Mom And the Passing of The Years

My sister had a running battle with my Mom that ran for over thirty years.  It wasn’t a bitter, malicious battle, but for some reason, Shea was never really able to accept that Mom wasn’t going to tell her how old she was.  I don’t understand why it was so important to her to know how old Mom was.   But it sure was.

She’s a little smug right now.   She’s got Mom’s birth certificate and her death certificate.  But the thing is . . .

Mom was born in Greene County, Georgia, in a small town called Union Point.  How small is Union Point?  When I was a boy, they had the first traffic light installed.  It flashed yellow.

In fact, when I was about twelve years old, Mom cut me loose in downtown Union Point.  It took me a couple of hours to explore the town, and then I was ready to head back to her grandfather’s place.  So I called her, and she said she was on her way. And she hung up.  The was back before cell phones, and I had no idea how she was going to find me.  Fifteen minutes later she showed up.  I asked her how she found me.  The answer?

“Oh, everybody in town knew where the stranger was.”  I found it a little disturbing, but I trust the point is taken:  Union Point is small.  And when the Green County courthouse burned down back before I was born.  There were no backups, and the records had to be re-constructed.  I fear that my mother and my grandmother, both now deceased, conspired to defraud.  I have seen Mom’s birth certificate, her death certificate, my own birth certificate, her Georgia driver’s license.  Only the birth and death certificates match.  And the death certificate is based on the birth certificate. I fear Mom gets the last laugh on that one.  I haven’t told Shea yet.

One last note on Loretta and the passing of the years.  For as long I can remember, she was twenty nine years old.  She was twenty nine for at least fifteen years.  But eventually, she decided that all her best efforts were resulting in, alas, a rather battered and road worn twenty nine.  Sixty two, however, she could pull off quite well. So she went from a busted up twenty nine to a wonderfully well preserved sixty two over night.

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