Recognizing Her Strength

In this episode, I sit down with Diana Eubanks, DVM for a moving conversation about her mother Diane, a woman who once confessed that "apple pie and motherhood" might not be her thing. Their relationship wasn't always the best, and Diana's dad didn't help, but later in life, they grew closer. 

From a friendship forged in Girl Scouts that lasted a lifetime, to a card Diana discovered carrying words she didn't know she needed. This is a story about the strength that only reveals itself through difficulty. 

Visit https://adaughtersinheritance.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

She told my grandmother one time, I'm just not sure apple pie motherhood is my thing, but she made it work and we became closer as she got older.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hello everyone, and welcome to A Daughters Inheritance, where we have honest conversations with daughters about the complex relationships they have with their mom. In this episode, I'll be talking with Dr. Diana Eubanks, who is a clinical professor of veterinary medicine with a specialty in dentistry here at Mississippi State University. But I've known Diana for a while. I will say I was in my 20s when I moved to Atlanta and we met shortly after that. So we've known each other at least 10 years. That's right. At least, yes, that's something like that. So um, and she she grew up in Smyrna, Georgia. So if you're not familiar, that's just outside Atlanta. Went to the University of Georgia for undergrad and vet and uh vet school. So thank you for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, thank you for asking me. And and let me just start by saying I think this is an amazing thing that you've been doing. So well done. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Feel free to add in any other things about yourself as we go along. That was just a quick uh quick intro. But let's start with you telling me about your mom, uh, who she was just as a woman before she was a wife and a mother, a little bit about her backgrounds, just so we can uh kind of frame uh who she was.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Okay, well, I was named for her, and perhaps a little bit too closely. My name is Diana with an A, and hers was Diane with an E. So that caused a lot of confusion as I was growing up. But uh she was born in 1943. Uh she was my she was raised by my grandmother and her stepfather. Uh my grandmother's first marriage didn't last very long. And uh she grew up in a household with two half siblings. She has a sister and a brother. She shared a room with her sister, and so that came with some of the normal sibling rivalry type of things. And she was very protective of her baby brother. Um, her baby brother was about eight years younger than her, and I think that was a big uh big thing in his life was he had his had his uh sister die that looked after him. She went to secretarial school out of high school. She married my dad when she was 20. She had me when she was 21. So she just took off, right? She did. She she took off. Um I'm not sure she was she was quite ready for all of that. I know that you've talked to a lot of people that talk about how motherly their mother was and how wonderful their mother was. And I think as I talk about her, you'll find out that I I do think she was wonderful, but I feel as a young mother, she was she was not quite ready. And I think she would tell people. Uh she told my grandmother one time, I'm just not sure apple pie and motherhood is my thing. But she made it work and we became closer as she got older.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Actually, in one of the other episodes, somebody said, My mother didn't know what she was doing. She was 22 years old, and she'd have told you, I don't know what I was doing. So I, you know, I think that may be a a common thing as well. You were also named for your father, right? So I was my name. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So I they they were either fairly original or unoriginal, however, you want to, however you want to say it.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

One or the other. Um, so what was the relationship that she had with her mother?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

My grandmother was she was a wonderful woman. She was a wonderful cook. Uh, she was a wonderful grandmother. She was a little bit of a stern woman. She wasn't exceptionally compassionate or nurturing. And and I think, you know, that probably shaped my mother a little bit. My mother was very independent, and I think she instilled that in me. I'm very independent, can kind of take care of myself kind of person. But she certainly didn't have that more motherly figure. Yeah. Similar to her mother. Right. Uh Aura May. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

I mean, you gotta love that name. Aura May and Oscar.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Oscar. That's just yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah. And you had a great relationship with with him, even though that wasn't her father.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

I did, I did. And I heard her say one time that uh, you know, growing up with two step siblings in a household with a stepfather, she always felt a little different. Um, some of that may have been what she created, some of that, I think it it just was different. And she didn't feel exceptionally close to him, but she said that where he maybe wasn't terribly successful as a father, he sort of made up for it as a grandfather because he was just the sun rose and set on him when I was a child, and I think it was a mutual feeling there. He was a very influential person in my life.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Now, your grandmother was a great cook.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

