Happy Mother's Day

To all of you who are mothers, happy Mother's Day! To all of the rest of you, you'll need to have some kids, wait for father's day, or just wait until some other holiday comes rolling around. Don't fret, the calendar is full of them.

While you are waiting, let me tell you a little about my mom, since it is Mother's Day after all.

My mom started out being a mom earlier than most moms nowadays. By the time she was 23 she had all three of us kids already.









Before she was a mom she had a much younger brother that helped her get ready for doing mom kinds of things. He once asked her (his artistic big sister) to draw him a chicken. Grandma always bought extra chicken legs because the legs were a popular part at the dinner table. So mom drew a chicken with four legs. We always laughed about that.











Mom was pretty cute back in 56!

When I was growing up Mom was always helping other kids, kids that really needed some help. Like Susie from across the street. I'll never forget hearing Susie say, "Mrs. Collier, learn me to cook." Mom helped Derek too. Derek was a kid in my class with a bad bullying problem. I think it was because he was really mad about how little his family had and how messed up his life was. I don't think his dad was around and he lacked discipline in a big way. The poor kid. He was angry, black, and poor in 1966. Mom offered to take him out of class one day so he could let off steam. She offered to take him anywhere he wanted to go. He wanted to see race cars. Back in the day there was a drag racing place in San Jose. Mom took him there. I remember once there were a handful of neighbor kids in the kitchen making paper mache puppets with mom.

Then a lot of time went by.

We all grew up and everyone moved out of the house and Dad passed away. Mom had moved far to the north. We didn't see each other very much at all. We still don't.

That's all for now. I'll finish the story later.