Thursday, April 24, 2008

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my Mother's birthday and I would like to tell the story of an incredible woman. Mom was born in Oklahoma at the beginning of the Great Depression. The family was incredibly poor and moved to Caifornia, a la Grapes of Wrath, to find a better life. Sadly it didn't work out so they returned to Oklahoma. There was tragedy in her life; my grandparents divorced, Mom lost all but one of her siblings and alcoholism ran in the family. My mother left the chaotic family as early as she could by marrying the wrong kind of man. She had two little boys, my brothers, while she still a teenager. Whenever we talk about her early life she muses about why she was the one to survive.

I can tell you why: My mom is a Survivor in every sense of the word. She was determined to have a better life than what she came from and she succeeded. She was introduced by friends to my father, a wonderful loving man. His family took her in and treated her as one of their own. Dad encouraged her to take some college courses when I was young and she gained confidence in herself.

When I left for college she decided to become a nurse and she did. She enjoyed her work and turned out to have a gift working with the elderly. She worked in a nursing home's hospital and was especially attentive to those whose families had forgotten them. When my dad had a stroke and progressed into dementia, he had to be put in a nursing home for his safety, she nursed him for the rest of his life. She was at the nursing home daily caring for him because she didn't want to leave it to the staff. She new she could take better care of him than the staff. And when he passed away she took care of all the details of his estate with the help of the lifelong friends who introduced them.

Mom is the strongest person I've ever known. Even though she had tough times she would ride them out knowing that things always get better. I have to say that my father had alot to do with that being the positive person he was.

It's been two years now that she came to live with us and let me tell you, I am so blessed to have her here. We've never been closer and I treasure our relationship. One of the things that made this so special was that she left al her friends knowing that she would have to develop brand new friendships. When my husband lost both of his parents in the span of one year, he told her that she was the only mom he had now. For those of you who think that she moved here because she is unable to take care of herself, nothing could be farther from the truth. She looks years (decades!) younger than she is. She's still sharp as a tack. We moved her out here because she needed several joints replaced and we have an excellent orthopedic clinic not far from our home.

We've had our disagreements, of course, but we always work through them. For instance she's a neat-freak and fairly obsessed with being organized. I am neither of those. She always had to tell me to clean my room. I think I'm still rebelling from the time she told me if I didn't pick up my dirty clothes she was going to empty all the clothes in my dresser and my closet. (I had a habit of just dropping my dirty clothes on the floor when I changed my clothes) . I guess she decided she was no longer going to enable my bad habit by picking up my clothes for me. I didn't take the warning seriously and sure enough, the next day when I got home from school my dresser drawers had been emptied all over the floor. I was so mad but she reminded me she had given me fair warning. It was the last time my dirty clothes were thrown on the floor!

So, to the most incredible woman I know, Happy Birthday!

Eduation Lessons Left Behind

Doing my daily perusing of National Review Online I came across George Will's latest column about the state of public education. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) openly talked about the disintegration of the public schoool sytem, the family and the power of teacher's unions. And this was back in 1983 based on years of research that government and the NEA attempted to supress. Moynihan was an advocate of the importance of an intact family to education results. Will writes:

Moynihan also knew that schools cannot compensate for the disintegration of families and hence communities -- the primary transmitters of social capital. No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males.
In 1966 the year the Coleman Report was released the government refused to print it. The report concluded:

Released quietly on the Fourth of July weekend, the report concluded that the qualities of the families from which children come to school matter much more than money as predictors of schools' effectiveness. The crucial common denominator of problems of race and class -- fractured families -- would have to be faced. But it wasn't. Instead, shopworn panaceas -- larger teacher salaries, smaller class sizes -- were pursued as colleges were reduced to offering remediation to freshmen.
Will concludes that "our nation is at risk now more than ever."

Please take the time to read the article and send the link to all your friends.