2021: X – April A to Z: Mama in Photos… Xtra Bits and Pieces

2021: X – Mama in Photos…

I’m back for my sixth year (2021)… can you believe it… of participating in the yearly April A to Z challenge… and I’ve had quite a time in deciding on my “theme.” I had a few running through my head, but as I lost my mother last November, I thought I’d honor her through the many photographs I have of her… and tell the story of the photograph… as every photo has a story.

I’m fortunate that my mother had many photos of herself growing up… and I’m honoring her this year as the theme of my April A to Z… especially as was she was an April baby. Mama would have turned 91 this year… but she’s now back home celebrating this birthday with her parents and brother on the farm… where I believe she was always the happiest. The past few years my mother was fighting off dementia, while still managing to live alone until the last couple months of her life. I miss her every day… thinking of her daily and remembering all she did for me. She was the storyteller… She supplied me with my stories… and it’s because of her, that I write!

X… Xtra Bits and Pieces

I finally dug out another box of photos today… finding many that would certainly have fit on the other posts… but then what would I have for X, Y and Z if I had posted them!

I can just hear her voice as she gave me this look… “here you go with that camera again taking my picture when I’m not dressed and working in the garden… can’t you wait?”

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Mama on her last bus trip to Memphis, Tennessee to ride one of the paddle gambling boats. She’d fuss about not going… and then fuss when she did go… she hated leaving home! Pictured with her two best friends… twins Carolyn and Marilyn. I’m told that the three of them could just look at each other and fall over laughing… as they’d all know what the other was thinking… guess Mama completed the triplet aspect.

The Memphis trip was a bust for her… saying how it was the worst, especially the part of walking down to the boat, as they had to walk down a steep hill… all seniors holding onto each other… and exiting the boat was even worse as they then had to help pull each other up the hill. Then afterward they rode on a sightseeing bus ride around town… where she fussed about the girl describing the sights and how they rode by so fast, that she couldn’t even see. I can just imagine her mouth on that ride fussing about how they rode by so fast… and that she couldn’t even see. She said she was never so happy to finally return home from that trip… and it was the last one she ever took with the senior center!

It was the other daughter, Donna, who took this photo… and mama gave her the same look of “stop taking my picture.” I’m sure Donna just laughed as she took it… mama had gone out in her nightgown to gather some tomatoes for Donna and her daughter Joni. Mama never cared if she was dressed or half dressed… saying, “if they want to look… then look”! I sure wish I had some of those green tomatoes… I would cook fried green tomatoes! Mama always planted a small garden for herself with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and green beans… and always took extras to the senior center for her friends… and if you weren’t on her friend list… No tomatoes for you!

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Mama saved projects for the grandson with the strong back… she hijacked him to use the hole diggers so she could add another mailbox in the backyard… to hold the gloves she never used. She had several old mailboxes around her gardens to hold tools and unused gloves!

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Another couple of quirky friends she met somewhere in Memphis on the bus trip… glad she left them there. I know she would love to have sat them in her gardens to chat with while working. What conversation pieces they would have been!!!

On a walk around Athens, home of the Georgia BullDawg’s… these bulldogs were everywhere, and mama wanted to hop on them all, yelling “Yee Haw.“

No matter where we stopped… mama made friends! She really wanted this little birdie to come home with her… not sure how Boo (cat) would have felt about that!

We stopped in Heavy’s BBQ in Sparta and she couldn’t resist to show me how she used to climb up in her father’s wagon. I kept telling her she was going to split her pants trying… but she insisted!

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A couple of older pictures I found showing mama’s gardens… from back in the day. It was nice to see how it once bloomed. She had more stamina in her 70’s and 80’s that puzzled everyone! I bet she’s fussing with God now over his gardens… and not thinking twice to tell him what he’s doing wrong!

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My previous years of A to Z Challenges:

• 2016: A to Z Southern Foods and Memories… they said write what you know… and being a girl born in the South… well this was what I knew.
• 2017: A to Z Conversations with Mama… it was a somewhat easy one for me to write as I’d journaled our conversations for years… I researched favorite topics to write.
• 2018: A to Z All About Nancy Drew… this one has been my favorite topic so far, and I don’t know if I’ll ever come up with another one to equal it
• 2019: A to Z Italian Famiglia Foods and Memories… I felt it was time to finally write the favorites of my husbands family foods.
• 2020: A to Z Family Stories… writing the stories of my husband’s family.

For more A to Z of Mama in Photos… click HERE!

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