Kosky He is vice chancellor for development and entrepreneurship for the San Diego Community College District and lives in North Park.
On Mother’s Day, I remember all that my mother gave us and what she overcame as a young mother in the early 1960s. I never thought about how my mother spent Mother’s Day in the kitchen preparing dinner for more than 20 people with little help. She and her sisters, who were also their mothers, served the meals and, with a little help from the girls, cleaned up and cleaned up until it was time to take the cousins back to school the next day. My mother stayed at the kitchen sink until late at night, cleaning up the dishes. In our family, it’s been Mother’s Day for at least 20 years.
Dessert was my focus. It was always a cake that said Happy Birthday Laurie, Happy Birthday Grandma, Happy Birthday, and Happy Mother’s Day. Even though Grandma and I didn’t have the same birthday, it was Mother’s Day for both of us, so we celebrated it as well.
My mother didn’t hate all her work. At least, decades after I called her, now that her grandparents and father are all gone, her uncles and aunts are gone, or she’s older, if I call her and ask her, I think the answer would be yes. “I didn’t know any better,” she used to say, right before feminism entered our lives. It was not a time when she, her aunt, or her grandmother could expect help from her father, uncle, or grandfather. That’s exactly what they did. If she could do it again on Mother’s Day with all her loved ones sitting together at home at the table, she would gladly do it and would expect more help from everyone. Mom was strong and did her job. She didn’t complain.
That’s what my mother did on December 14, 1963, when she lost her entire home, property, and most of her life in the Baldwin Hills Flood in Los Angeles. When the Baldwin Hills Dam burst, 290 million gallons of water poured into our streets, taking our homes and everything in them. all. My mother was 27 years old and had three daughters, a 6 year old, a 4 year old and a soon to be 2 year old. Blessed with grandparents on both sides, we moved into my mother’s parents’ home while my mother and father tried to rebuild their lives.
Dad had to go back to work right away. Even if you didn’t have a home, you still had a mortgage and bills to pay. My mother began working to rebuild our broken lives. She found us a place to rent so I could go back to first grade after winter break. She somehow spruced up the place. There were dishes, a bed, and sheets. There was a dining set and sofa that I had borrowed from a family member somewhere. She found clothes for us to wear, not just from boxes delivered to us through the kindness of her family, her friends and acquaintances.
My mother then spent the next year trying to recreate everything we had and lost. Thanks to the relentless advocacy of Los Angeles City Councilman Tom Bradley, my parents and others who lost so much were able to recover some of the value of their property due to the City of Los Angeles’ liability for the dam’s structural deficiencies. . . Relying on her memory, she recreated every room, every piece of furniture, and what was in every drawer. She spent her days wandering around, finding proof of the value of household items and trying to recreate receipts for similar items. To this day, I can’t imagine how she was able to pick them up from different schools, feed and bathe them at night, and then get them ready to do it all over again the next day. She was strong, did her job and never complained.
Years passed, the feminist movement came through our doorsteps, and we all grew up. At 88 years old, she is strong, resilient, and her mom. On Sunday, a cake with Happy Birthday Laurie and Happy Mother’s Day is waiting for me.
