Let me tell you about my amazing mom. Most of you have never met her, yet some of you have, so here is an introduction or a reacquaintance.
My mom, Tuovi, gave birth to me when she was almost 37 years old. I was the second child of hers, having a 2-year older sister, Riitta. As long as I can remember, my mom always worked as a pharmacist in one of our city's pharmacies. After my birth, she went back to work just after 6 weeks. A nanny was hired, and Täti (aunt) came to our lives. Now, Täti wasn't any relation to us, but answered a want ad, and she was hired. She was our nanny for the next 13 years. My sister and I spent most of our vacations with Täti and her husband, Setä (uncle) at a cabin by a lake, near our cousin's farmhouse. In the summer, my mom and dad would come and spent just a few weeks with us, but then they would have to go back to work.
When I was a teenager, my mom started learning other languages such as Russian. Even though she took Latin, Swedish and German at school when she was young, she always wanted to learn others. She has a funny story about how she ended up learning Latin. She was a 3rd grader or so, I believe, and she had chosen English as her foreign language. She went to her first English class and thought that it was so difficult that she switched to Latin instead. All of those years learning Latin helped her in her pharmacist career.
When she was about 60, she started learning English when I got married to Rod. She wanted to be able to talk or communicate with my in-laws, so she took years of English. She can get by really well with her English now.
When my dad got Alzheimer's, my mom joined a dementia support group to better understand the disease. It was my mom who valiantly took care of him through the years of pain. If you know my dad, I'm sure it wasn't easy at all. Seeing the brightest person lose his ability to talk or remember words is horrible. I only was able to look at this situation from the distance. I only heard about his struggles through mom's words. Then my dad developed cancer, and he quite quickly passed away. My mom was by his side the whole way, never giving up, but always there to comfort him.
My mom always has had a huge circle of friends and relatives that she stays in contact with. She constantly goes on lunch meetings with her old co-workers, or relatives. She visits friends all the time, and has the best stories to tell. She is busy ALL the time. Whenever we go visit her, she has a mountain of magazines, and when asked if she has read them, she says, she hasn't had time. The woman is on the move...constantly!
Two summers ago when my mom came to visit us, she had to be taken to the emergency room (because she had dry Costco chicken that got stuck in her throat, but she thought that she was having a heart attack). There we are, in her bedroom, she is laying down, having extreme chest pains, the ambulance arrives, and after explaining to the ERT's what had happened, my mom is in bed, and tells me to notice how handsome the guys are. She is quickly put on a guerney and wheeled into the ambulance. Before we get to the hospital, she asks if the ambulance guys could wheel her into the emergency room like they do in the movies...full speed, doors slamming. We all laughed and laughed. After spending a night, and making sure that all was well, she was released. But before that happened, she was given some papers to fill out, and one of the questions was:"Are you worried how your condition is going to affect your sex life". I remember starting to laugh before I could get the question out. I was laughing so hard. My mom looked at me with this wicked look on her face, and said:"yes, very concerned". Then we laughed, and almost couldn't stop laughing.
Last summer when we went to Finland to visit my mom, we had Family Olympics at our cousin's farmhouse. My mom was a judge in all of the events but she also participated in two. One was fishing and one was shooting. I was my mom's partner in both events. We placed last in both events.
The latest interest of hers is the computers. In the past year, she has attended various computer classes. She tells me in our weekly phone calls what she has learned, and how much fun those teachers are. She bought a laptop, and has now hooked it up. Yesterday was the most amazing moment of my life when I received the first ever e-mail from her, from her own e-mail address. You might say, that's not something surprising, but she is going to be 81 years old next month. In her e-mail she said that the next thing she is going to get downloaded is Skype so we don't have to spend a penny on our phone calls anymore. She is truly amazing, she has the best sense of humor, and I so love and adore my mom.