She was. Your mother? My mother was not, not at all. My dad traveled a lot, and mom often did fish sticks, takeout, pizza. Yeah, she and as she got older, she made no excuses for not liking to cook. She wanted a very fancy mixer, one of those KitchenAid fancy looking. She wanted that simply because it looked very good on her granite countertop. She never ever turned it on. It was never used, but she she liked that. But uh, she was not a good cook. My dad was uh, we'll get into that probably in a few minutes, but he was he could be a little critical too. So I don't blame her. Part of learning to cook in most cases is trial and error. And I remember one time she cooked some green beans and didn't string them, and you would have thought she was trying to serve cat food or something the way my dad acted.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

So he wasn't he he wasn't one of those that pretended like, oh honey, that is so good.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

No, not at all. And I grew up being, for some reason or other, very, very protective of her. And so I remember a few dinners I just wanted to choke him and say, you know, she's she's trying. And then you couldn't blame her for not trying again when you know when there wasn't a lot of grace there for for error.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

So she had two step siblings. She did. And your father had uh he was he was an only child. He was an only child. And you were an only child. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Uh so not a huge family, not at all. When I was small, we would often have my dad's parents over to my mother's parents' house for holidays. And I can't remember there ever being more than maybe nine or ten individuals there with, and that was with both sides of the family. So very small family, and as I've gotten older, that family's even smaller. Uh of her siblings, her sister did not have a child, her brother had one child. So I really just have one, one amazing cousin. Yeah. And she also has one only child. So we're not a real proliferative family.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Um, so what did your mom like to do? She was she didn't necessarily like to cook, but what what brought her joy?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

She did like to garden and she passed that down to me. I think I take it a little level up. She mainly did little containers and stuff, and I love to do all kinds of yard work. I think her her job brought her joy. She stayed at home with me when I was small, but by the time I was in first grade, I think she got a secretarial job. My dad was a typical man of the time and did not think that his wife should have to work. And I remember when she did go to work that he made her get a separate checking account. And all of her money was to go into that, and absolutely none of it was to be spent on any household items.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

That was his responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

That was. So he was very, you know, very much the the provider in that way. And I think the very first thing I remember her buying from her special checking account was a nice set of patio furniture. And I think it very much hurt his pride to actually even sit on the furniture at first. There was some battle with that. But but I I think she enjoyed getting out and doing that. Now, when I say getting out, she was not a real people person, or I get so many of my traits in that that regard from her. Very introverted. I don't remember her spending a lot of time with friends. I mean, occasionally the girls from the office would go out to lunch or something, but she was always, you know, coming home right after work to to be home with. Like I said, my dad traveled some, but she was either getting home to be with me or just be at home, or certainly be at home if he was there.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

So that that trait I think is similar between the two of you, like like you said, because you have really close friends, but you don't have a ton of them. Right. Right. Right. And she had, I've heard you talk about her Girl Scout group. Talk about that a little bit, because that was, I mean, they've been friends for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

