EDGEWATER, Fla. -- Happy Birthday to my mother who turned 89 on Monday (Oct. 27). She has been a Realtor for commercial property and insurance salesperson as long as I can remember.
It was five years ago at the riped old age of 84 that she finally closed her large office and moved it into her home, which now is my home. We both maintain our real estate licenses and she still does some real estate deals.
Her knowledge of the craft is still as sharp as it ever was and people still call for her advice about purchases they are contemplating. Her gift of gab also remains and she can and does help anyone who asks.
Mom enjoys talking to people and they to her. She is an opinionated Scorpio and uses her knowledge to back up her opinions. She enjoys a good back and forth with a friend.
If it weren’t for my Mom, I don’t know where I’d be today. She made sure her only child always had what she needed, but not everything she wanted.
If it weren’t for my Mom, I don’t know where I’d be today. She made sure her only child always had what she needed, but not everything she wanted.
Sometimes the unwanted thing was her idea of how to live my life but that’s normal between kids and their parents.
She was the driving force of her life and if she had not pushed herself and my Dad we wouldn’t have had our first house in Brookfield, Conn., where I spent my childhood until I was 16 years old, when the two of us moved to Florida.
Although we don’t always agree, she taught me so much over the years I can’t even list here what exactly all the lessons were. Sometimes, I went and did my own thing and it turned out badly, but I learned from that, too.
Mom also learned that she was not always right about my life. We wanted different things.
I never liked real estate and was more into medical things, which landed me at Bert Fish Hospital in 1976, and ended up with me being director of medical records at Ocean View Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
I know the fact that I did not follow in her footsteps was a disappointment to her but I had to follow my own path. Mom is a clone of her aunt, who also was in real estate and insurance and lived to be 104. They looked alike and thought alike.
The two of them even went to Washington, D.C., during the war and worked at decoding messages. They returned and her aunt spent her life working and taking care of her father, who died one month shy of 99 and helping her widowed sister raise her four kids.
It hasn’t been an easy life for Mom, but she at least spent it working at what she enjoyed. She is admired and befriended by many who have called or written to wish her a happy day.
As for me, I will be making one of her favorite dinners, pork roast. Best present I can give someone who has everything already that really matters in life.
Happy birthday, Mom. I love you!