Gladys Lena "Happy Bottom" Brown

In answer to my good friend Lin's request. Here are a couple of photographs of my mother.

The top picture is one of my favorites. It's the way I remember her...doing some little kindess for someone.

She is eighty years old and sitting at my dining room table writing a note to a neighbor to tell her she had noticed her young son doing something she thought was impressive that morning. She was always and forever writing notes to someone. Truly, there never beat a more tender heart.

I should have included a picture of her handwriting. She could write smaller than I can type, both beautifully and legibly. Honestly, Reader's Digest would have condensed one of her postcards before printing it.

The second photo is her graduation picture. In her youth her hair was jet black and extremely thick. She was a small woman...only 5'2". She married at 22. She and my dad fell in love amost instantly and remained contentedly husband and wife throughout their lives.

I need to get the one small indignity she had to face out of the way. She was the oldest of five children...had three younger brothers. They were a motley crew who referred to her from the time they first learned to speak as "Happy Bottom". Her name was Gladys... get it? glad -ys... got it yet? Glad-ass. Brothers! Seems like their whole purpose is to taunt. At least when they're not protecting. She had a ready laugh, although she never understood anybody's jokes. She knew every flower in creation by both common and botanical names. She was an average cook when it came to meatloaf and soups, but, she made incredible desserts! She never worked outside the home, but was the local "kool-aid mom" to all of our friends. When I was in the ninth grade I wrote a paper titled, "She's everybody's Mom" about her. She loved to play tennis and baseball, had a mean back hand and could hit a wicked line drive. She could type 95 words a minute on an old manual typewriter. I can remember listening to her in her office...clackity, clackity, clack, clack, ching!!!" Her fingers just tap danced on those keys. She didn't much like fancy things. She always wore housedresses or muumuu's. Daddy offered to buy her a fur coat one Christmas and she just thought the idea was silly. Well... we DID live in sunny Southern California so it probably was. But sunshine and warm temperatures didn't stop the Hollywood stars from wearing them, so daddy wanted her to have one, too. More on her lack of interest in owning anything too fancy or "hoity toity" as she called it... we ate off of S&H Green Stamp dishes and drank from metal Arden Cottage Cheese glasses. Does anyone remember those? We lived in the biggest house in the neighborhood, had the first television and the first garage door opener, and Daddy always bought her a big car. But, that was him... not her.

She never went to bed until my sisters and I were tucked in for the night after an evening out. She asked all of us the same question almost every time we came in the door. "Did he kiss you good night?" And her reaction to our answers remained the same for a decade. "No" resulted in a pat on our hand. "Yes" resulted in "Gasp!" followed by a look of disappoinment or horror depending on how well we knew the young man. She was rarely ever angry and always busy making something to give away. She sang constantly, always off tune, and generally with a rather loud voice. She had literally hundreds of people who loved her. And she was (and is) adored and revered by her children.