Mums and Music

This is a photo of my beautiful mother in about 1946 while she was still in college.  Several years later she married my Daddy, and a bit more than a decade later I was born into their family.  My mother was a busy lady, with a family of six children and a farmer husband, but she always made sure that she had time for her children.  As a former school teacher, she knew how to teach and encourage and love her children.  She played with us, read to us, sang to us, and listened to our problems and woes.   She cooked and baked and cleaned and washed and ironed and gardened and canned.  She put bandaids on scraped knees and encouraged us to always do our best.   She drove us to school and activities and church and piano lessons.   She encouraged us to turn off the TV, do our homework, do our chores, and practice the piano, and to love one another, and not fight or quarrel one with another.  Occasionally she was even know to deliver a well deserved spanking!

When I was small, I called my mother Mommy.  As I grew older, I no longer wanted to use that child's name, but I didn't want to call her Mom either, as that seemed to ordinary for my wonderful mother.    I knew from reading that the British often called their mother's "Mum" or "Mums", and since we have a heritage of British Ancestry, that just seemed right to me.  And the Queen was born the very same year as my own Mums!

Mums was always a lover of music.  She began playing the violin as a young girl and practiced faithfully all throughout her growing up years.  She played with the Orchestra in High School and College, and was in demand to play for weddings and parties and church meetings.  She was even invited to play her violin on the radio.   She tried to teach me to play when I was young, but I became discouraged and gave up too soon.  I wish I had tried again, later, as I loved listening to her play.  Three of my own children have learned to play string instruments, and I love to hear them play too.

Mums also loved to sing.  She would sing to us children, and dance to the radio as she worked.  She had a nice collection of classical records albums that she often played for us.  She sang with the Choir both at church and with a Community Choral group after we children left home.   She has always delighted in music, and encouraged her children and family to enjoy good music and develop their own musical talents too.

It will be one year ago this coming Sunday that my beautiful mother left this earth and joined the choir of angels in heaven.   I miss her.  We all do.   But we know that she is happy there, playing and singing and helping, teaching, and influencing others for good, both here on this earth and in heaven.  I feel her influence often and am comforted by my beautiful angel mother.