Gotta Know the Players

Look up Family Tree by Norman Rockwell, a favorite picture of mine since Saturday Evening Post days.  I know. I lost some of you younger ones with that reference to a weekly magazine of an earlier time. Most of you who read this are some leaf on my family tree.   Others are close friends who at least know my name.  I didn’t intend this to go viral with unknown readers searching out my comments.  That means along the way what I write will be all about me.  The hope is you will turn the lens to make it all about you.

I have a broad feeling of family because those of birth/blood, adoption/love, marriage/in-laws, and meet a need members are a varied group  For Mother’s Day, I want to introduce the most shadowy one of that group, my birth mother. She was the oldest of one brother and two sisters in Lakeland, Florida.  She married a small town Baptist minister and lived through what were difficult times in the depression  She died when I was two weeks old. At that point, her life story and its intersection with mine stopped. My adopted mother saw that I had contact with her family, and I did write sporadically over her sisters’ lifetimes. Yet, some tension between families arose over her death and no one talked much of this young woman’s life.

Some pictures from one of her sisters show I have a family resemblance. She is the dark haired one in this picture. This is the part of her essence that was maybe passed to me. She must have had a slight arty streak.  Only two verifications remain.  I have the wedding booklet she made herself:  construction paper end pieces with clippings of newspaper comments of a shower and the wedding.  A ribbon is used instead of brads to hold pages together.  My niece, her granddaughter, has a picture of a sailboat she painted.  What I created in Friday afternoon free drawing class was not recognized nor memorable. The most I do is paste pictures in my journal or write decorative words in different colors. Her greatest gift to me was not this talent. Instead,  it is with every breath that I say, “Thank you , Norene, for life.” 

Honor your father and your mother.  Exodus 20:12