Sibling Assignment #97: Tribute to Mom on Mother's Day

Silver Valley Girl's latest assignment to us siblings is to write a tribute to our mother for Mother's Day. InlandEmpireGirl's post is here and Silver Valley Girl's is here.

An image: my mother, Mary Idell West Woolum, knees and hips slowly giving out, although she's been helped with one hip being replaced. Her back has been slowly bending for the last seven or eight years. Like many people in their late seventies, she's beginning to shrink some.

So there she is, back bent, knees a bit wobbly, her gait deliberate, pulling the lawn watering hose from one side of the yard to the other; there she is, slowed down but not stopped, yanking weeds out of her raised garden boxes; there she is, putting in as many as three straight hours in her yard, harvesting, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and finding spots, which are getting scarce, to put new plants in the ground.

This is hard work, and it continues in the house when Mom finishes in the yard and waters her many, many house plants, vacuums her carpets, mops the kitchen floor, and takes a round steak or a chicken or a pot roast out of the freezer to thaw in preparation to start cooking dinner.

When I think of my mom, the dominant image is of a hard worker. When she was a teacher in Kellogg's District #391 she not only gave her classroom, her students, and their work all the attention she had, she also attened PTA meetings, was active in the union, and served her fellow teachers and district in a number of other ways.

When I think of my mom, I often think of those summer days in the mid-sixties or those evenings during the same years when, in order to keep her certification, Mom had to take summer classes and night classes toward earning a Bachleor's degree. For two summers, she lived in Moscow, Idaho, taking summer courses at the U of I, these summers falling not long after she'd given birth to Silver Valley Girl. For one of those summers, she took Silver Valley Girl and InlandEmpireGirl with her to live in Moscow, so not only was she studying, but she was taking care of her daughters and hoping against all hope that Dad and I held down the fort back in Kellogg. (Mixed success.)

Mom has stamina and determination. She blocks out pain. She's one of the hardest working people I've ever known.

The fruits of her labor are everywhere: robust flower gardens, productive vegetable gardens, a spotless house, a highly regarded teaching career, and three kids who are doing all right, inspired by her hard work, hard work that never took precedent over being a loving, tender, attentive, tireless mother to us kids.