Lou and David Sears

It’s been very difficult lately to come up with a new idea for a children’s book. My mind continuously goes to my mother’s story. She has had an interesting life and has made it through several difficult times with grace.

My mother’s mother (my grandmother Marie) was married to an alcoholic who would frequently take off and leave his young family. Grandma Marie couldn’t take care of mom and sent her to be raised by her grandparents in California. Mom remembers being sent packages from time to time from her mom. They were usually dresses or skirts that her mom had made for her. (She’s wearing one of them in the photo.) She remembers other kids at school teasing her about being “given away” by her mother and how much it hurt her.

Great Grandpa Curry was a strict, cranky man who didn’t believe girls needed an education, so Mom was made to quit school after 8th grade. Mom said she cried and cried. She loved school and didn’t want to quit. Soon after, Mom was required to work as a migrant worker following the various seasonal crops up and down the state. Mom said they often lived in tents with dirt floors and worked in the fields from sunrise to sunset. She said much of this time is a blur.

When Mom was about 17 she came back to Missouri to live with her mother in Leadwood, Missouri. Mom remembers walking to the post office and boys sitting on the steps whistling at her. Our dad, Marvin, was one of those boys. He worked up the courage to ask Mom out on a date. Dad was so taken with Mom that he proposed after three weeks and they ran off to Paragould, Arkansas to get married. (There was no waiting period for marriage licenses in Arkansas at the time.) They moved to St. Louis so Dad could find work. Exactly nine months and twenty days later I was born. Debra, Marilyn, Sharon, and Daniel came soon after.

This is the story I want to tell for many reasons. Mom is not doing well and is now being seen by Hospice. I want Mom’s great-grandchildren to know about her life and the difficulties she had to face. She has always been one strong lady and needs to draw upon that strength to make it through this last stage of her life.