Mama's Birthday

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Today Mama celebrates he 81rst birthday. Mama is the tenth child of 11 children. Only one of those children did not make it to adulthood. Grandma had Mama when she was 39 years old and Mama's sister, Lucille, when she was 42 years old. Lucille was born with Downs Syndrome. Mama took care of Lucille most of the time when they were children. After Mama married Daddy in 1945 Mama would take Lucille for a month at a time ever once in a while to give Grandma a break. After Grandma died in 1972 Mama became Lucille's guardian. Lucille passed away in 1997.

Mama lived in Rebecca Georgia when she met Daddy. Daddy lived in Amboy, a small nearby community. At one time Rebecca was a booming town with a couple of grocery stores and a drug store. Now it has a couple of convenience stores. There isn't much to say that Amboy is a community any more... just the remains of an old country store. Daddy used to ride a mule to Rebecca in his teen years. I'm not sure if he had other transportation when he courted Mama.

Here is a picture of Mama with her sister, Laura, taken a few months before Aunt Laura passed away at almost the age of 99. I always thought that Aunt Laura beautiful inside and out. She had a memory like an elephant.



This is Mama and Daddy soon after their marriage. The photographer wasn't very good, I cleaned the picture up the best I could.




This is a picture of Mama when she was maybe 16 years old or so. Since it says "Love always, Clora" it was probably a picture she gave Daddy before he went off to war.

My middle name is Clora after Mama. Mama was named after her grandmother, Clora Aurora Hogan. Mama's full christian name is Clora Annie Jane. Annie after her mother and Jane after her other grandmother, Martha Jane Swain.



Mama's school... if I remember correctly... only went to the eleventh grade. This is her graduating class. The lady on the left is her teacher.


Mama and Daddy had five children together. The boys in order of age are Zoral, Zane and Zarone. Then comes me and my sister, Zawanda.... we were known as the Five Zees.

Mama reads her scriptures daily. She taught us to love God; to trust in Him. Mama has made many sacrifices in her life. She is a wonderful caring, mother. I love her dearly.

Happy Birthday Mama!

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Last week the bathroom sink was running slowly so I used drain cleaner.... it still ran slowly... so more drain cleaner. It seemed to improve. This morning I was running the water to get it somewhere near warm so I could have warm, clean hands to check around Frank's drain tube. The water stopped draining and I had a sink full of water. I tried the plunger to no avail.

Frank... with me protesting... took the the pea trap off. No, nothing in there!.. at least not enough to keep the water from draining. Houston we have a problem! Frank had no idea where his snake was... you know that contraption used to unstop drains. So he called his Dad to borrow his and his Dad didn't have one. So he got his Dad to go to Lowes and buy one.... hoping all the while that his Dad got the correct size. He did get the right size. He finally got the drain cleared.... of course I get blamed because they found a long hair in there.

That was not the end (can you see me rolling my eyes). His Dad put the pea trap back on. Ran water to make sure he had everything tightened. The pea trap has a small hole in it! Frank says some of the gunk in there probably blocked the small hole before. Frank always keeps plumbing supplies on hand, but of course he didn't have the right size. So his Dad had to make another trip to Lowe's. Finally everything gets put back together and nothing leaking. I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful father-in-law.

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I went to Sam's Club again this afternoon. I went to the ATM machine before hand. I got in the line with the lady with the hand-held scanner and she didn't run off to do anything else :-) The cashier had problems counting the number of items I got, but the third time is a charm :-) Traffic was a little heavy on the way back home. I prefer shopping in the early hours when there are fewer people and less traffic. Tomorrow I'll tackle Wal*Mart.

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No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones. -- Harry Truman