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Ode To My Mom
She looked up into my blue eyes (I was 6'2”, she was 5'3”) and said the most courageous and scary words (courageous for her, scary for me) I have ever heard. They were:
“Have a good life, Jimmy.”
The occasion was my departure for the U.S. Army in September, 1966. I was 19 years old. She had delivered me to the bus depot in downtown Bakersfield and the start of a 3-year journey that would lead to the Army Induction Center in L.A., Basic Training at Fort Ord, Military Police School at Fort Gordon, Georgia, a year in Saigon, Vietnam, and 1 _ years in Heidelberg, Germany. Her words ended my childhood and began my adulthood.
She was born Emily Ellen Stedman (they called her Ellen or Ellie; we called her Mom, then Ma) in 1918 and she died in 1991 at age 73. She worked the canneries in Monterey in the 1950s and the old Corky's Restaurant on Niles Street in the 1960s and early 1970s. She was married to my Dad for 28 years, then eloped with her high school sweetheart for 20 years of marital bliss. She modeled unconditional love, the Golden Rule, hard work, humor, the gift of gab, and great parenting. Yes, she was pretty special.
And so, here I am now, at age 61, feeling pretty confident that I obeyed my Mom's words when she said:
“Have a good life, Jimmy”
Submitted for “Show Mom Some Love” feature by:
Jim Burroughs