mother's day

Yeah, I know, a picture of a picture and some bad glare. I suppose you have guessed this is a picture of my mom. Over on Facebook, people are changing their profile pictures to pictures of their moms. I'm not. I love my mom. I'm still not going to change the profile.

This seemed a more appropriate venue to deal with Mom, and Mother's day. This is how Mom looked as a young woman, in her prime. Edith May Hess Hursh. She was a great mom. Not a perfect mom, you understand, but I respect her for the mom that she was. She loved kids, and we got to do lots of things growing up that not everyone does. She was a cub scout leader, and a girl scout leader as well.

I was lucky enough to be able to grow up and have the opportunity to spend time with her as an adult, and know her as one adult to another. Not everyone gets to that place with their parents. I appreciate that I made it, and could see her as a human being, flawed and doing her best and not just the Mom-must-be-always-right-and-powerful being.

She did some pretty amazing things. In a time when women were just thinking about protesting and burning their bras, etc, Mom was busy getting her degree in Physics. In most of her classes, she was the only female. When her brothers joined the service(s) during the Korean conflict, so did she. When she worked for Shell Oil Company, she was the only woman working for the company who was not a secretary. She paved the way for a lot of women to work alongside men as equals by doing it, which proved it could be done. And yeah, she was very smart. It was - and sometimes still is - daunting to have to follow in those footsteps. Which is just the way she wanted it.

She's been gone a while now, close to 20 years. Of course, I still miss her. I wish she had been around to meet her grandchildren, Raine and Shelbi. I know they would have given her joy. Then I glimpse a little bit of her in some stubborn moment of proving herself that Raine will have, and I think, well, maybe she's here, lending a hand after all.