I don't think you could talk about Diane without bringing up the Girl Scouts. There was a group of about a dozen of them that knew each other from I think before the time first grade started. They all grew up in the same community, went to some of the same churches, and they were in a Girl Scout group together. And even though mom did not, in my opinion, spend a lot of time outside the home. She wasn't, as an adult, she wasn't active in church or her community or anything like that. At least about twice a year, the Girl Scouts would get together, usually for lunch, sometimes at someone's house. And those were very important. That was a very important group to her. In fact, when when mom got older, she developed dementia. I had an 80th birthday party for her, and she was getting quite confused by that time. So I worried a lot about whether I was doing the right thing. Because, you know, there's always a little risk throwing a surprise party for an 80-year-old, even under the best of circumstances. So I had a lot of worries about it. And we had it at the assisted living place where she was. We had a lot of the people from assisted living. We had family friends. I had a few friends I had grown up with, real mixture of people there in the in the little community center area. And I had the Girl Scouts. I think at the time there were about eight of them. A couple of them had already passed away. And I had been praying that this day would go well, but I wasn't sure. And I walked in, she was in front of me, and everybody said surprise. And she looked a little panic stricken. And for about five seconds, I thought, oh Lord, what have I done? This is not gonna go well. And then her eyes fell on the group of Girl Scouts. She took a deep breath and a big smile on her face, and she starts heading over to the Girl Scouts. And I think that it's always been that way with her. That's just was her home group, even though she wasn't real outgoing. That was just, you know, they were friends that had been friends from literally cradle to grave and had always been there in each other's lives.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

You know, I think that's something that is, I'm sure it's important with men, but it seems like that is such an important thing for women. Yeah, just I mean, it was for my mom. She had friends. Now my mother was a lot more outgoing. Right. So motherfuckers. As you are.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

She was so much more outgoing than I am.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

So, you know, she knew everybody in Ashoba County, and they were, you know, but she had her really close friends also that they did their quilting and stuff together.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

I remember.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Um, other people we talked about in another one, in another episode, about their sisters, where they would invite their best friends with the sisters and and uh how important those connections really are that kind of stay with you throughout the ups and downs, and maybe when your spouse is getting on your nerves or you know, whatever you have that that tight-knit group.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Well, one one other story I'll tell about the scouts. Uh, my mother was not a big outdoorsy person. I mean, just she was always dressed nicely, she was a very pretty woman. She took a lot of time to do her hair, to do her makeup, to, you know, she just didn't didn't go out in public without that. Uh, and again, just not real outdoorsy. I was probably about college age, and she came to me one time and asked if she could borrow my sleeping bag and maybe some camping stuff. And I thought, where is my mother and what have you done with her? Who is this? And the scouts had rented a couple of cabins up in North Georgia and they were going for the weekend. And that was very out of character for her. I think she had a good time. She didn't often go off and do something for herself, but that's probably the only group that could have drawn her out to something, and then especially with being an outdoorsy type of thing. And they probably did the same things they did when they were little girls.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

I'm sure. They sat around, they told stories, they giggled, they stayed up later, you know. I'm sure. So yeah. Um did she change over time with she had to wear the perfect clothes, have the makeup, the hair? Was that something that kind of stayed?

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Or that that stayed.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Even as her mind went as she got older, she uh now sometimes she applied the lipstick a little too thick, a little too much, a little, but you could tell it was it was because she still thought that was important.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

So uh did she skip some of the Girl Scout badges, like the cooking and the thing? Yeah, I cannot imagine the woman got a cooking badge. So or a camp. Well, she might have gotten the camping one later. Um, you mentioned that, but you do like the outdoors, and you talked about that she passed on to you um the love of of gardening and planting. You you have 14 acres, 15, yeah. Tell tell us a little bit about that because you have lots of animals out there.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

I do. I would say that's my kind of passion in life is taking care of that uh that little hobby farm out there. Um I share it with a very dear friend of mine, and we have horses and a pig, and we've got many rescued dogs. That's that's really what's at the heart of what I love to do is is dogs. Uh I've got chickens, I plant a little vegetable garden, I spend a good bit of time on my little hobby farm. Now, having grown up in Metro Atlanta, that little 15 acres seems like a ranch to me. Right. You know, it's it's it seems big from where I came from, but in a lot of people's minds it would be just a big yard.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

So as uh as a little girl growing up in your home, as an only child, what what was your mother like as a mother?

