My Mom.

My Mom.
I loved her so much. Still do. To me she was the best person in the world. She was loving and caring and brave. She read Aesop's Fables to me as I sat on her lap as a child. She taught me the names of different dinosaurs when I was about 4.
She told me stories about growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y. - about watching zeppelins (airships, dirigibles, blimps) from the rooftop and playing hide and seek in a huge Chinese cemetery.
She told me about people she knew: some Italians (I remember a man named Pasquale, nick-named Patsy), some Jewish people and some Germans who ran a speakeasy.
My mom grew up with all of this diversity. She said she saw the Statue of Liberty as much as we see the Battleship USS North Carolina. And probably gave it as much thought.
She told me her last memory of leaving New York was the lit up skyline at night as her family drove over (I guess) the Brooklyn bridge, moving to North Carolina. I still have a View Master reel, that I got as a kid, that, according to my mom, looks just like her memory of that. All they could take with them, as far as furniture, was a dinette set, strapped to the top of the car. My sister still has that table.

That my mom and dad ever met is amazing to me.

Aug. 19, 2002
My mom loved waltzes. I heard the "Blue Danube" on the radio, today. It made me think of her.