{"id":8007,"date":"2013-11-02T22:43:55","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T05:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=8007"},"modified":"2013-11-03T06:16:33","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T14:16:33","slug":"a-tiny-tribute-to-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2013\/11\/02\/a-tiny-tribute-to-mom\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tiny Tribute to Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mom-115\"<\/a><\/h6>\n
Mom, before she was one, with her man.<\/h6>\n

My mother died on Friday. She was just shy of her 95th birthday. It was in her sleep, the perfect way to go, since it has to happen somehow.<\/p>\n

I confess I’m taking something of a philosophical view. The promise of long life as reward for obedience to parents was moving to the extreme. She must have been a very obedient daughter.<\/p>\n

And from what I’ve heard, that wasn’t always easy. My mother overcame a whole lot of unhelpful influence from her upbringing.<\/p>\n

I’ve sometimes thought that we spend half our adulthood unlearning half of what we learned growing up. I won’t go into details to undermine the reputation of my grandmother; she always liked me so it was easy to like her back. But I will say my mother’s distinctive positive attributes were apparently in diametric contrast to what she’d had modeled.<\/p>\n

A people lover to the extreme, Mom never met someone she didn’t treat like she’d not known for a long time. Once, when stuck for hours in an Arizona airport because of some system delay, Dad told me later that she was in her glory, talking to anyone and everyone, finding out things in common, chance mutual acquaintances, and just anything interesting. And what isn’t interesting?<\/p>\n

And hospitable? Entertaining strangers was never strange for her. Once, when Dad got pulled over and ticketed for speeding by a lady-cop, Mom struck up a conversation that touched on the personal. Turned out the lady was living with her boyfriend and my mother asked why she didn’t get married. The policewoman said marriage is just a piece of paper. Mom came back with, “Well, this ticket is just a piece of paper!”<\/p>\n

But that wasn’t the end of it. Mom learned that the woman was driving a great distance to come to work. Mom offered their guest room so she could sleep at their house weeknights and just to go home on weekends. That lasted for about a year, rent free.<\/p>\n

As I understand it, Mom’s mother didn’t particularly like people, and never had company.<\/p>\n

So, the stories we’ll be gathering to tell and hear later this week won’t just be stellar, but double so, for what she had to unlearn.<\/p>\n

And as for living so long, what with my dad still being with us at 97, I suppose I have good genes. But I’m not so sure I was always as obedient to parents, so the promise may not hold.<\/p>\n

We’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In two weeks Mom would have been 95. But as she might have said, “Enough is enough.” She always shot from the hip, spoke from the heart, and never knew a stranger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8007"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8034,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007\/revisions\/8034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}