2021: Y – April A to Z: Mama in Photos… Yippee, More Photos and Memories of Mama

2021: Y – April A to Z: 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 after losing my mother last November, I thought I’d honor her through the many photographs I have… 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!

Y… Yippee, More Photos and Memories of Mama

I have always had a camera… first the film camera… which made you develop them… hoping they were in focus and that you managed to get your shot. Remember lugging around a camera bag, juggling lens, film canisters, and panicking when you thought you’d lost your roll of film? Now we have digital photos that you seldom print, and store on a second server, or the cloud. I always laugh, when someone says, “Oh all my photos are in the cloud“… I’d rather have mine on paper! It saddens me to think that the future generations are going to lose many of their photos… and for the very reason of how long can we manage to keep up with all these digital photos. They don’t cost you anything to snap… so we snap way too many, and then feel overwhelmed! Personally, I think using the film camera was the best!

Yippee… what a doozy of a photo mama took here… what was she thinking? We had stopped to visit her BFF, Willie Mae, and I probably had wanted a photo of them together. Willie Mae was more like my aunt and whenever I went home, I always stopped to visit. (This was mama’s “flat hair” phase… just wash, fluff up, and go!)

Mama usually celebrated her birthday at Donna’s house (other daughter)… and Donna never forgot to make her a cake. Actually Donna isn’t a daughter, but we’ve always called her mama’s other daughter… and she’s always been there for mama when I couldn’t be. I’ve been very thankful for Donna’s help, especially over the past few years. (A rare photo of long sleeves on mama… she hated wearing long sleeves, but she loved turtle necks and owned many turtleneck short-sleeve tops.)

Mama celebrating one of the many holidays with Donna and her family. What a beautiful table Donna set… sure wish I had been there! If it was Thanksgiving, she always cooked mama’s favorite dressing and pink stuff. If you are reading this as a Southerner… you will know what dressing is… it’s our southern version to stuffing! Want to read my post on Southern Dressing… head over HERE.

Mama with her one and only grandson, Steve. We had stopped to visit one of mama’s cousins on this visit… look no flip flops! He never failed in making mama laugh and smile… and could never do any wrong in her eyes!

I have no actual photo of mama telling me how she learned to ride a bike at the farm, or a photo, but I do have the memory. Mama had no bicycle, but always wanted to learn how to ride. Boys had bikes… but, it didn’t seem acceptable for girls to ride bikes.

Paint a picture…. One afternoon, her brother’s friend came over on his bike… he and Leroy were going hunting. The bike was left in the yard… big mistake! After they left, Mama decided she would push the bike up the dirt road and coast down. By the time she landed back in the yard, she had ripped her dress, and scratched up her arms and legs… and certainly didn’t want to be discovered in that fashion. She placed the bike back where her brother’s friend left it, and scurried in the house to clean up and change. I can paint the picture in my mind… but sure wish there was a photo of her flying down the road trying to ride that bike!

I took this photo from the Ring camera I had on Mama’s front door… taken after mama had passed away. It gave me such an eerie feeling in seeing this black cat stroll by, as it looked so much like mama’s “Boo”… which had also passed. I felt like he’d come back looking for her! I’m sure those two are back together again… and maybe this time she will let him play in the gardens with her.

I walked through mama’s bedroom one evening… there she was sound asleep, snuggled with Boo … who was guarding her… and always content to allow her to hold onto him. Thank You Boo!

Where Mama was most happiest… she always said she did her best talking to God in those gardens!

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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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