Mom's Memories
I talked to mom last night. She is 85 and beginning to do that thing that older people do. Remember the past better than she remembers the here and now. My dad passed away nine years ago and she was reminiscing about when they met. Some of the stories she comes up with now I have never heard. I want to document them because preservation is important I think when it comes to word of mouth stories. Hopefully they are more true than made up.
Mom met dad at a roller skating rink. The thing about her is she pretty much tromped through her life in her Kansas farm girl way mostly oblivious to all but the next moment in her life. She never worried about where she was going to live, work, or eat.
She went to college early in life because she was intelligent and got through the lower grades quickly. Her aunt was her teacher and moved her around a lot in the class room because she talked to everyone. She would get her lessons done while everyone else was still working and then she would talk. Her aunt was stern and she said she never realized until she was grown and married that her aunt really loved her.
So off she went after college to Detroit. She had never lived outside her small community. She was working as a secretary and saw Detroit on this guy's resume and asked him if it was a good place to live. He said it was a wonderful place to live so she packed a bag and off she went. She found a YWCA and moved in. She had the name of a preacher who she went to only to ask him if the Y was in a decent part of town. He asked her if she needed help or anything else. She said no. She said she kept looking out his second story window at the street below because she had never been higher than the first floor in a building. She was about ready to leave when he told her he had a position as a secretary. She seems to have lived a kind of charmed life.
She was around twenty when she met my dad at the skating rink. He knew the owners of the rink and mom said the owner's daughter was a little older than dad but had designs on him. My dad was always a gentleman and the ladies really liked him. He had chubby cheeks and boyish charm. I guess when he met my mom that was it. She said he took her home the first night and came to the skating rink looking for her every week after that. She never talks about emotions or how she was feeling. I don't think she thought much about anything except going skating.
My dad was always heavy but light on his feet. He was a wonderful dancer and she said he could dance on skates. She loved skating with him.
Before he was stationed over seas he ended up being stationed where she was. She doesn't know if he put in to be stationed there or it just happened. Another mystery. I wish I had thought to ask him. But that is usually the way it happens.
He went off to the service and was stationed in India. He was an airplane mechanic. I asked if he wrote to her and she said she thought maybe he did. Too funny. Not a romantic bone in her body. I do know he brought her home jewelry made of sandstone from India.
Unless I find out more in sequence the rest is sketchy. He was from Oklahoma and that is where they ended up living. I always wondered what it would be like being like her and just living in the moment. I guess I take after my dad. He worried about everything. He worried enough for the both of them.
