Planet Auntie

My mother, Maude Louise Littlefield Freeman was born in Waterville, Maine on March 11, 1907. My mother and her mother Albra Mae Flewelling Littlefield Grant Baird.

The picture below is one of my most favorite pictures of all time…

A friend asked me once to describe my mother…what was she like, what did she like to do. I pondered this question and found it was sort of a hard one to answer. To me my mother was funny and a little nutsy at times, a trait I’ve happily inherited by the way… she was kind and loving, a hard worker, she adored my dad, and me. She liked to crochet, she made tablecloths and doilies, when I was around 12 she went back to work the bank she had worked in before she got married.

She was a kook in her younger years and I’ve got the photo album that proves it.

The first page says ‘taken during the year 1926’.. most of the photos are of mom and her friends on Martha’s Vineyard…there are a few from NJ as well.   I love how she wrote in white ink on the black pages…and wow, what typical 1926 sayings she wrote.  My mother it seems was turning into a flapper… I love it.

For instance, the picture on the lower left says ‘The Oak Bluffs Sheik “oh daddy” “He’s a hound with the ladies.”  I’m 80% sure I know who that hound was but I’m not telling

It would have been fun to have known my mother when she was that age, to have hung out with her and her friends on the Vineyard, to be in on their inside jokes and what really went on in with the sheik of Oak Bluffs ! Okay, maybe not. Does one really want to know THAT much about their parents, some things are better left unknown.

Yes indeed, my mother was one of my favorite people to spend time with. Some nights when my dad was working my mom and I would have our favorite supper and speak our ‘silly language’, which was to put ‘S’ in front of every word… it made for gales of laughter from both of us.

She was a strong woman, who suffered with a year long bout of agoraphobia, which for her was fear of leaving the house. She eventually overcame it and then found and reinvented herself and got a job at the bank she had worked for before she got married. I’m proud of her for that and like to think that I got some of that fortitude or spunk from her… I definitely got my quirkiness from her and I thank her for that.

Happy birthday mom…