A Root Beer Float and a Box of Crayons.

Today would have been my mom’s 87th birthday.  She posed for this photograph when she was six years old.

When I think of her, I remember things like the nights she stayed up making costumes, especially the long, white princess dress with violets on it.   I remember the times we rode the bus into town (my mom didn’t drive then) to have root beer floats at the Woolworths lunch counter.

As a child, I wanted to be just like my mom. Once, she made us look-alike dresses – orange bodices with blue and orange print skirts. I was thrilled. My father took a picture of us standing in the front yard. That was a good day.

My mom was my playmate. When I was bored, she played “Go Fish” with me.   Later, she taught me to play Scrabble. We both loved crayons and when I was little we often colored together. She told me the story of how, when she was a child in Mississippi, a mean girl named Eunice Crum broke all of my mom’s crayons. My mom’s family didn’t have much money and my grandmother had actually wrapped old crayons with new paper for my mom to take to school.   After hearing this story, I would occasionally give my mom a new box of Crayola crayons for Christmas. Even when she was 80, deep into the throes of dementia, she would still sit and color with me. By that time, we both scoffed at staying within the lines.

My mom was my hero. At age fourteen, she had a heart attack as a result of rheumatic fever. Bedridden for many months, she coped by becoming an avid reader, something she would continue her entire life. In 1959, her mother died. While my father stayed home with my brother and I, she bravely faced riding a Greyhound bus alone from Tucson to Memphis.. Later in life she took on many military moves, divorce, and breast cancer, all with a determined spirit that surprised some, but not me. She gave me so much and taught me to pass it on – encouragement, kindness, and love.

Best of all, my mom was . . .well, my mom.   She comforted me when I was sick. She knew when I needed a hug. She believed in me. She cried with me and laughed with me.

So today I will honor my sweet mom, Avisteen, in a quiet way  and in a way she would approve of – with a root beer float and a new box of crayons.