Hard Working Moms

We all know how busy moms can be whether working outside of the home, or being a full-time housewife and mom. So today's blog post is about what did your Mom do for work? How did she spend her day? Did she have a job outside the home, volunteer or keep things from falling apart at home?

My mom, to me was the greatest. Besides her kindness and compassion, she loved her family more than herself. Growing up, I always remember my mom working. I do remember that she was home when we got home from work, but she did have a job working as a cocktail waitress as a bowling alley. This later changed when my parents moved from Huntington Beach and settled into our new home in Santa Ana, California.

Sadly those happy days would end when I turned 7 and my parents decided on a divorce. This forced my mom to find creative ways to keep things running while taking on a mortgage payment while raising two kids. She did this by working two jobs. One while we were at school and the other shortly after we got home from school. She worked as a waitress at the Airporter Inn, a hotel with restaurant just across from John Wayne or Orange County Airport. It was just minutes away. She worked that job as many hours as she could while we were at school and even on the weekends. There would weeks she would save all her weekly change from tips and put them in jars and she would give rotate giving them to my brother and I, each week. It was spending money we looked forward to receiving. We loved to count the change and then roll it to take to the bank for cash. It was always fun for us to see who got the most money week after week.

This was how my mom managed without being able to be home during the weekends and outings and trips anywhere we rare occasions because of her two jobs. Her night job was working as a cashier at Don Josè Mexican Restaurant. We also loved this job because the next day we would get chips and salsa she brought home at the end of her job.

Since we knew how hard our mom worked, we did things to try and make her days easier from cleaning the house from top to bottom and doing all we could to make sure she didn't worry too much about what we were up to. Our neighbor Judy watched us because our best friends were her kids. So spending time there wasn't something we dreaded. I don't remember being afraid at night while we waited for her to get home, because she would get home while we were at home, and that made everything right in the world.

She worked those two jobs for almost our entire childhood so when mom was home, it was a special time and we loved being able to do things together as a family again. Little did I know it would be those times I would draw upon when I divorced and wonder how I would make it. God knew this would be just what I needed to help me get through my own troubling times. I would understand what moms give up for their kids as well.

So what did your mom do? I'd love to hear your story.