My Mom

Today is the 88th anniversary of my mom's birth. June 3, 1920. For over fifty years she was married to my father. She was a minister's wife. She gave birth to six children. She buried two of her children and two of her grandchildren before she herself passed away. For years I watched her represent our family gracefully in public. She always looked very nice and was very much a lady. At home she was in charge. Because there was only five years age difference separating the oldest and the youngest children, she had her hands full. My mother had a rather rough start in life. She was one of four children born to Carl and Florence Iverson in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the twenties. Her father died suddenly when she was only six years old. Her mother remarried the next year and there were several more children born into the family. My mother's step-father, Mr. Shaeffer, was an unkind man. Mother and her siblings were not allowed to eat until Mr. Shaeffer and his children had eaten. The situation became intolerable until Auntie (Carl's sister) stepped in and took the four children to live with her and Uncle Ed. My mother told me that one day when she was about eight years old she and her siblings were put on a city bus and sent across town to Auntie's house. Mom never lived with her mother again. I remember asking mom if this was sad for her. She just remarked that this is the way things were done and you just accept it. Living with Auntie and Uncle Ed offered stability and the opportunity for a good education. Even though the 1930's brought the Great Depression, tuition money was allocated for my mother and her sister to attend Minnehaha Academy, a very fine private school in south Minneapolis. My mother wanted to go to college but the money was not there for this. She did go to secretarial school and then went to work for Sears Roebuck. She worked there until she married my dad. When I look at older pictures of my mother I see a beautiful young woman who loved fashion. She always dressed nicely and loved to wear hats. Her hair was always perfectly groomed. She loved poetry and like to write. Her penmanship was impeccable. She kept scrapbooks and took much of her material from the Minneapolis Star society pages. She sent away for studio pictures of movie stars and collected articles about Shirley Temple and the Dionne quintuplets. In later years she started to paint. She loved the arts. I have always thought that my mother had a very dreamy look on her face in every picture I've seen of her. Here's the thing. I have always wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't married young and had so many children and a rather restricted lifestyle. I know she loved us but..... I wish she could have danced at a fancy ball. I wish she would have published her poems. I wish she was the one people were reading about in the society pages. I know she chose her path but I still wonder. Again, I know she loved us but was she dreaming she was someplace else? Or were the dreams helping her cope with the reality? ..... Mother has been gone for nearly fifteen years now. But here is the legacy she left me. She made sure my sister and I went to college. It was never an option not to. She insisted that we be educationally equivalent to our husbands. Never inferior in any way. I am an artist. I got that from my mother. And I know she is proud of all her grandchildren. I think my sister and I became all the things she wished she could be. I hope I haven't disappointed her. Thank you Mom. Love, Jeannie