Since I was a grandma at age 38, time is not at all, at all, at all, relevant. (I was 19 when son was born, he was 19 when his son was born, I was still "young".) I didn't feel old then and now that that grandson is 25,I think I look great for "a woman of my age". The big secret is that inside I am still 33!!! But, don't tell anybody - there are definite advantages to being a "cranky old lady". My grandma was 104 and still played cards twice a week (in her own apartment, serving oodles of appetizers and nibbles she made), other grandma was 99 and made bread and doughnuts every Saturday for the retirement home she lived in - for 25 years straight, because someone told her that she could not live alone at 74 - pshaw. That is my goal - to still be a fruit farmer and be making homemade jam well into 40 years past retirement -- that's started 10 years ago as I retired at 55 so I could get out of the stifling corporate workplace to sell my jams and baked treats at my local farmers market every week, making people happy with "old-fashioned" so I still have 30 years left. I'll be 66 come June and have wrinkles galore - every single one I've earned. I went to my 25th reunion in 1988 and saw such despair that I vowed never to go again. They all, like, stopped living past high school or college. Could not relate. They had no "present tense". I greatly object to obituaries that cite from whence and where someone finished high school or college as if that made them who they were and then -- they stopped. I much prefer the obits that say he/she loved their family and what they did to show that, or took in strays, or painted murals, or knitted hats for preemies, or grew gorgeous roses, or volunteered at soup kitchens, made great casseroles, or knew how to prune bushes and trees, or drove cross country with 3 kids, or helped out at a preschool, or whatever REAL THING they did AFTER they graduated umpteen years before. Those people I can relate to, not the ones whose ONLY accomplishment in life was that they graduated. Nancy

My mother passed away April 13th 2022. she raised me and my sister, as a single mother. she worked 2 jobs to ptovide for us, but we took her for granted as children. When the mother of my 2 children passed away in 2016, my mother moved in with us. My mother helped raise my daughter(16 now) and my son(15 now) for almost a decade. My mother was more than just my best friend, she was my only friend. i have complex PTSD, and she was the only one that i trusted enough to talk about the war with… she went with me to the VA, when i had to. she gave me strength, she always seemed to understand things that other people either couldnt or didnt want to understand… my dog died about a month before my mother did… 2022 has taken a lot from me and my 2 children… they saw her as a mother, as much as me… i go from feeling numb to feeling deep sadness and loss… i don‘t want to give up, but i always needed her support. she died from cancer, after being on immunotherapy for 2 years… she suffered from many side effects, for most of her treatment. she became so thin near the end that it was painful to see her like that… i was with her until the end, and it may sound strange but i held her for some time after she died and just sobbed onto her… i talk to her still thst she is dead for months, but i still wake up thinking that she is alive… i beli my mother is in heaven, but selfishly i just want my mom back… i miss my only friend… i miss the only selfless person that i ever met… i feel so empty, and i did not think that id feel so lost… she gave me direction when i didnt know what to do… i hope this posts, it does give comfort to know that i am not a

I just want to thank you all for everything. My hubby is the cook in our family. This design is with him in mind. Since he liked the sample I showed him, I didnt want to let him down or at least find a comparable option. This project was becoming so overwhelming. Not be able to find such a key piece of my design plan, my family and friends were about to abandon me because this is all I talked about. Everyone's answers were its no big deal its just the counter top. That was making me even more nervous and sad. I really appreciate everything. Again, thank you all.

Jeepers, while reading this thread, my eyes welled up and I even ended with having tears running down my cheeks. Thank you everyone, for sharing your "Mom-memories." My Mom was, in my most charitable definition, merely a "serviceable" cook. That doesn't sound very kind, but the fact is that raising two kids on her own, making ends meet and trying to save pennies towards buying a house (which she did by the time I was 10 years old, on a bank teller salary) made feeding us as cheaply (and as quickly) as possible while maintaining our nutritional needs her first priority. We always had some kind of meat for protein (except for a few end-of-the-month dinners when we were very young and she, very poor), a vegetable and a starch on our plate, and always something, even if it was as simple as a can of fruit cocktail or a dish of jello for dessert with dinner. Later on, when she was a bit better off, she did try to get a bit "fancier" with her cooking, but she had a dull palate, I think because she wore dentures and the nasty glue that held them in hampered her ability to taste things, and she had a tendency to a far too heavy hand with herbs, salt and pepper. She baked better than she cooked, however (I've since noticed that it is often the case that people are better at baking or at cooking, one or the other.) In spite of all that, I bless her for taking the time to teach me the basics of cooking. So many of my friends found themselves, when first out on their own, struggling to learn how to feed themselves. My first memory of cooking was helping her cut out sugar cookies, and based on my memory of the kitchen, I could not have been more than 4 years old. By the time I was 9 or 10, much of Thanksgiving dinner was left in my hands, as she had to work a half day on the holiday. I'm sure we ate a number of overdone turkeys and underdone potatoes for a few years. After so many years, I had a hard time thinking about what things I still did because she had done them. One thing, is that once I have filled cake pans with batter, I always drop them onto the floor from a short distance a few times, to knock the air bubbles out. I have no idea if there is any real reason to do that or not, as I've never made a cake without doing it. Another quirk, is that I must roll my pie crust up on my rolling pin to carry it to the pie pan. Even now, when I roll it out on a silicone mat that I could perfectly well simply invert over the pan, I use the rolling pin, because that is the way Mom taught me. One thing she used to do that I never thought to ask her the "why" of, was to prick a potato several times with a fork before baking it. I found out why, once, when I forgot to do it and had to clean exploded potato off my oven walls. There are many things regarding kitchen hygiene that I did simply because my mother taught me to do them that, over the years I have learned the "why" of. I rinsed chickens and meat after taking them out of the package without knowing why. I scoured wooden cutting boards (the only kind we had then) with salt and bleach and doused them with boiling water. I scrubbed iron fry pans with plenty of hot water but no soap. I used different towels to dry dishes than I used to dry my hands.