Monday Mumblings: On My Mother’s 91st birthday

Kamál (Perfection), 18 ‘Alá (Loftiness), 168 BE – Monday, March 19, 2012 about 3:30 PM Pacific Time

Today my mother is 91 years old. Mom was born on a farm in Oklahoma in 1921. Over the years, Mom told us some thing about her life as a child and a young woman. I have thought about the information she gave my sibling and me before the Alzheimer’s began to steal her memory.

When my mother was born, the only person in the nearest town to have a car was the doctor. After the doctor delivered my mother, he told my grandparent that because Mom was so small she wouldn’t live. She lived.

The doctor didn’t weigh Mom when she was born. When my grandparents took her into town some weeks after her birth, the doctor weighed her and she weight only about 3 lbs.

As a child, Mom went to a one-room schoolhouse. She eventually graduated from high school.

Mom met and married my father. I’m not sure where they met because I didn’t ask her and now I wish I had ask. Anyway, my dad was in the Army Air Core during World War II and stationed in Las Vegas at the air force base. During that time, Mom worked as a maid at what is now University Medical Center. After the war, Mom and Dad moved back to Blackwell, Oklahoma, where I was born.

Mom later moved back to Las Vegas, and in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s she worked at the Show Boat Hotel Casino on Boulder Highway.