Board remembrances: my “very own Mother” and me
Date
2012
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
A wooden board plank placed over a gutter serves as an impetus to remembering my young years and the years following as they relate to my mother. Mother needed me, her only biological child, to become a newer her, with the same life’s viewpoints. I decided to be me. When our perspectives did coincide, my way of payback for her verbal spankings was to deny her any affirmation. That situation caused me to live in two conflicting worlds. Taking the form of an apostrophe, this memoir allows me to speak to my now deceased mother, recognize her achievements and to delineate the shortcomings within both of us. Spontaneously interjected but not necessarily in chronological order are memories to either reinforce an event, or to simply serve as relief. The fifties’ and sixties’ historical arc explicates much in both our lives. Readers who peruse this subtle, seasoned with the history of the times remembrance may decide to think back on their own lives to determine to what degree the actions of other people have affected them and if, for them, change is needed.