SPEAKER_00 15:57

I think she she tried. I think that's something as I've looked back, I realized that for the situation she was in, she tried. She wasn't uh she wasn't like your mom. She wasn't the PTA mom. She wasn't on all the church committees, she didn't usually offer to bake the cupcakes or serve for Bible school during the summer or anything like that. Uh children made her nervous, really. She wasn't the Kool-Aid mom. All the kids in the neighborhood didn't come over. No, I did have that. I had some friends down the street, and they were a lot, you know, their moms were a lot more likely to have all the kids over and things like that. But she was she was good. She, you know, she came to most of my um, you know, school things, and I played basketball not nearly as well as you did, or as, but you know, she came to things like that, and uh she she made an effort. She was present, she was present. That's a good thing. Attentive, yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Uh but not necessarily overly nurturing.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Right, right. I I think she grew I I grew up very independent. Um I know for a lot of kids things like going off to college is a big thing, and the parents go with them and they cry, and everybody's I think I packed my car by myself, said I'll see y'all in a couple weeks and drove off. You know, she said okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, that was just kind of how we, you know, how we did things.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

You said something interesting that that surprised me a little bit. You said your mother was independent.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

That's not what I saw because of the relationship with your with your with your dad. Right. Because she seemed very dependent on him. So what what's your kind of take on that?

SPEAKER_00 17:52

I think I have kind of dissected my mother a little bit over the years. And I understand things a lot more, I think, now now that I'm older and having seen what she went through. My dad was an alcoholic. He was a good provider, he always had a job. He um any of his spare time, as you know, was usually working real estate or flipping houses. I mean, he was he was a hard worker and he he and I did not have a wonderful relationship, especially as I got older. But he did instill in me a good work ethic. And he was uh, you know, in some ways good to me, but his drinking, I think more than anything else, probably defined our family life. And my mom was the typical codependent wife that constantly felt like her biggest job was to run interference for him in so many regards. And so that really defined who she was. I felt like when I was growing up, I saw her as kind of weak. You know, I was like, she just does whatever dad says or she just folds whenever, you know. Um, I had high aspirations to go to college and become something professional. And and maybe I looked at what she did and thought, well, you know, you didn't really make any huge, you know, huge contributions to I I don't want that to sound sound bad, but you know, I don't know that I looked at it as something a route I wanted to go. And then I look back and uh realize a lot of the strength I think I have comes more from her than than from my dad. Um I've always felt like I'm pretty strong and I'm very stubborn. I always say that my best and worst qualities are the fact I'm stubborn. I think uh, you know, I can be irritating as all, you know, as the day is long to work with. But also I feel like the things I've accomplished in my life are because not necessarily because I'm incredibly smart or because of any great talent, but just the fact that I don't I don't give up, but I'm very stubborn. Um I think I'm stubborn believing in people and and everything else. But uh I think I got that from mom more than dad. And I I think that was a big realization as I got older.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

When did you come to that realization? Because I remember you saying, my mom doesn't even know how to put gas in the car. Yeah. So when did that happen that you started seeing your mother in a different way than you had when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_00 20:25

I would say probably not really, even well, I guess it began. My my dad got very sick. Um, pancreatitis was in the hospital for almost an entire year. And my mother, who couldn't put gas in the car, who I felt like, you know, yeah, she had stayed alone a lot as he traveled, but he was always coming home to fix something, or, you know, I just wondered about her life skills. And that year that he was in the hospital, I think at first she saw her world crumbling, and then after a week or so, and she realized this was going to be more of a marathon than a sprint, she sucked it up and went back to work. She'd work every day, then she'd go to the hospital and sit with him for about two hours. She'd go home and rest and get up and do it again. And and I I think that was I was in vet school at the time, so I came home as much as I could on the weekends, but I wasn't there on a day-to-day basis. And I think I started to kind of see then, I was like, you know, dang, she's kind of tougher than I ever gave her credit for. And then, you know, I don't know that I that was a total epiphany though at that point. I think it was, you know, probably even after my dad died later in her life that I really looked back and thought, you know, she was the she was the stronger one of the two of them.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

And that really showed up. Because when you were talking about the sickness, that's not when your dad died. No, no, he did not. He rallied. He rallied and

