A Woman of Faith: A Tribute to My Mother

The following entry was written by my sister. I'm publishing it here because most people reading this blog, from all over the world, have never met my mother, and she is truly one of the most remarkable women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. My sister knows more details than I do, being 9 years older than I am, and although I knew most of the following, my sister has really captured my mother in a way I could not.

I am my mother's child, and more like her than she wanted to admit for years. I realised it a long time before she did, and remember the day she came in the kitchen and said, "I just realised something." She looked as if she was having an epiphany while eating a bug. "You are not very different from me at your age."
"Yeah, Mom. I know." was my nonchalant, 14 year old reply. She looked horrified, moreso as she discovered that it wasn't a secret and walked away, stunned.

For those of you who know me, and those of you who know me only through my writing, I hope you see a little more of where I am from. It's magical, and this is only half. My Daddy is truly special as well, although in entirely different ways. I was Daddy's girl, as my sister was our mother's. They are both remarkable people and I am ever thankful for all they have given me, not in material goods (we never had many of those), but in love and riches of the spirit. I hope you enjoy my sister's tribute.


A Woman of Faith: A Tribute to My Mother
Journal Entry: Sun May 22, 2005, 6:29 PM, by Aurora Vanderbosch


She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent! --Lord Byron


This poem, written almost two hundred years, captures my mother, almost perfectly. (Um--aside from the bit about "raven tresses"--all women in my family have red hair. )

She was born a little more than half a century ago--adopted by my grandparents--two people who couldn't have children. Her parents were the perfect 50's middle class family. My grandfather worked, my grandmother stayed home and took care of the house, which was full of pretty seascapes, plastic flowers floating in bottles of water, lamps, with glass bases full of seashells, a formica kitchen table, and a couch that was covered with plastic, so it wouldn't get messed up.

My grandmother dressed her in frilly dresses, curled her hair in Shirley Temple ringlets, and bought her encylopedias, and the "We Were There..." series of pseudo-historical books. (Years later, I would read them all...my favorite, being "We Were There with Martha Washington", because Martha Washington was pictured as wearing a beautiful pink satin ballgown, on the cover.)

She started piano lessons, when she was four--and planned to be a concert pianist one day. She also played violin, with the Fullerton Youth Symphony--but had to give violin up, eventually, to concentrate fully on her piano.

She started teaching piano, when she was 11--and after her father died, she began working in the music store where she'd bought all her music for her pupils. (They never asked her how old she was--and she never told them. She was 14.)

By the time she was 9, she'd decided she wanted to be a "lady"--the type she read about, in her "We Were There" books. She gathered that a lady needed to be proficient in all the womanly arts--knitting, crocheting, embroidery, sewing, tatting, weaving, and spinning. She managed to learn all but the last two--since she didn't have access to a loom or a spinning wheel.

She also decided that a lady needed to know poetry and classical literature--so she started reading poetry (never could bring herself to like it--but years later, she managed to instill a love of it in her children, at any rate!), and by the time she was 13, starting high school, she was delighted to discover that the high school bookstore had paperback versions of the classics--and began buying them, one a month, to educate herself. (Her parents weren't intellectuals at all--and didn't do things like go to the library--so she didn't go to the library herself.)

Her first "classical book" was Pilgrim's Progress--her first book purchase. She eventually put together a list of "the classics"--and made her way steadily through them. She would've liked to have learned Latin and Greek--but they weren't taught at her high school. (She did later teach herself Greek, with my Dad, so they could check the veracity of translations of the New Testament, but never got around to Latin.)

She also decided a lady spoke a certain way--with precise diction and carefully chosen words--rather than the folksy way her Oklahoma-transplanted parents spoke--and so she taught herself to talk the way they did "in books"...something she later passed on to her children, by example. (My whole life, people have asked me where I'm from, because I talk "with an accent"--an accent that involves perfectly pronounced words--and is nothing more than me talking like the books I read..same as my mom. )

The summer of her 14th year, she taught herself to play the guitar--and already had very decided tastes, that were quite different from anything anyone she knew liked. While not a hippy--she developed a love of the land--of nature--and a life-long admiration for the American Indian tribes as well as the people who settled out West--most especially, the "mountain men"--trappers and trackers. Her clothing (much to my grandmother's distress) began to reflect this, as she saved up for a doeskin vest and moccasins.

After graduating from high school, she packed up her car with her guitar and a few belongings, and headed off to explore and seek out adventures.

She wound up hanging out with many folk musicians--she lived briefly, with Joan Baez; she hung out with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Mike Nesmith, of the Monkees, and remembers rubbing shoulders with Steve Martin, who was then trying to make a living as a banjo player and tap dancer, rather than as a comedian.

It was at one of these folk clubs that she first saw my father. She decided then and there that she was going to marry him--and told her friends to leave without her that evening--she'd get a ride home with him. Dad had sworn off women completely 2 weeks before--and says he wasn't all that impressed with Mom that night...but it wasn't long before they were planning their wedding.

Mom and Dad wanted to get married in native American doeskin outfits made by my mom, just a simple ceremony in her mom's backyard...but their respective mothers kept wanting to plan something more elaborate--and frustrated by all the fuss, one night after Dad got paid--with $20 burning a hole in his pocket, he suggested they drive to Vegas, and get married.

And so it was--that a 6 weeks after they'd met--mom, at age 18, Dad, a mere 21--they were standing in a small wedding chapel in Vegas, saying their vows, having woken up a preacher, to marry them that night. He said that he'd married lots of people in his life...but there was something special about her and my dad--and that he knew their marriage would work out. They celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary last month--so far, so good!

