Update (Patreon)

Thank you for all the support.  It has been a hard week, but I'm glad I didn't have a knee jerk reaction and shut down the Patreon. I just felt so overwhelmed by life, but it meant everything that so many of you left messages of love. I am still exhausted, so forgive me if I don't answer each comment.  I am going to start poking my stories again. I am finding escape in reading, and the urge to write is returning.

Losing Mom was hard.  She was an amazing woman.  When I was a teen, she got me a job doing data entry at the place where she ran the credit department. She called one man about a delinquent account. Instead of demanding payment, she asked him why he hadn't paid. Apparently she was the first creditor to do that because he broke down and admitted that his wife had died and he didn't know how to pay bills.  This was back in the eighties. He was getting final notices, and he didn't know what to do. She told him to put everything in a box and bring it down to the office. She sat with him for four or five hours and taught him how to pay bills, write checks, balance a checkbook, and do a budget.  She was an amazing woman.  Not perfect.  She had her issues, including an inability to let go of food.  She lived through the depression, and we found food that terrified us.  There was some fairly new cooked chicken in the freezer, and we thought to heat it up and add it to the dog food.  Oh lord.  It had clearly spoiled before she put it in the freezer, but she hadn't been willing to throw the food away.  That shall now and forever be known as the chicken incident. But no matter her flaws, her heart was incredibly good. Anything goodness I have in my soul comes from her.

Okay, I'll stop now.  I know we all love our parents (or in my case, my mother anyway), and think they are perfect.  But I appreciate the chance to share a favorite memory.  That's what I'm trying to focus on. she left the world a better place, and that's the best legacy any of us can have.