Mom - Sandra Coy

Today would have been my mom's 73rd birthday.  She shares the date with Abraham Lincoln.  I remember her being teased by my dad that she and Abe were the same age.  Considering that she never looked as old as she actually was, she always took the joke with a smile.

My mom was a funny combination of traits.  Her job for several decades was maintaining the file room for Mississippi Valley Title Insurance Company.  This was back when everything was on paper, which was placed in a manila folder, and then filed according to some numerical scheme in a forest of metal shelves.  And my mother was in charge of being able to retrieve any given document. 

What I find amazing is that my mother, who could never keep up with her coffee cup, car keys or glasses, could locate anything you wanted in that file room.  Even now, if I take my cup of coffee with me and leave it somewhere in the house, whoever finds it will bring it to me and call me "Sandra."

Mom was a dancer when she was a child.

Here she is as Uncle Sam, probably between 1949 and 1951, when she was around 12 years old.  This is one of my favorites of her.
 

In addition to dancing, Mom could also play the ukulele.  I think I only ever heard her play 2 songs, though:  The Bed Bugs and Mosquitoes Song, and Five Foot Two.  I've learned the Bed Bug Song.  I guess now I need to learn Five Foot Two. 

Oh!  And she had another unique talent.  She is one of the few people that I know who could actually do what a paddle ball was intended for.  With the string at its full length, Mom could keep that ball bouncing for as long as you cared to stand there watching.  How many people can do that?

These are some of my other favorite pictures of her.  They seem to capture the Real her!

Happy Birthday, Mom...