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As I write (on 11/16/18), my mother, Julia, now ninety-six, is struggling against a rising tide of impairments, the future looking bleak in some ways, and yet her indomitable wit and spirit remain. Hers has been a Cinderella story of sorts. The family was abandoned by her father in 1932, when she was nine. Subsequently, she would be abused by her step-father who later lost his work after a heart attack, the household then reduced to near starvation and living in a lean-to on the banks of a small rural TX stream. Later she was taken in by her grandfather, yet her step-grandmother treated her as badly as had the fairy tale heroine's step-mom, and she was not given a room, only a small space on an enclosed porch, cold in winter, hot in summer. Still in these circumstances, her relationship with my dad began when she was fifteen. Though prince charming he was not, Leon must have looked pretty good to her at the time, and they were married when she was nineteen, weeks after Pearl Harbor.

So began her new lease on life. Intensely independent, and though with but a high school education, she was determined their family would be successful and that her kids have a better future than the childhood she had known. A number of key traits were her weapons in this, and to her it was indeed a fierce endeavor. Throughout she has shown strength and resolve.

Though Dad thought he could dominate her, more the custom in those times, she found ways to get her own back, as when he fell asleep while expecting her to give him a pedicure, and she painted his toenails a bright red. In the dark later, he did not see the evidence. The next morning, he was more shocked than his peers and supervisors when a surprise military inspection, down to the skivvies, revealed more than anticipated, and he was whisked off for psychiatric evaluation. He did not ask her to give him pedicures again.

My mother was devoted to having a big family. RH factor difficulties and a tendency toward miscarriages did not faze her. She became pregnant at least 14 times and bore eight children, the first when she was twenty-one, the trio living in a small rental place in FL. She had a bit of flair for real estate, and they would soon buy a house. It was profitable, and another followed in San Antonio, when her first-born was about two and Julia was living near her husband's folks' place there while Leon was overseas, first in Hawaii, as the Pacific War was turning against the Japanese, and then in Japan itself, where he led a team under General MacArthur that investigated for the War Crimes Tribunal. The couple bought their next residence in Falls Church, VA, and remained there about four years while Leon was working out of the Pentagon. An Omaha real estate venture did not go so well. They lost money on it, so after that they delayed further property investments till Leon had retired at age forty-eight and the family, now nine-strong, moved into a fixer-upper with a bit of surrounding acreage a little northwest of Austin, TX. Here she would have one more youngster and, though their oldest went off to college, she and Leon would raise the rest on this little tract of central TX land.

Ever since their initial house in FL, Julia had been a gardener, and in the tough clayish and limestone gravel soils of their little spread, her green thumb began to glow. She was resourceful in finding ways to make that barren dirt into a rich mulch. Before long, she had a wide expanse of bountiful produce from out back of their abode, plus flower or cactus gardens, cool shrubs, and even trees where there had been nothing but weeds and an arid landscape before. Her love of gardening persisted and was in full bloom once the couple moved, a quarter-century later, to a larger ranch with nearly 200 acres and river frontage, one she called the Rockin' B. Even when Dad had died and she was down-sizing to a smaller residence in Woodway, TX, the gardening theme prevailed, with ample blooming flora on three sides of the dwelling.

In high school, Julia was a member of the National Honor Society and later delighted in reading and in book groups. She also got into storytelling and always had some entertaining tale or anecdote to pass along. She went to a number of storytellers' conventions, trained herself in the skill, listened by the score to tapes of professional storytellers, told stories herself for young people at local venues, and remained active in the Mexia or Waco storyteller groups for decades.

Besides her passionate involvement in the lives of her children, their girlfriends or boyfriends and later spouses, her grandchildren, and afterward many great grandchildren as well, she and Leon, and later - after their marriage of 53 years ended with his death in 1995 - just she herself, hosted multiple family gatherings that kept her relations as close as possible amid diverse outlooks and styles. Through the years, these happy reunions would remain memorable for her offspring and for new generations of her growing extended family.

Intellectually curious, Mom maintained a healthy skepticism about a lot of popular notions and enjoyed chatting about current political or other issues. Despite her lack of higher education, she took correspondence and community courses and loved discussing with her gradually more educated descendants ideas they were learning in school and university. Nor did she discourage budding geniuses in her midst, and when one of my brothers showed a talent for tearing apart anything electronic, she was tolerant of his seemingly destructive habits. He would presently be an Air Force electrician and, a little later still, an electrical engineer working on some of the country's most sophisticated aircraft.

