Mama and Me

To celebrate Mother's Day, I want to send a huge "Happy Mother's Day" greeting to my Mama.  I've been scanning pictures for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary reception, where I'll do a slide show of their life together.  So it's been easy to find "Mama and Me" pictures at the same time.  Some of them I'd never paid attention to before, because there are so many photo albums with so many pictures.  Hope you enjoy them.

These first ones are of my 35-year old Mama with me, her first child.  She was already a very busy Ob-Gyn physician in Bangkok when I came along to make her and Daddy into three.  (Daddy was often behind the camera in these photos, so you'll have to wait until later to see him.)

What strikes me funny is how much this picture (above) looks like my granddaughter who was born last December. We share no DNA, but the big eyes and facial expression look a lot a like her. I sure love those Grands and their parents!

I think this was the picture taken for our passport together; we were headed back to the U.S. for a visit when I was one year old.  Makes me think of that poem, "There was a little girl, with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead..."

Suddenly, when I was just over a year old, my little brother arrived on the scene.  As you may notice, he looks rather ho-hum about it, Mama looks delighted--one child for each arm, just like she wanted it--and I look less than thrilled.  I'm told that when my parents brought my brother home from the hospital, I went up and took a look at him, then slapped him on the face.  Yikes!  Sorry, Mama.  Sorry, Bro.

One of my very favorite pictures of Mama and me that I'd never noticed before I started this photo scanning project.

We lived on islands throughout my childhood, and thus we got to ride on creaky old wooden boats from time to time. Riding on boats continues to be a theme in our family. Mama had us wear orange kapok-filled life vests.  To my knowledge, neither of us kids ever fell off a boat, but Mama did a time or two.  But those stories are for another time, another place!

My mother loved to travel and see the world.  She had done a lot of traveling before she married Daddy and had us, but we kept on traveling after her kids showed up, too.  Here she and I are at the Acropolis in Athens.  Cool needlepoint purse, Mama! Very classy.

It was awfully hot where we lived.  Once and a while we pulled our sweaters out of storage and headed for the highlands.  The White House Hotel was in Cameron Highlands on the Malay Peninsula.  I remember eating white toast and marmalade at this hotel for breakfast.

The other reason Mama liked going to the highlands was the riot of flowers up there, flowers she knew from her own years of growing up in the United States. I was quite pleased, in this picture, with my lovely new binoculars.  I think they were for bird watching, but I never have been very interested in watching birds.  They hop, they chirp, they fly.  That's about it.

Despite her very busy medical practice, Mama always found time for us in each day.  Looking back on it, I don't know how she managed it. Maybe it helped that we had an amah to look after the house and cook us lunch each day.

Mama read to us nearly every morning before going to work, using Bible story books as well as other books about nature by Sam Campbell, the Wisconsin naturalist. It's nearly impossible to be biblically illiterate when you have a mom who loves reading and loves Bible stories.

Through my awkward, chubby years, Mama was always there for me.  For some of those years she was a predecessor of the "sandwich generation," looking after her mother on one side and her children on the other. We look a bit solemn in this photograph, but I remember it as a good and busy time in all our lives.

I went away to school in Singapore at the age of fourteen--and loved it there, even if I was a tad bit homesick. My parents came to visit as often as they could, which was about once a year.  Other than that, we went home for Christmas and summer vacations.

Mama wouldn't miss a big event in my life for anything.  She and Daddy came to California when I was honored as a "teacher of the year" at the college where I worked.  But I got to her big events, too, like when her medical school alumni association honored her as an alumnus of the year.

I think Mama was nearly as happy as I was on Husband's and my wedding day.  She had a sparkly outfit to wear, and she likes sparkles. And her daughter was marrying a man who likes her, and that is guaranteed to make a mama's heart happy.  And her daughter was happy, and that makes a mama's heart happy, too.

I'll end with a picture from nearly a year ago of Mama and me and the Bro.  Forty-something years of her being our mama, and I'm ready for her to go another forty-something more in that role.  Happy Mother's Day, Mama!  Love you!