TRQ

I'm stealing this idea from Louise over at The Chattering Crow.  Read her list about her mother, because it's great.  And that's not a cheap American compliment either.

I write a lot about my mother, but it's a pretty one-dimensional portrait I create here, because I tend to talk about her when she's being her gloriously eccentric self.  But she's so, so much more than that.  So here's the rest of her.  Or if not the rest of her, at least more of her.

--She was an only child and an only grandchild on her father's side.

--When she was little, she used to sneak over to the neighbor's house where the neighbor fed her tiny spoonfuls of coffee--in spite of my grandmother's insistence that was "against our religion."

--She was named after her grandmother (Patti) and her mother (Louise).  Except her grandmother wasn't really named Patti originally.  My great-grandmother re-named herself when she left the Midwest and kicked over the traces of her old life.

--She survived a fire as a child that burned the family home to the ground.

--She broke her back as a child and has suffered from back trouble more or less for the rest of her life.  Doesn't stop her.  Put her in a city (preferably NewYork) and she can out-walk any of her companions.

--Every spring she decides to take up gardening, which means she buys plants.  Icelandic poppies usually.  And then she waits for my dad to plant them.

--She loves, loves, loves animals.  The pet population at our home was always fluid, because she never said no when we brought something home.

--She once threw a party at our house and wore a turban and rings on her toes (literally) just for the hell of it.  She was--you know--like freaking Elizabeth Taylor that way.

--She has raised thousands and thousands of dollars for the Provo Boys and Girls Club.

--If you're an underdog, my mother is so in your corner.

--Speaking of which, she once challenged the town bully to a fight after school.  He never showed up.

--Her parents sent her to live with her Aunt Blanche in Utah when she was fourteen because my grandmother thought the schools were better her.  My mother missed Wyoming every single moment she was away.

--My mother has always had a taste for jewels.

--I frequently had nightmares as a child.  My mother was always a constant and soothing presence when they happened.

--She used to wear sunglasses in church.  Like Jackie O.

--She still decorates for Christmas, even though she's in her eighties.

--She knows how to swear better than my father does.

--She can never say no to a card game.

--She reads more than practically anybody else I know, excluding Betsy Burton.

--She sleeps with an electric blanket.  In July.

--She is superstitious.  Truly.

--She loves me.  In spite of my hair.