I was born in the early ‘50s. We lived in an upstairs apartment of a house that no longer stands. But the time I was in second grade, we had lived in six houses that I know of. Mom and Dad bought their first home with an FHA loan for a little under $11,000. Two bedrooms with an unfinished attic and basement. It wasn’t much, but we were grateful for it.

Dad worked in the parts department for Mack Trucks. Not a lot of money to be made there, so Mom had to work outside the home. I remember one of her jobs was working for AB Dick…a printing press company. She also worked for Ben Grant who owned a printing company. When, when I was up in school, she started working for the Easter Seal Treatment Center as their “Girl Friday”. 

Still, even though she worked outside the home, she was such a ‘50s mom. She wore house dresses and fake pearls and red lipstick. She sewed our clothes and embroidered pillow cases. She wore heels and carried a patent leather purse with a hankie, a change purse, and a compact inside. Oh, and she always had clip on earrings to match her dresses.

She didn’t learn to drive till I was in second grade. That was the year we bought the house in the suburbs and she had to drive my brother to his special school and get to work. I clearly remember her best friend Elaine Gordon teaching Mom how to drive. We were in the City Park where you could just circle round and round without facing oncoming contact. For some reason, Mom turned on a straight stretch and panicked. She hit the gas instead of the brakes and took us right up a bank, narrowly missing a tree. It was always an adventure with Mom behind the wheel.

Mom was NOT a good cook, but oh…could she bake! She made the best Pineapple Upside Down Cake I have ever eaten. She baked cookies every week. We always had a sweet around…I suppose because they were relatively inexpensive to make and you felt indulgent when you had one of her desserts. 

She wore an apron over her house dress when she worked in the kitchen. Grandma always made quilted hot pads at Christmas from quilting scraps so there were always bits of cheerful color floating around the house. She made curtains for the windows. When I was big enough to get my own bedroom, Mom made these fabulous curtains with pink poodles on them. She made a cover with ruffles out of the same material to put over an old TV console to use as a vanity.

The decades came and went and the styles changed, but I never really saw my mom as anything but a ‘50s mom. Even when she and my dad divorced, she waited till I was married and left home to do it. She always put everyone else’s needs before her own. Generous, kind, unintentionally hilarious…she was incredibly naive to the ways of the world, clear to the day she died. That was one of her most endearing qualities.

I was rummaging around during my thirty minute allowance of browser time yesterday and saw this contact sheet of “50s Moms” and it just made me smile. I can still smell the Evening in Paris she wore…simply because I bought it for her with my babysitting money. I can still feel the soft touch of her cool hand on my fevered brow when I was sick. I can still hear the frustration in her voice when I was a rebellious teen. She worked hard, and loved harder. 

I think they patterned June Cleaver after my mom.

What I wouldn’t give for one more day.

❤️

“He will wipe all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death, suffering, crying, or pain. These things of the past are gone forever.”

Revelation 21:4 CEV