A Few Things I Want to Remember About Mom...

-Every time there was a Father/Son camp out at church, it was party time for mom and me. We’d get all kinds of old movies and musicals to watch, usually get some delicious take-out as well as ridiculous amounts of treats. We’d shut ourselves up in her bedroom and talk, eat, laugh and watch movies. I would always sleep in her bed on those nights.

-After I graduated from BYU, I had no money, no job, and no prospects. For some reason I didn’t want to come home to Texas. I was seriously down to my last loaf of bread, and the rent was due soon. I called my mom one night to cry out all my problems. My mom decided that all she needed to do was pray for me—and so she did. She prayed and prayed and prayed. The next WEEK, I had a brand new job, and a month later, I met Steven. I’ve always said my mom had magic prayers.

-My mom always randomly said things like, “Do you know how much I adore you?” or “I can’t believe I have such a beautiful daughter.” Things like that. Just out of the blue.

-When Mom and I would fight, we’d have these huge, irrational, crying and screaming fests, followed by a very brief silent treatment (and I mean BRIEF! 30 minutes tops—neither one of us could stand to have someone mad at us) and then finished off by an equally huge, irrational and crying make-up scene. We Howsley girls never got the hang of calm diplomacy.

-And I save the best for last. My nephew Andrew came to spend the night one weekend, and my mother and I decided he needed a haircut. I vaguely remembered the location of a barbershop close by, so we drove to it and went through the door.

It was completely filled with (only) black men. It was straight out of a scene from that movie “Barbershop”, only MUCH more crowded. Fathers and sons were sitting around on benches, all talking loudly and laughing, waiting to get their hair trimmed. When we walked in—absolute silence. Everyone in the room was trying to act as natural as possible—like there was nothing in the world abnormal about two of the whitest white ladies in the world waltzing into an African-American Boy’s Club barbershop and sitting down to wait for a haircut.

We went ahead and got Andrew’s hair cut, but the man who cut his hair gave us a discount because he admitted that he wasn’t entirely familiar with cutting white hair. We all smiled politely and walked out the door. As soon as we shut the car doors, we burst out laughing and didn’t stop for at least 10 minutes. I’m pretty sure the guys in the barbershop erupted into uproarious laughter the second we walked out the door.