
My wife, Lyn, and I reside in the house that my mom and dad had built in the late 1950s. It’s special for me to recall Mom standing at the kitchen window and eating her lunch. She would take a short break from what she was doing to make a small sandwich and then slowly eat it and watch whatever she could see out the window.
The kitchen was modernized a few years ago, and the large appliances were replaced. Some of the old pots and toaster are still used often. I remember Mom telling me that our toaster was a wedding present to her and Dad when they married.
During the time when I was a young boy, Mom had yet learned to drive. We walked to the bus stop at Madison Avenue and Morgan Drive and the suburban took us Downtown to go shopping.
When mom started learning to drive, she would practice in our driveway, during which time I was instructed to stay far away. A few years after she obtained her license, I was walking down Madison and saw her coming. I waved as she passed, but she was concentrating on the road and didn’t see me.
I have always remembered that and made special effort to help new drivers understand how to keep their eyes moving when we had the driving school in Broad Ripple and worked with new school bus drivers.
Mom was a member of a sorority for many years. I was visiting former Southport High School classmate Shirley Zimmer the other day. Our moms were in the sorority. Shirley and I reminisced about some of the club’s parties and trips. One of the other members – Mrs. Goss – was a longtime friend of Mom’s. I remember going to her house and playing with her children.
It was cool that years later the Goss family purchased the house next to us. The memories start to flow when I occasionally see one of the Goss boys. The trees that either my dad or Mr. Goss planted in our yards are now big and beautiful.
After my sister, Kathy, got older, Mom got a job at a card shop in The Greenwood Mall. It was lots of fun to stop in and see her.
In Mom’s later years she downsized and moved to Crestwood Village. Several months after moving in she approached the manager and asked if anyone in her building liked to have fun. As the manager explained this to me, I recalled that Mom had hosted neighborhood “happy hours” a couple of times a week for several years.
Mom was soon hooked up with three or four other ladies, and they started having fun. Mom was the only one who still had a license and a car. They got around quite a bit ... so I often told them to “behave.”