anna is one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet and her heart is as pure as the sun.
my family is also the most beautiful family in the world.
i'm going to start with my mother. her life story reads like an ancient greek epic, filled with tragedy and despair, love and hope, and a reluctant hero who gives her all for the benefit of mankind's future (in her case it was her family's future). she is super mom! when i was younger, it was hard for me to respect my mother. i don't know how or why, but i treated her like garbage. it is hard for me to admit this, especially to the whole world, but i think it helps me liquidate my conscious, and begin living life to its fullest again. this may sting some, but the world my mother confronted after divorce was very different from the one she was living in while married. in the community we lived in, it was expected that women were to stay in the house and take care of the children while the men would go out and work. few people in our community defied this traditional convention, and those who did were looked on as....different.
my mother could have, as is too often the case, wilted up from such confrontation and given in to the idea that she and her children should be nurtured by the state, or flee into the arms of another man and his estate. she did not. perhaps it was the bit of scottish blood coursing through her veins in those first few, very tough years after divorce that prohibited her from bowing down to such vainglorious thoughts and traditions. my mother instead rallied around her family, sucked it up and went back to college, got a dream job as an elementary school teacher, and moved herself and her children the hell out of the city that had come to represent so much tribulation and tears (to me anyway). the city and people of placerville will always hold a special place in my heart, they took us in as their own, and helped make us the people we are today.
her determination and grit are, to me, more important than anything else on this planet, in terms of lessons learned. children learn by example, and hers is the most exemplary of all. she taught me how to be self-reliant (but not to the point of bumming money off of various relatives), self confident, and how to treat a lady with respect. i am just saddened that, to this very day, i have not done a very good job in returning such love and respect. were it not for my mother, i would have been dead by now. my mother not only pulled her own self up by the bootstraps; she sacrificed much more in helping me to get up off the ground, learn how to be a human being again, and become the best that i can be. she is best mother on the entire planet!
in spite of the fact that we have been taught to correctly fend for ourselves, my siblings and i have yet to finish college, though we are all planning on doing so. it is here that i take the time to properly reprimand my sister, kim, and myself for being such slackers. c'mon girl! get'r done!
