My Mother's Birthday

February 8th is my mother's birthday. This year she would have been 90 and hated every minute of it if she couldn't be independent.

She always reminded me of Betty Grable with black hair. I once told her that and she wasn't pleased. She never thought of Betty Grable as being at all pretty. I should be so lucky. She was born on a small farm in Southern California, between Santa Ana and Long Beach. Her mother was a school teacher and has a school named for her in that area. My mom and her two sisters were required to pitch in and work along with their dad. They delighted in telling about the time they caught their dad out in the outhouse and nailed it shut until their mother made them let him out. He in turn chased them down with tomatoes and I guess they had a free-for-all. The old farm is now the site of a Forest Lawn Cemetery.

My mother worked at Knott's Berry Farm when it was just a chicken restaurant and a berry market. One of my aunts was Mr. Knott's bookkeeper. My mom saw a good looking young man coming up the front path and ran into the office to tell my aunt, "If he's looking for a job, you'd better hire him!" He did, she did, and the rest was history! My mom and dad married in June, 1941 and when the war broke out, he was working with the FBI in Washington D.C.

After the war they relocated to Anaheim, started a business and wound up with their own concession at Knott's. My father passed away in '69 - much too soon - he was only fifty. My mother went to work the day after the funeral even though she was totally devastated. It was her way of coping. She spent the next 23 years keeping up with that business. She never dated because she said she didn't expect anyone else to live up to my dad. She absolutely idolized him.
She was one of the strongest women I have ever met. She always kept going, no matter if she was sick and had a Christmas dinner to fix or if she had to go to work because someone else was ill. She had a soft spot in her heart for the men who lived down in the missions in Los Angeles and supported a charity that helped look after them.

There was a woman that worked for her at the shop, who had a lot of family in Tijuana. My mother loaded up the car at Christmas with masa (corn flour), flour, beans, sugar and other staples and drove down to deliver the food plus jackets, coats and warm clothes to the families in need. She never spoke about stuff like that, either. She just did it. Back in the day when she grew up, if there was a need in the neighborhood, the neighbors stepped up and took care of it. That's what she did.

She found out she had cancer the first of October and was gone by October 29th. At 75, she still worked full-time, attended to all of her own affairs, and drove just as well as she ever did, which was as good as any female that ever drew a breath! And she never looked a day over 55. She was always impeccably groomed but I remember seeing her when I was young, driving a tractor, ripping out a stand of poplar trees.

We were all so blessed that she didn't "fade" away and become dependent as that would've depressed her to the core. We were given time to say our "good-byes," and whatever needed to be said, but we all believe that, not only was it her "appointed time to die," but she yearned to go home at that point. She so missed our dad - she was ready...

I miss her voice, her black-bottomed pie, her wonderful Christmas dinners and most of all, her advice. She always waited until I asked and never offered unsolicited. When my husband died, it was the first time I had ever witnessed her lose it. She told me it was because she knew what I faced. When my son-in-law died, I immediately realized what she meant.

Every day on the 8th of February, I think of this raven-haired beauty with the lilac blue eyes and realize a part of me is gone forever more.