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"The things Moms have to do"
ReplyDeleteBy Nathan Wayne Johnson, her son
~I had a few thoughts on my mom to share that you may not have heard before.~
Esther is of Danish decent and they say they can be stubborn at times.
I was little at the time and my dad had supplied me with a large sand box in the back yard to play in with all my John Deere toys. We had neighbors just across the drive way and they thought it was great fun to come over and make problems for me and my sisters. They always were breaking my toys or simply stealing them, and I was really tired of it after a while. I think it wore down Esther’s patience as well.
Esther worked nights, so she slept during the mornings to get ready for the evening and work again the next night.
I was playing in the sand box and the bullies next door decided to make a real bold effort to make my day especially bad. I told them to stay on their yard and a disagreement ensued which escalated with every unsupervised attempt to defend my sand box. The neighbor’s father was home but had been out drinking the night before so he was asleep, as well, as I learned a short time later.
The morning events took a turn for the worse when they began throwing rocks at our house from their drive way and broke our kitchen window. Esther must have heard the screaming and then the glass breaking and had had enough. She came out the back door and told those children to stop and then marched right over to their house and in the front door with me right behind her. "I remember saying Go get ‘em mom" She went right into the man’s bedroom and grabbed him by the shirt and shook him awake. At that point she gave him a piece of her mind and told him to get his children under control, or something to that effect and he had little to say after she explained what they had been doing. I'm not saying we didn't have some of the blame for the broken glass incident, or this whole experience, but my mom put the whole thing in a new perspective.
I always had a great deal of admiration for my mom and never saw her that upset at any other time in my life.
I don't remember much about the McKenny family as they moved away shortly after that.
Esther was strong willed and fought for everything her entire life, working hard to support the family every night and struggling with family issues in the day. My dad was working as well, but traveled a lot at this point in time so he wasn't there to help her deal with a lot of these more challenging issues.