained how to watch actors who were portraying musicians and what to look for to see if they were really playing the instruments.  She also explained that it took someone who really knew what he was doing to portray a character who didn't.

My mother loved to play with words.  She taught me to do crossword puzzles, which I still enjoy.  She would flip words around, like spoonerisms, so we had chublip stamps (Blue Chip Stamps) and chotato pips (potato chips).  I still tell people to have a happy "oneth of the month" when a new month rolls around.  And she taught me an appreciation of foreign languages, which definitely influenced my choice of a major in college.

I don't think my mother met a cuisine she didn't like.  We grew up eating Chinese, Mexican, and Indian food; if Thai and Vietnamese had been available at the time, we probably would have had them also.  My mother used to call us kids the vultures -- there was never any food left on the table after a meal.

Unlike the stereotype that is prevalent even today, both of my parents enjoyed watching sports.  As soon as she walked into the house, my mother would turn on the television, often to sports.  So we watched football, baseball, basketball, golf, boxing, car racing ... if it was on television, my mother would watch it.  I find that I still tend to be a minority among most women I know because I enjoy watching sports and have a good working knowledge of most of them.

If my mother were still alive today, I like to think she'd enjoy my working as a genealogist, since she's the one who started me on that path by telling me stories about my family.  Thanks, Mommy.

Stories about My Mother

Last year I shared some of the stories my mother had told me.  She liked to talk about her family, and I heard lots of stories.  But some of the stories about her I only heard after she had passed away.

I didn't learn how my parents had met until several years after my mother had died.  My grandmother told me that one evening my mother and her best friend had gone out to party.  Before they got to their event, their car had problems and was stuck at the side of the road.  My mother was upset that they were going to miss the party, but her friend told her not to worry:  "My uncle's a mechanic, I'll call him.  He can fix it."  Her uncle is my father, and so they met.  I don't know if it was love at first sight, but they married and had three children, so it couldn't have been too bad.

Some years later I had the opportunity to meet that best friend, who is my first cousin.  (She's only seven years younger than my father, because her mother [my father's half-sister] was 21 years older than my father.)  She told me that she and my mother had been proto-Women's Libbers and promised never to marry, have kids, or settle down.  Apparently she stuck to the plan better than my mother did!  After my mother married and moved to California they mostly fell out of touch.

Another story my grandmother told me was how when my mother was about 12 years old she announced one day that she wanted to go to Midnight Mass.  My grandmother just about had a fit!  The family was Jewish, she wasn't going to mass with my mother, and she certainly wasn't going to allow my mother to go out at midnight by herself.  Needless to say, my mother didn't go to Midnight Mass that year, but she maintained a healthy interest in Catholicism during her life.  She married a Catholic (my father was raised Catholic), and I even went to Midnight Mass with my mother more than once.  (Never saw her in a synagogue, though.)

It's always interesting to hear about your close relatives from other people.  You can view their lives in a new perspective.

Stories My Mother Told Me

My mother and her mother are two of the biggest reasons I became interested in family history.  From the time I was a little girl they told stories about the family, so I grew up knowing a good amount of family history.   Over the years, as I became more interested in genealogy, I have become the de facto family historian, keeping the photographs, remembering the stories.   But because I am not married and have no children of my own (other than ones with fur or feathers), I haven't been passing that information on.  In honor of Mother's Day, I want to share some of the stories my mother told me.

Her maternal grandfather was born in Russia and was the first member of his family to immigrate to the United States.  My mother was the first granddaughter, and he loved to spoil her.  He also loved to bounce his adored granddaughters on his knees, but he had what she called "the look."  If any of the kids was misbehaving, all he had to do was give "the look", and they knew they better stop right then.  He didn't even have to say a word.

Her maternal grandmother never really learned to speak English, although she lived in this country for 59 years.  My mother would speak in English to her, and she would respond in German to my mother, and they managed to communicate that way.

My mother was living in Chicago with a friend of the family.   This was during the period of the first Mayor Daley and everything that time is famous for.  She always carried a $20 bill tucked behind her driver's license in case she was stopped.  That was just the way things worked in Chicago.

After my parents married, they had chickens for a while.  My mother hated the chickens and always called them "the cluck-cluck things", even years later.

My parents were married in Florida and drove to California, where I was born.  My mother always used to complain that it took three whole days to drive across Texas.

She got a spinal and was reading a Mickey Spillane novel when I was born.

My mother took me to Florida when I was just a tiny baby so my great-grandmother, who was still alive, could meet me.  (This one drives me crazy because there's no photograph.  My father has told me he remembers my mother taking the trip.  So how come my grandfather, who took photos of just about every other event in the family, missed the shot with four generations?)

I am a year older than my brother.  The due date given for each of us was April 1.  I was born a week afterward.  The next year, two weeks after the due date, my mother decided she was tired of waiting for my brother to come out and went dancing.  Boom!  She went into labor.

When I was a toddler, we had a standard poodle who took it upon himself to "protect" me.  If my mother got mad at me for something and started yelling, the dog would stand in front of me and not let my mother get to me.  Don't misunderstand -- my mother was not abusive or anything.  But the dog had decided I was its "puppy", and it took care of me.  Later the dog died of an epileptic fit.  (As many times as my mother told me this story, she never told me the name of the poodle.  So I asked my father, who said it was Pepe.)

While my mother was pregnant with my sister, she had to take my brother and me with her when she went to visit the doctor.  I apparently used to run up to all the little boys in the doctor's office and kiss them.

Not all the stories were accurate.  My mother always claimed she was part Irish, but I don't have a drop of Irish blood on either side of my family.  She said that she and my father had taken a motorcycle trip to Death Valley while she was pregnant with me.  My father confirmed the trip but said she was actually pregnant with my sister.  (Heaven knows who was watching me and my brother!)

When I think about these stories, I can hear my mother's voice.  It's a good way to remember her.