Please Share

My mother never showed me these pictures.  After we lost her, 4 years ago, my sister and I found them while we were going through her papers.  And....being a genealogist, there were a lot of papers.  She would go on and on about great great Grandpa Easter's third cousin, twice removed, etc,.etc, but she didn't show us these.  I wish she would have.

These were taken in 1947.  She was 17.  At 18 she was married. She moved from Missouri to Michigan as a teenage bride, leaving all she had ever known.  3 weeks after her 20th birthday, she had me.  She never talked about her teenage life much.  I know she didn't date.  She worked, selling tickets, at a movie theater and that's where she met my father.  Life with him was rather trying.   For the last 30 years of her life she suffered the agonies of Fibromyalgia.  But right here......there is hope, joy and a warm summer day.   She is every bit a pretty as the other pin ups of the 1940s.  I don't think she knew that.  I wish I could have told her.

During my teenage years, she would join me and my girlfriends that had spent the night.  She would sit on the bed with us, asking all about our dates, boyfriends, dances, movies, etc.  She enjoyed hearing about them as much as we did going.  We never thought she was invading "our space".  Years later, the girlfriends would remember how she did that and how they enjoyed it too.  My sister and I did so much more, socially, than she did.  Homecoming Dances, majorette, proms and more proms, homecoming court and bridemaids.  I know it brought her joy.

I would swear there is nothing left to share with my daughters.  I've been told TMI Mom.  TMI..  My youngest daughter asks the questions.  Any questions about my past.  I always give her an answer.  She said she knows I will tell her to mind her own business if I don't want to talk about a certain subject, but I am pretty open and have not found that subject yet.  Maybe I didn't ask my mother the right questions or just maybe, she didn't feel as comfortable discussing herself.  It was a different generation.  You know us boomers...  We let it all hang out.