My Mother, My guardian Angel

In June on the day I was born, my mother suffered greatly with the pains of child birth. I arrived around 8:00 P.M. in the evening and was an enormous relief to my mother, when I finally was born. My weight was above average and the whole experience was a long haul for Mom. According to what I was told, I was big enough that the nurses told my mom to give me a dime and let me catch the bus home that evening. At the time that I was about two, my mom remarried and my new step father was a good one. He helped her raise me the way a kid should be raised and was a blessing to my mom and I, just when we needed one. My mother was actually encouraged to have an abortion before I was born, because my biological father was very abusive, and not a good parenting role model. My mother loved me and was devoted to me from the beginning. She would hear no more about abortions and was determined to raise me, no matter what, My new step father was a wonderful person and a hard worker. He spent a lot of time on two jobs in order for his family to get by. My mother was always attentive to my needs and if anyone ever crossed her about me or tried to annoy me in any way, she was on them like a "crow on a June bug", and that was the end of that.

As I reached school age, Mom often encouraged me and was always right up at the school when called or when she felt that her son was not being treated well about an issue. She was always right, and usually got the full attention of the school personnel, in my journey upward towards graduation. The bar of soap was never spared when I used bad language and the little red plastic belt that hung on the closet door was there more of a reminder than to be used to spank an unruly child. I was punished fairly and got less than I actually deserved on occasion, as well. I remember one summer when I was bored with nothing much to do and in third grade, my mom came home with a giant coloring book about birds. There were every kind of birds common to he United States in the book and at first, I was rebellious in trying to read and color the variety of pictures. Now, to this day, as a wildlife painter, i remember with much fondness the book my mom first got for me to use. It got me on the road to a wonderful world of nature.

I became a teacher of kids with learning problems and other special needs later in life, and used my early training in art and wild creatures to inspire the kids, and help them adjust to learning when they were placed with others with more normal or average abilities, to learn in the classroom. This art was a blessing to me and the kids that I taught over the years. My mom was the one who inspired me as I grew up and encouraged my interest in art, which I may have inherited from my grandfather He was a very good artist and minister of the gospel. My mother helped me get through bad times with a broken leg in eighth grade from a football injury and later in tenth grade with a bad spinal injury. Without her strong support and determination for me to be enabled to succeed, I would not have gotten through it all. My mother was my guardian angel and will always be the one who made the most difference in my entire life. She gave me life and she helped insure that I had every opportunity to make the most of the life she had helped create. My mother still inspires me to this day at her age of eighty-two. She still walks every chance that she gets and works in her yard almost everyday. She is one of the few ladies that still cuts her grass and battles bees at her age and will always be my heroine and guardian angel. Every now and then she reminds me of why I was able to overcome challenges in my past life with a brain tumor and other medical problems I have had. She still stands as my true inspiration. She is one of the few people that has read all of her life and knows more about everything than I do, regardless of my having earned four college degrees. It was her influences during my lifetime that helped me achieve these goals. My mother, my angel.