My parents, Virginia and Orrin, circa 1938Today would have been my mother's 91st birthday. She was born Virginia May Harris on April 30, 1918. World War I was raging and the Spanish flu epidemic, which would spread worldwide and kill more than 20 million, had just been begun. Her father was a brakeman on the city trolleys. Her mother was homemaker with a 9th grade education.
I have lots of memories of my mother, warm and not-so-warm. She was complicated and insecure, frustrated in many ways. Had she been born 50 years later, she almost certainly would have been a career woman. Instead, she was of the June Cleaver generation, expected to stay home, raise kids and keep a tidy house. That was so not her natural inclination. She was a strong person who married a strong man. That made for some interesting arguments.
She died in 2002 and I miss her. As time goes by, only the good memories remain in Technicolor. The others fade to black and white.
She was a lionness when it came to protecting her children. She was generous, emotional and very loving. She was forced to be stronger than I think she really wanted to be. My father died young, when my brother was only eight. She had no career to fall back on. But she picked up the pieces and got on with her life, finding a real passion in working with the elderly as a mobile librarian.
I'm grateful that we drew quite close in the last 15 years of her life, sharing many feelings that we never shared when I was younger. I wish she were here to help me navigate the tricky shoals of growing old.
