Memories of my Mom

Diane Lindman Brown

As I think of early childhood memories my mind visualizes a fruit tree laded with beautiful and fragrant fruit.

Some of my early memories include trips to the corner meat market with Mom and Jerry, laying in bed on weekend mornings with Mom and Dad sharing little coffee candies wrapped in pretty shinny colored papers, a trip to the Salt Lake Temple to become a "forever family", peanut butter sandwiches parachuted in white napkins out the back window (from 3 stories up) so we kids could keep playing in the backyard, Mom bathing her babies in the kitchen sink and dressing them on the kitchen counter after lotioning, q-tipping ears, and finishing up with combing the babies hair with a curl in the middle of the babies head. It was a daily ritual.

Mom hanging the wet laundry on a clothes line outside our bedroom window (some days in dried completely other days in was still damp when she hauled it back in thru the window because the fog rolled in).

Mom's fresh laundered sheets smell so nice. When she could not longer hang out laundry on the clothes line because Dad bought her a gas clothes dryer, she mangled (Ironed the sheets and pillow cases!!!!!)

Mom was a great cook, with lemon pies, chocolate cakes for Dad, even chocolate eclairs!

Mom always looked beautiful on Sundays as she led the congregational singing. She always looked slim and trim no one knew she was expecting Suzanne she was so trim. Boy, did the sisters in the ward have a surprise the Sunday Jerry came to church and told everyone he had a new baby sister.

Mom was sure a great sport to vacation alone in the mountains near Lake Tahoe with new baby and 3 kids while Dad worked the week days back home.(no car to run to the local stores, had to pack all the essentials as well as all the food.)
Moving to Utah was a huge task for both Mom and Dad. Being in different states was challenging for husband and wife as well as children.

Great sacrifices for the their childrens future benefit. I can't imagine what it must have felt like for Mom to move into her dream home with only 3 bedrooms, 1/2 bath and laundry area complete-what an adventure that must have been cooking on a camp stove and doing dishes in the deep laundry sink.

What great pioneers the folks are and what a great example of faith and obedience to refrain from going into debt. (Not to mention working together for years to accomplish the building and finishing of a lovely home that we all enjoy visiting.

Mom surprised me royally when she secretly made a beautiful emerald green dress for a high school dance my first year at Olympus. It was a girls choice (the only ones I attended for the most part ). Mom even bought shoes and had them dyed to match the dress. I had absolutely no idea she had been sewing a dress for me!!! (She has always been so good a keeping secrets!)

She had the dress hanging in the closet in her bedroom, somehow I went looking for something to show her and ask to borrow it when I saw the dress- it still did not even enter my mind that the dress was for me. Sorry Mom, I had absolutely no intension of discovering your surprise early! What a dissappointment for you!!!! You'll never know how very beautiful I felt that evening!! Thanks for all your hard work and wonderful thoughtfulness!!!!

Then there was my wedding day, Mom sat beside me thru the temple endowment session in those days the session were live and we moved from room to room. I remember leaning over and whispering to her in the 2nd room "When am I going to get married?" That was 40 years ago April 4th.My, how time flies by on wings of lighting. Thanks Mom for all these and many other sweet and lovely memories .