An Amazing Accomplishment!

Image: My Grandfather holding Mom in 1935.

Next week, my Mom, Joanne, turns 90. That means she has been a citizen of the United States for more than a third of the USA's existence! Her father, Gerhard Weber, emigrated to America in 1929 from Germany. He was an engineer who ended up at General Motors designing diesel engines for submarines used in WWII. He was also an air raid warden during the war. He arrived with his brother and nothing else. Joanne was his first child.

Mom went to Ohio State to become a nurse which is where she met my Dad. She worked as a public health nurse in Columbus and then became a stay-at-home Mom, before returning to work after her youngest started school and then worked until she was 78. She had 4 boys in six years. Our childhood was half The Sound of Music (not the music part - the outdoor activities part) and half benign neglect. Mom took us hiking and exploring all over the state of Ohio. A favorite activity was creek hiking. We would explore the creeks near our home for hours, catching crawdads and sunfish. We were allowed to bring home snakes and turtles and any wild animals we found. When we were older, she learned to cook wild game, serving up the rabbits, pheasants and ducks we brought home from hunting trips. She even found a recipe for groundhog once. It was rather gamey, but the cookbook said the young ones were really delicious.

Mom gave me my love of reading and writing. She always had multiple books going at once (a habit I acquired from her.) She loved all genres, but when reading mysteries, she would flip to the last chapter to find out who the culprit was before finishing the book. Once we were reading, she let us pick our books, never once worrying they were too hard or adult oriented. (The one exception she made was not letting me read The Exorcist. I read it when I was ten, under the covers with a flashlight. Not sure which of us made the wrong choice.)

Mom has always been a bit rebellious. She taught us to push the boundaries and limits. She never saw an 'Exhibit Closed' sign at a museum that she didn't interpret as an invitation to enter. One year, at the Ohio State Fair, she wanted to go to the Sale of Champions which she had never seen in person. She made us get the pavilion early, so we could get seats right up front. Then she went "to look around." She never came back to her seat. We could see her, backstage, watching the sale from the side of the arena. She was standing beside the comedian Red Skelton and Ohio's Governor, Jim Rhoades. We were pointing and waving at her madly, and she waved back several times, but never turned her head to see who she was standing beside. Eventually, the Governor and Red Skelton were called on stage to wrap up the proceedings. Mom bragged later that she 'had been within ten feet of them" not realizing she could have shaken their hands without moving an inch.

It is estimated there are more than 2.7 million Americans aged ninety and older. How many of them have now been put at risk because of the Republicans 'Big Beautiful Bill'? It quickly brings to mind the early days of the Covid pandemic when folks living in nursing homes were devastated by Covid because the administration had no idea how to protect them. But I guess our millionaires and billionaires need their tax breaks, old people be damned.

I do not understand the cruelty of these people.

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!