by Little Roman

Created on: October 21, 2007

I still can remember when my mother would hold my little hand and drag me through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. I must have been about six years old, the city look so big. My mother and I would take the big transit bus to the large Sear department store building. As she would do some shopping there and she also worked at that Sear store. When your six everything looks big. I think she liked to show me off to her co-workers, she was proud of me and my other two brothers.

My mother enjoyed going to our school programs when we were in elementary school. My mother had a strong love for us but wasn't afraid to discipline us, if it meant spanking us. This was the sixties and there was no Oprah Winfrey on television. You didn't hear about a parent drowning their kids or child predators looking for children. It was a simple life back then, the sixties and seventies was a good time to be a child.

My mother would have us pray every night before we went to bed. My mother and father would give us our goodnight kiss. This kiss made me feel safe before I fell a sleep, the little things like this are priceless memoirs in my life. My mother made sure we ate together as a family at the table and that is something that doesn't happen with all families today. I hated baths as a child, I could never figure out how dirty the water would get after playing outside, but that was something that mother would make sure that we had our bath every night. Mother also made sure we were at church every Sunday, dressing us in our Sunday best cloths. My mother kept us in line, but we could see her love as she always tried to raise us to have good values.

I remember my mother picking up my older brother's high school band uniform from the laundry and they would tell her that her uniform wasn't ready yet. She liked that comment, she liked the idea that she looked young for her age. My mother looked young throughout most of her life, until time has no mercy on your aging, but mother would always be young at heart.

I have seen her pain through the years as my mother watched her sons grow up, sometimes we would not making the right choices in life. Sometime she would tell us or just let us live and learn. My mother's pain in losing her oldest son, my beloved brother. She has been a very strong woman and heaven holds a place for my mother. I think of how many people were raised by their mother for a short period of time or no mother at all. I'll always be grateful for my mother's living years upon this earth. I have been blessed to see her now that I am a man in my late forties. In my prayers at night, missing my mother's kiss, I thank god she's been there for me all these years

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