I've always known that my Mother regretted not going to high school. After all, she loved school. She is smart. So smart that despite the twenty eight moves her family made, she was able to test out of sixth grade and skip to seventh. A story that she is proud of and has told me many times. She also told me that she never went to high school because she stayed at home to help my Grandmother.
My Mother was born to dire times, The Great Depression. A time of no frills, no indoor plumbing, oil lamps, sparse heat, hungry bellies, hand me downs and few jobs. Families had to be resourceful and work together to make ends meet. It didn't seem unusual that her place as the oldest was to help take care of her siblings, that she picked tomatoes to earn money to contribute to the house funds, and that she learned to make her own clothing from feed bags. These hardships were generic to the era, or so I thought until recently.
A few months before my Mothers' 88th birthday and out of the blue she shared her truth with me. You see my Mother and a neighbor girl did set out for high school in the fall of 1935. They boarded the train to Haddonfield, a well to do neighborhood where the high school resided. They arrived at the school to find a parade of well dressed students of less modest means. Sadly my Mother and her friend looked upon their own dresses made of feed bags and hand me down shoes with shame and couldn't bring themselves to enter the building where they would surely face the scorn of the other students. To avoid being discovered they cowered in the school yard all day and anxiously waited for the afternoon train home where they regretfully remained.
After hearing my Mothers' truth, I could finally understand why she hated my beloved, worn, artfully patched and embroidered jeans of the seventies, and why it was so important for her to study and pass the GED when she was in her early fifties. I am proud of my Mother, her life and her accomplishments. I just wish she had told me this story in the seventies instead of throwing out those jeans!
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