Thursday, March 3, 2016

On Graduations, Mom, and a Throw-Back Thursday too

A year ago, I was in the middle of planning a funeral.

We drove 1000 miles, through a blizzard, to get there.

I worried about whether Mom's brother and sister would get along with each other for the day.

I sat up and drank wine with Dad pretty much every night I was in Fargo.  Oh, who am I kidding? 

It was every night.


I find myself thinking about it as I've started slipping up again and talking to the kids about "Grandma and Grandpa, uh, I mean Grandpa."

Like when ordering a diploma for Connor.  Mom would have loved to see him graduate.






That's Mom & Dad, and I assume Mom had just gotten her master's degree.  In Entomology.

If I'm right, that would be the house where we lived when I was born.  Not that I remember it at all, but I've been told it was tiny.

Education was hugely important to Mom, and she was who I always talked to when I was trying to sort things out with this whole homeschooling gig.

Mom would have been a great homeschooling mama.  It's something I've thought often.  But especially as I was ordering a diploma for Connor.

Does it sound like this whole diploma thing is freaking me out a wee bit?

That would be because it is.

Anyway, Mom was the one going into the school library and arguing that I had been reading for two years, had already read the entire Little House series more than once, and I really should be allowed to check books out from the library that actually had more than two words to the page.

And she was in there trying to get them to let me check out biographies a couple years later.  She lost that battle, though, so she started taking me to the public library downtown.  And there she was able to get them to let me check out any book I wanted.

We'd do read-alouds over the summer.  We'd hit all kinds of historical sites when we went on family vacations, along with zoos and a whole lot of the great outdoors.

She found someone to teach me to crochet after Grandpa (Dad's dad) died.  He had taken up crocheting after a heart attack and had started teaching me.  She proceeded to find someone to teach me to tat. 


Education was a big deal.

That's her getting her Bachelor's Degree in Biology from Gustavus.   I assume.

It can't be a high school graduation photo.

Love Grandma's hat and gloves.



1 comment:

BARBIE said...

What precious memories. Thank you for sharing.