18+ General Discussion Forum

My Mother: Career Woman and Adventurer

My mother is in some ways a remarkable woman. A college sophomore when she married at 19, she shunned conventional wisdom of the time by completing her degree. Although she went on to have two children after she graduated because she "couldn't think of any think of anything else to do," she went back to school to get an MA in education when I was in junior high. I remember her sitting at the dining table, writing and arranging notecards for a term paper. It was the model I would follow when I soon started writing term papers of my own.

My mother never taught, but instead ended up as a geriatric social worker. In time, with the help of my father, she became a nursing home owner and administrator . She took great care to see that the home was run well and her patients properly cared for, and her facility always scored high marks when it came to inspection time.

I had the good fortune of seeing her in action by helping her out one Christmas eve when she was short staffed. She and I, along with one nurse, took the grave yard shift. We stayed awake all night and cooked and served breakfast for the patients at 6:00 am. My favorite picture of my mom is the one in which she is wearing a business suit, heels, and a hard hat, standing on the site of what was to become the nursing home's new dining hall.

My mother retired when my father did and they moved to Florida to embark on their "second childhood." They joined the theater group, played tennis and golf, and travelled the world playing bridge. Sadly, my father developed Parkinson's Disease, but they continued their adventures for as long as he could hold out. Now that he is severely mentally and physically disabled and requires 24-7 care, my parents are lucky to be able to afford to hire 3 loving and competent aids to care for him round the clock.

My mother spends time with him, of course, but she is also determined to live life as fully as she can while she still can. She takes courses, sings in chorus and travels several times a year to foreign countries. She has a book called "1000 Things to Do Before You Die," and is checking items off one by one. Last year when she turned 75 she visited Costa Rica and zip lined across the rain forest, hundreds of feet above the ground. She says she wants to die (not any time soon) in a helicopter crash over the Himalayas. We can't imagine her going any other way.

Marcia