10 Facts About My Mom
8March 13, 2014 by Paula Reed Nancarrow
My Beautiful Mom
For #ThrowBackThursday, I am republishing posts from my old Livejournal Blog, Ordinary Time. This one was originally published in May 2011, and a modified version was performed for SlamMN! at Kieran’s Irish Pub that month.
- In first grade, I painstakingly lettered her name, Dorisanne, beneath a crayon portrait. I spelled it as I heard it: D-o-or S-a-n-d. I do not remember thinking this odd.
- Her own nickname as a kid, Captain Midnight, came from the Slovak unibrow. She’s still a tweezer fiend.
- One Christmas she asked for a watch. All of her friends were getting watches. Her parents couldn’t afford a real watch, so they bought her a play one.She had to wear it.
- In college there was a boy named Bob. He was not a good Catholic. That’s all I know.
- She is the eldest of three sisters and two brothers. Both sisters died of cancer within a year of each other. My grandmother, cushioned in the fog of Alzheimer’s, outlived them both. My mother became both for her, as well as her own aunts. It was easier than explaining where there were.
- She went to the same beehive hairdresser every Thursday for 30 years, though for the last ten she hated how her hair was styled. We lived in a small town, and if she went somewhere else, Marlene would know.
- The day I changed my clothes at a boyfriend’s apartment so that I could go to the County Fair after work (it was 1976, and I was 19) “gave her more pain than 9 hrs of labor.”
- At first, she said, she thought one of the surprise benefits of growing older was that she didn’t have to shave her legs so often. Then she discovered she needed bifocals.
- According to my father, the secret of their marital happiness is that they are equally matched in Scrabble.
- My mother’s most often repeated bit of marital advice: “All I can say is, it doesn’t get easier.” Sometimes I think she lets him win.
Paula Reed Nancarrow 
Reblogged this on charcarl.
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Lovely. Some of these ‘knowings’ we have (and chastisements – No.7!) especially as children, don’t have other words to accurately describe them, do they?
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Ah, Lisa, they most certainly do not… Thanks for stopping by.
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This is lovely, just lovely, a great tribute to your mum.
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Thank you Jenny. It was written before her diagnosis. I’m afraid they don’t play Scrabble now.
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#9 made me smile. It certainly sounds like the basis for a long lasting relationship
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Yes, it has been. They’ll have their 59th wedding anniversary in August. Thanks for stopping by, and congratulations on having been Freshly Pressed.
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I love number 8!
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