My mother was a very, very, very difficult person to get along with. No, I am serious. I know everyone says that their mother was/is difficult to get along with, and if you say yours isn't, just you wait until you get married or have children. However, I have documentation. She was a clinical psychologist and everyone, except x-patients, thinks she was hard to get along with. Friends, neighbors, her parents, both x-husbands, her kids, teachers, waiters and waitresses, her hairdressers (she never saw the same one twice), even my therapist. The spouses of her children got the brunt of it. However, my mother had many talents outside the realm of social interation, so I thought it would be nice to mention them here.
10. Cleaning the basement - albeit every 6 months and making me and my brother help
9. Balancing her checkbook - to the penny, every month, no calculator, in the days when they had that form on the back of your statement to help
8. Frugality - she could decorate her house, pretty cutely, with things from K-Mart
7. Gardening - I'm not talking landscaping here, I mean this woman could grow tomatoes in rock
6. Aging - all her life, to the day her chemotherapy began, she looked 10 years younger than she was
5. Cooking - she could make a meal out of a tomato, an onion, and some chicken broth
4. Education - she had a PhD of course, but also kept up on the latest medical, psychological and political issues. She learned how to use a computer when she was 68
3. Creativity - she could paint; her masterpeice being a distant nude of my sister in a woods sitting on a rock. I think it still hangs in my sister's house to this day. I also remember her entertaining us with little clothes pins (the old-timey kind without the spring) that she painted to look like us. She could dance; she taught me and my soon-to-be husband a rough two-step for our wedding. She could sculpt; I also remember clay sculptures of me and my brother playing baseball
2. Being a psychologist - it wasn't until the visiting hours after she died that I really understood this. Tens of people said to me "your mother saved my life"
And the top talent of my mother...
Folding a fitted sheets. Hers turned out in perfect squares, folded neatly, every time. I don't know anyone who can do this. I try, but end up rolling mine up in a ball
My mother died in 2002 of lung cancer one week after her 71st birthday. God rest her soul.
