Memories of Mom

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My mom passed away almost two years ago now. I think back to all that she tried to teach me and my sisters. Of course, we were typical kids who didn’t want to listen to their mother and thought she couldn’t possible understand us.

Now that I am older, I realize, my mom probably understood a lot more of the world than I did. She certainly had more challenges in life than me, and I have come to respect that.

Throughout my life, she told me and my sisters to be “survivors.” We needed to work hard to get what we wanted. We needed to carry ourselves with respect for people to respect us in return. She wanted us to be a “fancy,” “better class” than she was.

She grew up hard of hearing in both ears, but where she lived they didn’t test for it or care to notice. So, they treated her like she was mentally challenged. They even told her parents that she was “too stupid to finish school” so she couldn’t go past the 5th grade. Somewhere after that, some other kid in town blamed my mother for some shoplifting that he did. My mom was then sent to some detention home where she briefly mentioned being molested.

As she got older, she was married off to some man who moved her to Puerto Rico. My mom, who now had some basic hearing aids, discovered that this husband of hers was cheating on her. So she did what I would totally expect my mom to do. She followed him and confronted him. In return, he beat her and cheated more. I try to imagine being in a foreign country where you don’t always understand the language and having a hard time hearing on top of that. Then, add in the additional challenges of being abused and neglected with no family around…how she managed, I won’t ever really know.

Somehow she got out of that marriage and met my dad  though (which will make its own post on day). These are just a few of the main things she endured though, and I wish that I would have asked her more.

Now, I look at this silver pot of hers and think of her and her struggles. The pot has mystery to it as no one in the family seems to know where it came from. Was it in her family? Was it from a garage sale? Or was it some gift? I suppose I may never know its complete story, just as I may never know all of my mother’s.

When I look at this simple silver pot, I think of her lessons to us girls. It has basic details to it that just make it classic and beautiful, at least to me. It is not loud and tacky, screaming for attention. It’s just simple and elegant. I don’t know how old it really is, but it looks at if it has survived some time with no major signs of wear, other than tarnish. But, with a little polish, I imagine it will sparkle good as new. It has been a “survivor” through wherever it came from, my parents house, and now mine.

I looked on eBay and found some similar items, which were nothing of any great value. But, I am not looking to sell it, because its value cannot have a dollar amount. It will forever be connected to the memory of my mom and her lessons on how to survive life with your head held high.

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For the Phoneography Challenge.

Join the fun and check out the challenge by clicking on the badge, which will take you to Lens and Pens by Sally, the challenge host. But also check out Sally’s post this week, which will also have links to other bloggers’ submissions.

To check out a few other pictures of the silver pot that I took with my Nikon camera and posted on my photography blog, click here.