Floy Louise Senior

Last night, mom passed away, three weeks shy of her 93rd Birthday. In 1961, my father moved his family of 6 from Coos Bay Oregon to a suburban patch of wheat field in Littleton Colorado. By November of 1962, he was dead from trying to fly his own airplane, leaving my mom a widow, stranded in Colorado with 4 children under the age of five. Mom told me she came down with the flu shortly after but she would be damned if she would use that as an excuse to skip a full Thanksgiving meal, which she prepared anyway. In 1962, a woman couldn’t open her own bank account. She could have moved back to Oregon, or split my siblings between the relatives, but she didn’t. She parlayed her existing teaching degree into a Masters degree, becoming a school counselor and raised the 4 of us in a comfortable middle class and intellectual household filled with books, magazines, music lessons and jet plane trips to Oregon. She didn’t break, and it made a huge impression on me. She could play Clair De Lune and knock out Broadway tunes on the piano, most notably “I’m Going To Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.“ She did it herself (with a an assist from Social Security). I have so many questions on how she did it, but my time to ask them ran out. You did your job well mom. It’s time to rest.