My mom was from South Louisiana and always the lady. She was one of the kindest women I have ever known. She hated to make a scene, was always concerned that her daughters behave in a fashion that wouldn’t draw attention to them in a negative way. (Didn’t succeed in that one 
) Despite all her “properness” she had these kind of quirky things she did that still bring a grin to my face when I think of them. I wondered what kind of quirks the women in VN’s mothers might have had. Here is a few of my mom’s off the top of my head.
1. She never went without polish on her toenails. It was pink the day she died. I saw them peeking out from the hospital sheet.
2. She wrapped toilet tissue around her hair ever night and put a hair net over it to sleep in. I still have the net stored in a suitcase with the tissue inside. I guess it is one of my idosyncracies.
3. She called panties “Step-ins” I read a book by Jill McCorkle once. She used the word step-ins. It is the ONLY other time I have seen the word used.
4. She had this hideous ceramic conch shell ashtray that she kept out for smokers. She didn’t smoke. I have it stored with the hairnet.
5. She loved chjocolate covered cherries, chamber music and Hank Williams. When I saw the display of the cherries the first Christmas after she died, I left the store in tears, though I smile when I see them now.
Great parenting on your mother's part
moral support is always financial support has to stop at some point in their life. I wish I had stopped sooner. I wished had made accountable sooner. But allas now has it right for himself
Great memories for you. Bless you today!
Thanks Track. How about you? Any funny memories of someone special? And BTW I meant to right chocolate…not chjocolate
You can’t get chocolate wrong even if you want too!
My grandmother worn white go-go boots, she was before her time!
I love it!
What great memories! You brought back one of my own I’d suppressed. My mom was very conservative, and would never use any color other than a neutral tone on fingers and toes. Under hospice care, some spunky, young volunteer painted her toes bright green. One of my husband’s and my last loving acts was to lovingly remove the polish as she would have been mortified to pass with bright green toes. I don’t think I just imagined it when I felt how grateful she was as we gave her her final pedicure.
What a sweet thoughtful act on the part of your husband. That would be a twofold memory. I am sure that she knew what he did. I do believe that people, even those in a coma sense the presence of their loved ones. Moreover, your husband gave you a sweet, loving memory in the midst of the pain of her loss. She must have been very special for him to have done that for her.
My mom ALWAYS baked 100 dozen (yes, that’s right) Christmas cookies each December. Every conceivable kind was stored in labeled tins in the freezer — meringue, russian tea cake, mincemeat-filled, peppermint twists, decorated cut-outs, spritz. The pans of anise candy she made were legendary. It was wondrous. I realized when I got married that I could never match Mom, but it took me many more years before realizing that I did not have to meet the high standard she set for Cmas cookie baking! My children will have to survive on those stories instead of on my example.
Oh my word! 100 dozen. She must have been in the kitchen for days! I thought I was amazing when I baked three dozen! Read your profile too. You don’t have time to bake with all the amazing things you are doing. My hat is off to you!
Three dozen is PERFECT, as long as they are your favorites! (That’s three dozen more than I managed to make this year…)
You are so kind with your words. While I feel very ordinary, I love looking for the extra-ordinary in each person. Your profile overflows with that “extra.” Keep it up!
Wow! Lots of memories on this comment chain. Mom also used to make dozens of cookies and put them in carefully labeled tupperware, in the freezer, for parties and presents. I loved sneaking out one or two, here or there, and eating them hard as rocks. (We didn’t have microwaves back then.) Never occurred to me until just now that she might have counted them and known some were missing! Oh well, if so, she must have forgiven me many times over!
I wonder how many times we thought we’d pulled the wool over their eyes when really she was probably laughing in the other room. No microwaves. I’d forgotten that! How did I live so long and still feel like the whole thing happened just yesterday! At the end of the day, my mother was the very first and one of an extremely small number to love me without condition. I am so very grateful to have had her in my life, especially as I reflect on being a mother again, a couple of decades later than most. My granddaughter, who is now my daughter will never know my wonderful mother. I hope that as her Momo/Adoptive Mom, I will be able to give her some memories like that to make her smile when she’s 50+.
My mother was cheap, cheap, cheap. We were definitely lower middle class, but we were NOT that poor growing up, but she sure loved to pinch pennies until they screamed.
If she made a pot of tea……..you drank it til it was gone. I dont care how old it got, I don’t care waht it tasted like, you didn’t pour it out. She wouldnt make a new pot til that pot was gone.
Dang, some of that tea put hair on my chest.
To this day, if tea is more than a couple of hours old…………I throw it out so fast. I cannot ABIDE old tea.
Oh poor thing…..I hate old tea too, and am terribly wasteful with it I must confess.
My mom was cheap about some things, but not generally about food, perhaps due in part to the fact that my dad grew up on a farm–very poor–and insisted on having meat with every meal. He said he would never eat just vegetables again. Funny thing was, my mom didn’t really know country cooking. I grew up on gumbo and the like. I can’t recall ever eating a homemade biscuit until my first marriage. (My mother-in-law made a mean biscuit.) I probably should have stuck with the gumbo. It would have been safer for my waist. hehe Oh…..but my mom would save old rice and make rice pudding out of it. It was yummy. I wonder if I could even remember how to make it.