More stuff from my mom

I'm just about done with the strolls down memory lane, at least for this round of reminiscences. It's supposed to get up around 70 degrees today; Cliff may have put in for the day off to ride the Honda.

I've put the old yellowed memories away for now, but I'll show you just a few more things that take me back into the past.

This was on a page of Mother's 1930 diary; I wonder if it's the same recipe she used over the years. I've never made divinity, it seems like too much trouble; but I did enjoy hers every year at Christmas.


Mother went through a phase of entering me in any singing contest available. I remember this one well: a little boy from my one-room school and I sang a duet, "Mr. And Mississippi"; we had patches on our clothes, and the boy had a hobo bundle on a stick, to carry over his shoulder. We'd alternate verses and then sing the chorus together. I still remember all the words to that song.

See? There I am, number 9! I have a feeling I wasn't as talented as Mother thought I was, since I don't recall ever getting first place. Or second or third, even.


I found this picture of myself that I don't recall ever seeing before, probably because my hands look awkward and I'm not smiling hugely; so perhaps it was never framed and put on display. I must have been around three years old, judging by the amount of hair. It took me a long time to have enough hair so that people knew I was a girl.

This next one is really a whole story in itself: In 1962, Mother went to the bathroom to urinate, got up, and happened to look down before she flushed: she saw blood. A lot of it. She went to our wonderful Dr. Edwards, who referred her to a urologist. He discovered a polyp in one of her kidneys and had her admitted to the old Kansas City Osteopathic Hospital.

Tests were run, and it was discovered that her other kidney wasn't functioning well enough for the cancerous one to be removed. She was sent home to die, it would seem.



I don't recall how the whole process went, but I do know Mother decided not to accept the death sentence. She went to K.U. Medical Center where her kidney was removed. The cancer was contained in that one kidney, so it hadn't spread. That wrist band is from her stay in K.U., and Dr. Burroff was the man who did the surgery.

She recovered from that surgery in time to watch me graduate, and her remaining kidney served her well until her death in 2004, forty-two years later. I have no idea whether Osteopathic Hospital was wrong about her remaining kidney, or if prayers were answered that jump-started it. People of all denominations had Mother on their prayer lists; I recall a Catholic neighbor telling us she was asking St. Jude for help.

And now, back to the present.