Average Jane Remembers Her Mom

If my mother were still alive, today would be her birthday. I won’t say which one it would have been; she was always touchy about her age. She’s been gone almost 10 years now, but I still think about her all the time. This year I thought I’d share some photos and anecdotes about her.

This first photo was taken when she was in college. She went to Purdue, was active in the theater department, and sang in a variety band. She also modeled, and this may have been either a modeling head shot or a publicity photo for one of the plays she was in.

She married my dad in 1965, and left for her honeymoon dressed in the latest fashion. I love the gardenia corsage and the hat box.

As a young newlywed, she worked as a newspaper reporter. After I was born, she stayed at home until my sister and I were old enough to start school.

Later, she ran an advertising and public relations firm with my grandmother. She had a long career in advertising, working both for other agencies and on her own, writing and producing television, radio and print ads.

When I was in my early 20s, my mother learned how to play bass and ended up touring with several different rock cover bands throughout the Midwest. I don’t exactly know how she made the leap from "Turn down that awful racket!" to learning bass, but she always enjoyed performing.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer in the mid-1990s. She’d been a lifelong smoker and her addiction to cigarettes resisted all her attempts to quit. Even as she was dying in intensive care, she said she still craved nicotine so much that she thought about cigarettes constantly. If that isn’t enough reason to quit (or never start smoking at all), I don’t know what would be.

Our relationship was complicated. It’s occurred to me that I might never have started this blog if my mother had been around to read it. Still, I can’t help but be impressed by the job she did raising two strong daughters, succeeding in more than one male-dominated career field, and living life largely on her own terms. So, happy birthday, Mom.