My Mom's Astrological Chart

Mom's Poems (A Weary Vessel)

A few months ago, my sister Louise sent me a box of my mother's things, things Mom had saved for decades. Some things are merely of interest like the hand-written receipt for our property in Vermont, while others are real heart-tuggers, like the hand-drawn birthday and Mother's Day cards I had given her and which she had carted around the country since my childhood. Among the treasures I've found—and I have not yet made it all the way through the box!—are a few of her poems, including some I'd never before read. Louise was considerate enough to type them up from Mom's faded and old-fashioned cursive.

Mom's Immediate Ancestors (1880-1910)

Rarely, one gets to look at a photo taken in past decades and marvel at how contemporary someone looks. Grandpa's hair and outfit are too 19th Century to mistake him for a modern-day youth. But his expression of youthful optimism, unsuppressed even by the necessity of keeping still for a long exposure time, shines through the years.

Mom's Childhood (1912-1937)

In the first years of the twentieth century, cameras were still too bulky—and babies too wriggly—to make infant photography practical. Mom's first portrait was taken when she was about 1½ years old.

Looking for Love (1937-1948)

By the end of the 1930s, the Depression was easing but the clouds of war were looming on the horizon. In 1938, the Browns sold the house in Pawlet and Mom and her mother used the money to spend the winter in Florida. The following year they returned. That would be Mom's last vacation with her mother. Mary Virginia died of complications from diabetes in 1940.

Edna Mae Brown Cilwa, Obituary

My mother, Edna Mae Brown/Cilwa, died March 11, 2006 at 4:15 pm EST of abdominal cancer. She was 93.