My father was in the National Guard, early in his marriage, and while he was there, he met someone who was a Jehovah's Witness, who talked about God as if He was a personal friend...and my father was intrigued--so he and my mom began studying with him. (My father had been raised Christian Scientist...my mother had been sent to Baptist Sunday School classes.)

After studying with him--they decided that he couldn't support his beliefs with scripture--but they continued studying on their own, and with my granny--and so it was, that in the first year of their marriage, they were baptized, and became members of the Church of Christ.

Now, my mom had never really liked kids...but she had very firm beliefs about how children should be raised (bear in mind that she was 18, when she decided this!)--and after careful consideration decided that the best thing she could do to change the world, as a Christian, was to have children--and so--a year later, I was born--effectively putting "paid" to their dream of homesteading in Alaska... Two years later, my brother Tom was born...then, seven years after that, my sister, Willow, and three years after that--my brother, Landon.

Although my parents were little more than kids themselves--I can remember that even in their early 20's--they would bring home stray teenagers, who needed a place to stay, for a few weeks, a few months, or a year or so--and help get them straightened out, and build up their self-confidence. There's never been a time when I can't remember my mother taking someone under her wing, and helping them out.

Mom and Dad had eclectic tastes, and in the early years of their marriage, hunted together (both were accomplished archers); went on mineral collecting trips together (they have hair-raising stories about trips into mines!), played and sang folk music together--and, of course, studied the Bible together.

Our family almost always had animals--and the most cantakerous of them--the ones that HATED everyone else--adored Mom. At one point, we had a flock of geese--geese which would chase anyone (including my dad!) who went near them...but when my mother went outside--they'd all spread their wings wide, and race towards her, with a curious yearning note in their honks. (Really!--I'm NOT making this up! ) She would walk towards them (and she's a little bitty woman--just five feet tall, weighing about 100 pounds), talking and cooing to them, calling them all by name, and they'd surround her, stretching out their necks towards her, each one vying for her attention.

She was an adventurous cook, in her early years of marriage--and one night, she decided to make cloverleaf rolls. The biscuits came out beautifully browned--but hard as a rock--literally. To my mom's disgust, my dad fished one of the rolls out of the trash, wrote "Home Cooking" on it, with one of his Bic Accountant Fine Point pens, and kept it as a paperweight. He loved to tell visitors the story, and then pull out the roll and drop it on the floor, to show how hard it was. We all thought it was hilarious--our dad's finest hour. Mom was not so amused!

She raised all of us to be strong, independent, to think for ourselves, to pursue whatever interested us, to believe we could achieve anything we wanted to, to stand up for what we believe and never knuckle in to peer pressure, to always share what we learn with others, and to be tolerant, patient, non-judgmental and loving towards everyone, and most of all, to measure our behavior and our lives--not by how much better we were than anyone else--but by how Christ-like we were. (Talk about high standards--no danger of ever getting a swelled head, that's for sure!! ) By example--she and my father taught us that we would never have all the answers--and that we should always keep questioning that which we've been taught--and that learning anything, is a lifelong pursuit, not something you achieve after a few months or years of study.

We were always as poor as church mice, wearing second-hand clothes, and eating the food we grew in our garden, or the food Dad hunted for us--but we always had love and laughter in our various homes (after my father became a minister, we moved twice a year, every year of my life, until high school--since what Dad liked best, was helping churches get on their feet).

When I was in fifth grade, my mother was diagnosed with malignant melanoma--and given 6 months to live, if they amputated her leg at the hip and started chemotherapy immediately--6 weeks to live, if she didn't do that.

She calmly decided to pursue herbal therapy (through the Bio-Medical Center "Hoxsey clinic" [link] in Tijuana), rather than traditional treatment--a treatment, I am happy to report, which left her with both legs, and alive and well more than 25 years later. Not once, in the five years of her herbal treatment, was she anything other than her usual optimistic, joyous self. It was during her first months of treatment at the Hoxsey clinic, that she realized she was unexpectedly pregnant with my brother Landon--so she was being treated for cancer, at the same time as she was expecting the last child in our family.

She never made it through college (although she did go to a community college for two years, when I was in high school, to study accounting, and hopefully be able to get better paying jobs)--and yet, is better read than most people I know. She has had a variety of jobs over the years--ranging from working at the Estes model rocket factory, to working in a kennel, to working for a company that sold solar panels, to teaching. In recent years, she has taught English to local Hispanics, taught reading to prison inmates, and announced for dog shows. She and my father sell dulcimers at local folk festivals, and she teaches dulcimer to many of the people who buy dulcimers from them. She and my father would dearly love to be missionaries, but all of us kids have argued passionately against that (we don't want them somewhere it would be difficult to find them--they'd be likely to go off in the bush and live somewhere inaccessible, given half a chance! )

In her spare time, she is an avid gardener (has been, all her adult life) and continues to play, sing and perform folk music, with my father.

Perhaps the single most remarkable thing about my mother--is that in addition to completely inventing herself--she has never ceased to grow, spiritually, as well as intellectually. She and my father taught all of their children to be grateful to the Lord, in all circumstances--and whatever happened to us, (and as many bad things happened in our family as in most,) her example was to be grateful for the bad things, as well as the good--and to consider the bad things to be blessings in disguise--opportunities for us to grow and become better people. There is a light that shines in her--and the older she gets--the younger she seems to grow--and the thinner her skin gets--so that the light shines out more brightly than before, until one day, there will be nothing left of her but the light of pure joy and love.

She is truly the most beautiful woman I have ever known--and has been a beacon to me, my entire life. She has been my best friend for 38 years--and is a constant reminder of how I want to live my life.