Sometimes it is difficult to find a topic to write about and then to enlarge it into an article. I like sayings that I read on different sites and many of them give me insight for a new article.

Sometimes, someone will say something to me and that starts the article. Other times, I hear a line on a news story or a soap opera and they are adequate for a story. Many other times, I remember what a family member may have said years ago. Today is Mom’s twenty- eight anniversary of her passing. She often told me stories of her younger years and how poor the family was. Those make good stories about life then in about 1912 and on. In 1912, she was five years old and her memory was good for all incidents from then.

She was one of seven children, her father died when she was young and her mother was widowed with seven kids at her age of I guess about less than forty. According to my calculations, my grandmother who I did not know, because she died a year before I was born which was about 1933 for her death. That would have made her birth date in about 1885. She loved to dress up even with her meager income. She ran a little grocery store and the family I believe lived near it or behind it. I think near it. They had a telephone and were the only neighbors to have one. She needed it to run her little grocery store business. Her name was Eta Zalis Weinstein. She let some of the neighbors use her phone for outgoing calls and charged them the nickel or pennies the call cost. After a while, it got too much with neighbors running in and out of the home and she stopped them from doing it.We all now have phones in every room of the house and even in our purses or pants’ pockets.

They had a big and beautiful dog named Pal. I have related this before, every afternoon, somehow this smart dog, would go out the door or someone let him out and he would walk to the streetcar stop and waited for my Mom, who must have been his favorite child there and waited for her streetcar to bring her home.  They would walk together the few blocks to their home. This was some smart dog, he sensed the time. It is hard to believe, but it was true, she said.

Times were so different then, that we cannot imagine their trying days with a great lack of income. They survived and were a loving group of seven kids, my grandmother, the dog, and their meager life style. They all had respect with for another and were devoted to each another.

I never ever and I am sorry, I did not, ever ask Mom how she and Dad met. She was twenty and he was thirty-four when they married in a very lovely wedding and she wore a gorgeous gown. They went on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls and that was something great in those times. Dad was well to do then, but lost all during the Depression which followed two years after they married. They had a great devotion to one another and on his birthday, he always bought her a small gift. He said it was because she was his ‘gift.’ He wrote rhyming poetry which I do too and for every event, he would write a poem to the person.

When people heard he did that, they would always come to him to write a poem for one of their family. We had grape vines in the back of our house and he was famous for his wine making which he did in the cellar. If he liked you a lot, you were the recipient of a bottle of his special homemade red wine. Joe’s wine was a big hit in the family, especially my mom’s family. It was hard work, as I look back and can see him doing it. I do not know how he accomplished it, but all the wine drinkers in the family and friends too, clamored for his bottle of wine. He bought pretty empty bottles from somewhere and filled them with the wine.

He himself was not a drinker, but on Friday nights, he drank a small glass to celebrate the Sabbath. That was it; he never drank in between those Friday nights. Mom and I never did drink it at all.

When Mom died on October 19, 1984, she left me a letter in her safety deposit box. It said “you were the rainbow of my and Dad’s life from the moment you were born.” This nice sentiment had been assigned to me and even though, I know I deserved it, it shall stay with me for the rest of my life. Mom, herself, was my rainbow.

I have a friend who on his Facebook is always posting pictures of rainbows and astronomy pictures too. I shall look today on it and see if Mom has sent me a special rainbow today, October 19^th. When I go out and have something to do that especially may not be real perfect; I wear the ring she left me, so she is there looking down and protecting me and still showing her constant love, she had for me.

Dad gave her that ring, so he is there too, still taking care of their ‘child.’ On her gravestone, appears “she was a woman of valor.” That she was and always will be in my memories. When I see a rainbow, Mom, I know you sent it to me.