My Mom the Powerhouse Essay

717 Words3 Pages
My Mom the Powerhouse

One of the biggest influences in my life is my Mom. She is one of 10 children born to an Appalachian coal miner who could not read or write. Her family lived in the mountains of Kentucky in a little cottage that had no running water and no electricity. She read by kerosene lamp.

As a child, she attended a one-room schoolhouse, which also had no electricity and no running water. There was one teacher for eight grades, and each row in the classroom was a grade. My mom says she liked listening to the lessons of the higher grades. There was a big, black potbellied stove in the middle of the room, between the fourth- and fifth-grade rows. My mom couldn't wait to get to the fourth grade so she could
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When it came time to eat a chicken, he would wring its neck, and it would flop all over the back yard before dying. My mother got attached to one chicken and made it her pet. She named it Miss Red. Miss Red would lay brown eggs, and my mom would collect them. My mom's father killed all the other chickens for food, and he tried to avoid killing Miss Red, but she was the last chicken, and the family needed food. He waited until my mom had gone to school, then he wrung the neck of Miss Red. My mom came home from school and discovered that Miss Red was cut up, fried, and sitting in a platter on the supper table. My mom cried and refused to eat Miss Red. Her mother gave her a nickel and tried to comfort her, but to this day, my mom can't eat chicken without remembering Miss Red.

As a child, my mom suffered through the death of her mother. After that, she was put in foster homes and was constantly moving from home to home. She was able to get through college all by herself, receiving scholarships and working part-time. She now works as an editor for McGraw-Hill books and takes night classes toward an M.B.A. She says, "Education is a lifelong process." I find it amazing that the daughter of a man who could not read or write is now a book editor.

One quality my mom possesses that I admire is her ability to persevere and overcome hardship. She has always taught me that my true dwelling place is in my mind, and that I have dominion over my
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