Happy birthday to my mom...

On a snowy, cold day like this, Betty Fish would've been sitting on the marble slab atop the radiator in our ancient house in Collins, Iowa, reading a book, looking out the window, keeping her butt warm!

And i guess not a lot else would have happened. i don't recall ever making a huge fuss about her birthday, turning 40 (i'd have been 5) or 50 (me, 15). Today, she'd be 86 (me, 51, tho that'll change in a couple of months). If you're reading this, take note that i was my mom's oldest of three children. Back in the day.


Betty Fish was a stitch. She had great sayings for her kids. "Kiss my feet" was an all-around slam. "People in jail are wantin' out" was the response to "i want....". 


She was the only one of four children in her Gordonsville, Tenn., family to graduate from high school, then she went to Nashville to attend business school. She was working as a keypunch operator at General Shoe Co. when she met my dad and eventually married him. i was born, someone had to go to work, so they moved back to my dad's family farm in Iowa. It was colder there, for sure.


Mom was a great reader, a liberal in the Al Gore mold (his family is from the same county she's from) and a feminist, encouraging me to work and get a career. i know from the clothes she kept and the pictures i've seen that she always looked lovely and dressed wonderfully in her working days. 


i owe my mother more than i can say here. i know i disappointed her in some ways, marrying at 20 (tho she later saw the good in this), dressing like a slob most of the time. But i think she liked following my journalism career and adventures (except for maybe the motorcycles). 


Mom died too young, at 73, in 1997, of cancer. Every day, i wish she were still here.