Happy Birthday to a Great Lady...My Mama

Today , October 5th is my mother's birthday. She would have been 79 years young. An awe inspiring wife, mother and friend to every one that was lucky enough to have her cross their path. She was a stay at home mom until I was around 12 years old...but "stay at home" doesn't begin to describe her.

She had so many talents it is hard to choose where to begin. She could sew anything like a dress designer, she could even reupholster a couch. She made faux fur coats to sell in a local beauty shop and made all the cheerleader, majorette and drill team uniforms for our high school. She made all of the evening gowns my sister needed (unlike me she was very popular and was always on homecoming or Valentine court.) She could stretch a dime...even took a class called "Stretch and Sew" where she learned to make a suit jacket for my father and learned how to stretch a dime even further. My most vivid memories of my mother are her perched over her Singer sewing machine with a glass of iced tea in a Styrofoam coozie (remember them, before the ones they have now..with a plastic rim with slots cut all around for the glass to fit in?) She always had her ashtray nearby (one she had made in ceramics) and a Kool Mild would be smoldering away.

This was back when smoking was still socially correct...we have pictures of her at Sunday school parties with her Pacesetters class...sitting in another friend's husband's lap with an ashtray the size of a small pizza perched on her lap and both of them puffing away.

My mother never drank..not ever in her life. Her father was a terrible alcoholic and a terrible father that abandoned her and her brother early on in her life. Alcohol was never in our house and her only vice was the Kool Milds (formerly Kents) and Wrigley's Doublemint gum. She could pop that gum like a sista and I always wanted to learn how she did it. I never did, but the smell of Doublemint gum reminds me immediately of of my mother even to this day. She was frugal and when we would go grocery shopping at the A&P in East Point on Thursdays...she would buy for the weeks worth of groceries and write the check over for spending money . I vividly remember that every week she made the check out for $60.00. She fed a family of five and gave us every thing we needed that she couldn't make or sew and we lived in the most wonderful way...a house full of love and full of friends.

My mom had her fan club.

From the egg man that brought us fresh eggs every week and sat to talk with my mom at our kitchen table for an hour, to the man who owned the Gulf station (remember Gulf Stations?) and would spend literally hours at our house talking to my mom and bringing her free dishes from his gas station. When I was young, if you filled up with gas you got a serving set, just a few dollars and you got a plate. I still have some of these dishes today..white octagon shaped plates that remind me of my mother just like a stick of Doublemint gum.

My dad's best friend from high school and the Navy had married and settled in East Point as well and he was probably her BIGGEST fan. He would come over and they would sit at the kitchen table for hours while my mom cooked or cleaned or sewed and they would puff their cigs, drink their iced tea in coozies and gossip and chat.

I don't think my mother ever made an enemy...it wasn't in her nature and her character was huge...I never saw her angry, never heard an argument between my parents and never met anyone that didn't love and admire her.

Oh, us three kids made her angry from time to time...but it was always totally OUR fault. Like the time my brother, around 4 years old told one of our older neighbors that his dad was a fighter pilot and wouldn't be home for the holidays, or the time I cut off my best friend's hair with the hedge clippers...Hey! She ASKED me to do it, I just complied. We had our share of whippings...always delivered by my father when he trudged home after work. The worst thing you could imagine to hear from my mom when you were a kid was " You just wait til your FATHER gets home!"

She was always the room mom at the school, the PTA president, Booster club President and just the mom that every one wanted to be around.

I remember when my brother was in high school and came home with some friends and smarted off to my mother...she said to him "Don't embarrass yourself in front of your friends...I can still take you down." He smirked at her and said "Yeah, RIGHT." He was pinned to the floor in four seconds, much to the delight of his high school buddies. He got up and brushed himself and his pride off and scoffed at her that he hadn't been "READY." She quickly asked if he was ready now? To his misfortune he said he was...and was pinned in under three seconds.

I'll never forget that, neither will my brother OR his friends!

As time marched on, I became a snotty Junior in high school who had finally reached her pinnacle...a varsity cheerleader, first chair in the concert band and was coming into my own.

I began to rethink the whole "Mama" issue and in my small mind thought she was holding me back from being the great star of high school that I had suddenly been destined to become.

When she took me to school I made her drop me off a block away. I made fun of her being such a fuddy buddy and thought in my small mind that she was an idiot.

Two weeks before I started my Senior year in high school I went to cheer leading camp. The third day in, the news came in...Elvis Presley had died. If you are from my generation, it was bigger news than when Michael Jackson died. I was devastated. I went to a phone booth and called my mother...who just last week I had made fun of for crossing her legs when she sneezed...now having borne three kids, one of them a C section, I can't jump on a trampoline without wetting my pants.

But suddenly I needed to talk to my mother...I slumped in the floor of the phone booth and cried like a baby. I told her that I just wanted to call and tell her that I in fact loved her beyond belief and was so sorry I had been such a bitch lately. She blew it all off and said she had never doubted my love and loved me beyond any comprehension of the word.

I felt much better after purging my "Bitchiness" and when she came to pick me up the next day from camp , she never mentioned my breakdown but acted as if it had never happened.

The next day, my sister,who was married by this time and my mother and I went shopping for school clothes at a store who sold name brands for under retail prices (That's my MOM) and when I was in the dressing room waiting for my mom to bring me another size of jeans I heard my sister call out frantically. I came out of the dressing room to see my mom with a glazed look on her face and as she fell over, she reached for the rack that held clothes and pulled it over with her.

She opened her eyes once and in that short moment, I knew she was dying. I was a 17 year old kid, but I knew that was a look I had never seen and hopefully would never see again.

I believe she was dead before my sister ever started mouth to mouth or compressions. The 911 call was made and as my sister and I followed the ambulance to Grady Hospital, I knew what the out come would be.

When we got to the hospital, my dad was sitting in a room by himself making the phone calls.

She was gone.

She had just had a physical the past week and seemed to be in good health, but had suffered a brain aneurysm that no one knew about and was gone in a few short seconds.

I thank the Lord for taking her quickly and I thank my conscience for letting me have the opportunity to tell her how much I loved her...when it mattered the most.

The days that followed were a fog of emotions and outpouring of love for this wonderful and fabulous person that I was lucky enough to call MAMA.

The church was overflowing...a bigger crowd has never been seen in that church to this day I am sure.

She went quickly and she went home to Heaven.

It took me over twenty years to get over my grief and despair of losing her to the point that I could think of her without breaking down immediately.

If I can be half the wife and mother that she was, my life will be a success.

I love you Mama, still think of you daily and am grateful that God chose YOU to me my mama. You were beautiful inside and out, revered by many and loved by many more.

You and Diddy are together again...we all hope to join you one day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY "ANN MASSEY LEACH" .... You just made another tear fall down my cheek, but it is a sweet and heartfelt one, and know that you are missed here very much every day that I am on this earth.

Your daughter and your admirer...forever, Kelly

The first picture of her with her legs crossed was made the day she picked me up from cheerleading camp. She made that purse she is holding, made the entire outfit she is wearing and made me the person I am today. Thanks Mama...

Til next time...a very grateful COTTON...formerly but still a LEACH.