vTHROUGH THE LENS continued from page 29 them together, braced with a few metal poles and created new fencing to keep them from getting out. She did this quite often on the farm when it came to building pens or cages for all the animals, she was creative, and problem solved. Mom even made both me and my sister matching cribs, highchairs and strollers out of wood for our baby dolls and even made most of their clothes or blankets. My mother inspired and even encouraged imagination with us. Being poor we didn’t have the means to acquire certain luxuries like other kids we went to school with, who had video games, board games, radios with cassette players in their rooms or even a VHS player with movies to watch when you were bored. Mom was very creative and taught us games using yarn entwined in our fingers, that you and another had to grab certain strands to pull to our own hands like an intricate spider web and keep it going back and forth with a partner. We created our own board games even and if we couldn’t find dice, we used a deck of cards to know how many times we needed to move our pieces. When the holidays came, like Christmas we made ornaments out of everyday objects, even making gifts for each other. Valentines Day when we had to exchange at school a card and candy with classmates and the teacher, my mom helped us make our own Valentines using wax paper and melting old crayons inside and attaching a ribbon or yarn to it and then personalizing it with glue and glitter or just using a sharpie pen. Even when Halloween rolled around, we would work with mom in creating our costumes. This unique gift and ability helped us as we became older in doing school projects for homework, we thought out of the box utilizing everyday items. And when any of us kids struggled with a certain subject or an assignment, our mom got creative in helping us understand what it was that was challenging us to help us relate better and ultimately retain the information easier. We were kicked out doors no matter what the weather was and for hours we would build forts in the shelter belt behind our house, some were igloos in the winter, teepees and some were imagined even to be mansions. Everything we found had a purpose as we filled our forts, old crates and barrels became furniture, old bottles or cans became dishes and dirt and gravel became mud pies. My mom was an artist and used her imagination in drawing, painting, writing and later in life photography, thus my siblings and I all acquired many of those same talents for ourselves. Utilizing many of them as teenagers and as we became adults, some of those talents drifted from each of us a bit but also embraced in new ways. All of the situations of my childhood whether good or bad, I know there were life lessons being taught by my mother. I, of course, did not understand this as a child but now as an adult, and having a family, raising my own children I have used that same imagination, to create, to problem solve, to have compassion and to discipline, to be unrelenting, challenging and inspiring, to frame how I wanted my own children to look at the world and how to deal with life in every 30vHERVOICEvMARCH/APRIL 2019 vTHROUGH THE LENS continued on page 31