Music and drama were important to her too, and her leanings in these directions helped cultivate such talents in more than one of her children, their kids, etc.

She is also quite the traveler. Julia and one or more good friends would often go on cruises or driving or flying trip jaunts. Before this, she had also gone on trips with her daughter and son-in-law that included Europe, especially France. And she has taken many a journey in the U.S., including Hawaii and Alaska, plus vacations to both Canada and Mexico.

In addition to these noted diversions, Julia has been committed to volunteerism, in so many ways involved in her community and always having people about whom she is concerned, making phone calls or personal visits, coordinating social events, leading people on entertaining excursions, and so on.

My father had been content with one major career outside the home, working for first the Army and then the Air Force, as it split off from that branch of the service. He retired in 1960, then saw little need for moving off their first little ranch. In contrast, Julia about that time was just getting started in the world of work. True, she had been a candy factory employee for awhile in the Great Depression, starting at a dollar a day, but then was doing her job enough better than her peers that they told her to slow down, to stop making them look bad. She did not, though, and soon began to get raises. After Dad retired and more of her children were going off to college, but the family budget was as yet skimpy, limited at first to Leon's monthly pension of $600, she determined to help out with the education expenses of some, and went to work for a variety of employers, IBM for instance, and later was an office manager for a physician, a choice close, at least, to her original idea of becoming a nurse, which choice was abandoned after she became an officer's wife and would soon be trading locations on average about every 13 months for the next 16-17 years. Still later, Julia was working just for the heck of it, not only to get the extra funds needed to fix up their place or maybe put a little more aside on their growing nest egg, now also for the enrichment of these vocational experiences. She had her most rewarding such endeavor as the producer of a weekly nutritionist's TV show. She also worked for the Austin Rape Crisis Center, helping put with outreach programs for secondary school youth and counseling with young people who themselves, like her, had suffered sexual abuse.

The peak of her working career, though, involved a lot of sweat, not out in the mid-day sun, but leading chair and water aerobics classes. She taught these for over twenty-eight years, a vocation embarked upon when most people would be retiring, at age sixty-six. This occupation not only kept her physically fit long into others' relatively disabled phases, but gave her a wealth of social interaction. Julia loved people, and they loved her. She could inspire them in her classes to stay in shape, just as others around them were dying too young. And she kept her sessions fun. Perhaps her penchant for drama came out a bit here, for she almost always would give her classes a new animated joke or anecdote to send the participants off with smiles on their faces. Often as not, these were a bit raunchy, and to see a rather ancient lady giggling uncontrollably over her own off-color humor must have been a cool accent to an already enlivening class. Beyond the paychecks, useful yet hardly substantial, Mom probably gained more from the social and health benefits of her aerobics instruction.

Nor were Mom's leisure pursuits limited to books or the arts. Following her husband's and his father's lead, she displayed a growing practical enthusiasm for investing in stocks. This began when one or another of her children had some extra cash. The trouble was that Leon was jealous of his own portfolio and funds and did not care to share. Independent as always, she devised a way to take up the hobby herself. Julia offered to give her sons who had extra dollars 10% interest, risk-free, in exchange for some of their money, which she would then invest in carefully selected assets. After Dad had died, the experience gained from these smaller trades served her well as the amounts in play were substantially larger. One of her sons, a financial consultant, has noted that she became pretty good at picking stocks.

Mom also took quite an interest in interior decorating, sewing, cooking, the holidays, and antiques. She was never as good at these pastimes as some in our talented extended family, yet she managed by using these combined interests and with very little expense to greatly enhance the home settings, the satisfactions of mealtimes, personal wardrobes, and the fun of family gatherings.

Personally, I think the most impressive of a lifetime of her accomplishments is that Mom maintained much autonomy well into her nineties and then, as medical and accident-related set-backs would occur, kept bouncing back with remarkable resilience. Time and again, her family might think Julia, after each of a terrible succession of heart challenges, major blood pressure spikes or drops, awful injuries, a knee replacement, or other orthopedic hurdles when at an advanced age, and so forth, had been knocked to the proverbial mat and surely now would not be up again, yet to date it is true of her that you cannot keep this good woman down.

What are the secrets of my mom staying younger longer? I note but five: a good sense of humor; adaptability; a tenacious will; commitment to the things she loves; plus generous and empathic engagement with others.

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