It appeared that everyone who knew my mother loved her.
A walk up town {we lived in the south end} to pay bills took two hours or more instead of one because people always stopped to talk to her. There was always an unrelated face at the table come supper time and anyone sick in the neighborhood never had to want for care.
I only remember the door being locked a few times. People just opened it and called out. I use to jump out of my skin when someone rang the manual door bell. There was always an array of visitors and when mom wasn't to busy, she would bring out the tea service and what ever she had baked in the kitchen.
At some point, I had become shy and when company came I would hide behind chairs or under the dining room table. I knew about gay people at an early age. The gay people of color visited mom alot because she was so loving and excepting. They were my favorite because they always made my mom laugh as they related stories thatI had no idea what they were talking about. I learned no matter your belief, Our God is a God of love and we should emulate that.
Mom always incouraged her children to develope their natural talents. She turned out a group or singers, musicians,artist and actors. She had my sister and me on stage when I was six and in a movie before I started school. One or two nights a week, the family would gather around the piano. Our voices ranged from contralto to tenor. Mom kept up with all the latest music; We sang everything from country,musicals,ballards,opera,gospel,spirituals and hyms. My dads bass was so strong,my insides would vibrate everytime he sang.
During the summer months,people from the neighborhood would come with their musical talents and join in.
With thumb in mouth, I litteraly clung to my mothers' apron strings. At nap time she would hold me until I fell asleep. During that time I was to young to join in, so I sat between the legs of the piano in hope no one would remember I was there and I would fall asleep watching my mom's feet as they pushed down on the peddles. Looking back I realized, that those were the nights I wet the bed.

Before mom and dad married,the back half of the house was rented. Moms family lived in the front half. Every room in the whole house had a fireplace. There was nohot running water,electicity,{kerosene lamps which we still used during a storm}central heating and the toilet was the outhouse in the yard. I come from a family of great story tellers and I loved hearing the outhouse stories.
Dad closed up all the fireplaces except the large one up stairs in the back half of the house.He installed a coal burning stove in the dining room, wired the front half and put a toilet in the small hallway led from the kitchen to the other side of the house.
My brothers slept on the other side of the house and the older children made their playground. It was way bigger than the family quarters. After my brother{who thought he was a scientist]blew up the kitchen on the other side while experimenting with chemicels from a chemistry set he brought though a mail order catalog,{mom said the first thing she saw smoke coming from his clothes and hair} that part of the house rapidly deteriorated.
Mom did all the cooking,baking and boiling water for cleaning,bathing and washing clothes from the wood stove in the kitchen,even in the summer. My brother,sister and I bathed in a tub put near the coal stove. It was very soothing in the winter months.
Mom had a victory garden and we had to go out front and shovel the horse droppings from the tin mans cart. He sold household items and such.And you could hear him coming because the tins clanged as his horse trotted up our hill. The droppings went into the garden. Mom was good at bartering. The droppings were shoveled up in exchange for items on the cart. We also raised chickens.
Mom canned everything and made from scratch:breads,cakes,candy,pies,jelly,jam,soap and quilts. While taking care of us she took care of the neighborhood. There was always an unrelated face at the table come supper time. She washed and starched dads dress shirts and ironed them with a iron heat from the wood stove. Until she got the plugin iron and washer,all the clothes were washed using a scrub board. These new appliances made a huge change. However, she still had to take each item out of the washer and put them through the ringer. I would watch in horror the few times mom struggled to pull her caught hand out of the ringer.
She brought in extra money teaching piano and cleaning homes. If there was a child,she would bring me along to be a playmate. In later years it angered me to think that a music and English major could only get a job cleaning homes.
I never heard my mother raise her voice in anger and never heard her complain about the choice she made.

We grew up in the house my mother and her sister were born in.

I was born in a town of few black people or people of color. I guess my mon and dad where celebrating the end of the war. My brother payed the hospital bill. He sent the money to my parents from Japan. want to know more? I know that I was not expected. Mom was 46 and going through the change and dad was 23 years her senior. Being the youngest of 9{5 girls and 4 boys} had its chalengers. My sister next to me was 4yrs older and my brother next to her 6yrs. I got blamed for everything because she was considered delicate and he was considered slow. None of which,when I grew up was found to be true. I was just a little precocious. I feel their restraint made them better adults then myself. Close friends have always incuraged me to write my story. Maybe it will help someone outthere. I suffer from pts and selective childhood amnesia. I am the third of five female generations in NH. My mother had beautiful,silky dark skin. her father was a free man from the West Indies. Her mother came out of slavery. She was well educated and a goveness to the highly prominent in our small town. My mother and her sister went to the finest black girls school in washington DC. MY grandparents owned their own home. I never saw a picture of my mothers mom but I did see a picture of her grandparents who were dressed in indian atire and so beautiful. My grandfathers family arrived in NY and settled in NJ. My mom and her sister gratuated high school out of the eight grade;they only came home on weekends and holidays. They both played several instruments.My moms dad died in his early thrities of a lung desease{not smoking}.We just recently lost our middle sister of the same. /tomorrow or the next day I will write about dad. To this day, I think that my dad was the most beautiful man I ever laid eyes on. He and my mom made the most beautiful couple when they were dressed up for church or town meeting. He was like god in the house. When he spoke,everyone stopped and listened. Mom put on the bandaids and dad handed out the discipline. Dads family came here from England. They were conected to the Moors who came to England from Africa. As the story goes, my great great grandfather was asked to come here to start a church {baptist}in the south{caroliners}houever,upon arrival it was realized he wasn't all that white.The good news is, he was drafted into the Cherokee nation. My grandfather married a german/french women who was a teacher on the reservation. He became a very prominent land owner and they had 11 children. /If my readers would like me to continue, I really need some feedback because as the memories come back so does the pain. My dad was a finished carpenter and was like the shoe maker who fixed everyones shoes but his own. not to say he wasn't a good provider,he was. I thought up until his death that he worked for the same person. Going through his papers I found some paystubs from the shipyard. He made 47 dollars a week. Mom met dad in church. Her father was one of the founders of this first black church in NH. She told me that he was the most beautiful man she ever saw so she{as custom would have it}went up to him and put a flower in his lapel to let him know that she wanted to be courted.As a child I saw my parents as the most perfect people on earth. With all that has been said and done,I still feel that way. It has been 27 yrs since we laid them to rest and I still miss them to the core of my sole . I do not know how much time went by but mom was with child and they moved to NJ and married after the second child was born. Thy come back to NH when my grandmother became ill and the last three of of us were born. My dad and I became very close in his last days and I asked him about his first wife. Please know that my dad was a man of great pride and very much old school. He carefully told me that he stayed at a boarding home while learning a trade and the young lady who lived there pestered him until they coagulated and he married her because she was in a delicate way. Now in those days,you not only married someone in your own faith but your own color. Dads family was very Indian and could pass for white. When he married mom he was disowned by most of his family. The other thing that is important for you to know is ,if someone was committing a known {sin}you didn't go to the person it was being committed against, you went to the Pastor or your congragation and he inturn pointed that person out infront of the whole congragation. Dads wife not only pregnent but was an adulteress. Dad left and hitched a ride on a moving van going north.