Mother’s Day
Annetta on the far right acting goofy while Mom laughs. (Sister Karen and niece Jennifer in the middle)
As we are still in the throes of turkey season, and I prefer to spend my Monday morning chasing turkeys instead of writing my Monday morning blog, I am writing ahead of time. I often like to write outside. Whether it's in the yard or in my tree stand in the fall makes little difference. But in the spring when I am chasing turkeys, I'm usually not writing. It feels like writing takes too much of my focus and the gobblers are so smart and wary that I will miss my opportunity if I have my face planted into my phone. On more than one occasion I've had a wary old gobbler silently slip up on me and his gnarly head would come peeking around a tree to check out what he thought was a hen that's been yelping. Most often they would see me before I see them and they would get away. But even then, I still like seeing them and I would hate to miss seeing one just because I had my face stuck in my phone, oblivious to my surroundings.
Since turkey season is still going on, I'll save you from too much redundant turkey talk and I'll jump to a different subject. I'll try to share my turkey season with you all in a couple of weeks when I will hopefully have had a few more encounters with Mr. Gobble and maybe some other excitement from the turkey woods.
And since it's Mother's Day this weekend, we'll talk about Mom.
Now I think that I have the greatest mom in the world. There's no point in us arguing about it because I'm sure that you think that your mom is the best as well! I'm not backing down and you probably aren't either.
My mom was born in Germany, the part that is now Poland. She spent a lot of her childhood as a refugee and her teen years as a second class citizen due to the fact that her dad had served in the Nazi army with the SS. My dad brought her to America after serving eight years in Germany after the war. He was helping with the housing crisis in Europe and Germany by serving in the Pax program (the forerunner of Kennedy's Peace Corps).
Mom's story of those years can be found in a book entitled A Place for Ruth by Gertrude Slabach and can be found at Amazon. Not only is it a great story, but it gives you a bigger perspective of how terrible war can be to the innocent, no matter which side of the battle that you are born on.
After coming to America and settling down on Dad's family farm, they started having kids. After having several, they noticed that each kid seemed to be a little better than the last. And so they kept having them. When number six came along (that was me), they said, "Wow this is awesome, let's have another one". Well, when my little sister Annetta was born they noticed that the trend had abruptly turned and they decided that they better stop having kids.
My older siblings learned German as their first language, but this caused problems for them when they went to school. And so us younger ones were only taught English. We always had lots of fun joking around as a family. I would ask Mom how to say "bad things" in German to tell my friends. I would have to ask one word at a time so that she wouldn't catch on. And usually when I did come up with the sentence, she would say "now Dwight". And usually she would chuckle because the sentence structure was all wrong and didn't actually make sense in German. Then the older kids got older and moved out, Annetta and I were the lucky ones that got spoiled rotten, or at least that's what the older ones say.
And spoiled or not, we had so many good times, doing barn work, joking at the dinner table, and just hanging out. It often felt more like mom was a sibling than a mom. Unless of course, you got hurt or something of that sort, then she was there for us. Looking back, I always associate joyfulness with my mom. She taught me how to work hard and to be grateful for what I have. She taught me how God provides.
But most of all she showed me how to be joyful, even in the toughest times.
Thanks Mom, I love you!
