Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Three Things about Your Mother

It's the day before Mother's Day, so of course Randy Seaver has us thinking about Mom for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

(1) Sunday is Mother's Day in the USA, and usually a time for memories and gratitude to our special birth person.

(2) For this week's SNGF, tell us three things about your mother that are special and memorable  to you.

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

My mother was Myra Roslyn (Meckler) Sellers Preuss (1940–1995).  She was born in Brooklyn and lived in New York, Maryland, Florida, California, Australia, Florida (again), Texas, and Florida (redux).  She may even have stayed for a while in Chicago.  She married my father, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr. (1935–2019), in 1961 in Miami, Florida.  I am her oldest child, with a younger brother and sister.

1.  Like Randy's mother, my mother was also very smart.  Even though she flunked out of Florida State University her one semester there (her only passing grade was in Physical Education), I think she was going through an "I'm out of high school and on my own" party phase.  She was conversational in more than one language, she was a whiz at crossword puzzles, and she was great at bookkeeping.  She was big on learning and also was knowledgeable about history, literature, geography, sports, and many other subjects.

2.  My mother was big on family history way before it became popular.  She knew both of her grandfathers and one great-grandfather (everyone else from those generations had passed away before she was born).  She and her mother told stories about family members all the time, so I grew up knowing everyone's names, birthdays, and marriage anniversaries.  I knew who her favorite (Harvey) and least favorite cousins were.  She kept track of my father's relatives better than he did.  If it hadn't been for her, I probably would not have gotten into genealogy.

3.  My mother was a force of nature.  Serene?  Oh, no, not my mother.  She could get incredibly angry about something, but then she vented and it was done.  She told you how she felt, but she didn't hold grudges.  She could be blunt, but you didn't have to wonder about where you stood with her.  (I might have gotten that from her.)  She was also very giving and forgiving.  She took people in like stray animals and gave them a place to stay.  (I might have gotten that from her also.)  My half-sister and her mother (my father's first wife) lived with us for a while; how many women would do that?