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Then he died about ten or eleven years ago. He died in two thousand fifteen, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Did you see her change after that? Um because I think a lot of times women uh maybe there is a codependency or or sometimes I wonder if women don't do stuff because they just want the man to think that they don't know, you know, uh-huh here, honey, you do this, it makes you feel good about yourself. Um so how did she change after your phone?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

She changed a lot. Uh, and our relationship changed a lot. We had always it had always kind of been stressful. I feel like there were times I know I talked to you at times back then when um, you know, you said you gotta realize she's got to live with him on a day-to-day basis. I think a lot of times she chose whatever was the path of least resistance, whatever to keep him happy, keep peaceful, even if it didn't really meet meet my needs or my expectations at the time. But uh I think it changed a lot when he passed away. She had a pretty quick, in less than a year after he passed away, she had a uh health scare. She ended up in the hospital after a surgery went wrong, and she just about died. In fact, she a few times said she saw dad standing right outside the hospital window, and I thought, well, she there she goes, you know. But um she ended up going, you know, through a physical rehab, physical therapy, and went to an independent living. It was a retirement community, but was in an independent side, and she really blossomed there. She made friends. She, I think, always missed dad because despite the fact that he could be a royal pain, he he was good to her. They loved each other. Um, I've heard people remark they might be the only two people that would have put up with, you know, either each other of them. And I said several times, my mother deserves her angel wings for living with my dad for 51 years, I think, but uh that's a whole other story. But she went to the independent living side of a retirement facility and really just she made very typical the way I would probably be. She made a couple of very good friends, and she sat with them at dinner and still kept to herself a lot. She did a lot of, you know, reading and word search, and she liked her coloring books and things like that, but she was still able to drive, and she went to Belk and went to the grocery store and things like that. So she settled into that pretty well. But I'll tell you something that really changed the whole thing was COVID. Uh, they were in lockdown for almost an entire year, and I worried a lot about her. I had things delivered via Amazon. The building she was in, they took incredibly good care of them. They made sure they, you know, had whatever they needed. And mom made a lot of friends during lockdown. They were just forced in there together. I used to call her and could usually predictably tell when she would be in her apartment. I knew she'd be at, you know, breakfast or dinner, but you know, the normal thing before COVID was she would be by herself for the afternoon or something like that. Well, then it got where I would call and she wouldn't be there. Well, she'd call me back later and say, sorry, we were bowling in the hallway. Or we had a of course you were. Yeah. Yeah, we had a um cornhole tournament out in the lobby. Um, or they had a you know, a singer or some type of music musical uh entertainment that came in for the afternoon, and she went to all of these and just became a real real participant in it. Now I also think her mind was starting to starting that gentle slide.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

I was gonna say, was that part of a personality change that happened with or was it just more freedom or yeah, it's I mean, more freedom after dad died.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I think by the time they were out after COVID, though, she was probably starting to have a little personality change from Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

My my dad's personality changed. He had uh Alzheimer's in he was like that. He didn't didn't like people. Uh he had his very few people and he was funny and enjoyed them, but he was not a people person at all. And uh when he was in the um uh nursing home, he loved for people to come by and they they would uh when they were doing tours of the nursing home, they would take people to my dad's room because he was so hospitable. And I'm like, really?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Where's my dad?

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that does happen sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

I was incredibly blessed in that my mother, for the most part, as she progressed through dementia, she was she was very sweet. Now she got toward the end got anxious and you know that that side of it that I think a lot of people don't see until they actually live through it. But uh she was had a lot of anxiety toward the end. But she was she was pretty sweet and easy to mostly easy to deal with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

So I'm gonna ask you to uh put yourself in your mother's place for a minute. If she were sitting here and I said, How did your relationship with Diana change over time? That's a good question. What what would she say? Would it do you think it would parallel? Do you think it would be like, well, I was doing the best I could with the, you know, uh my family, my spouse trying to make that work? What what do you think she might?

SPEAKER_00 28:02

I'm not sure if she would realize quite the magnitude of times she, I think, chose my dad over me. I think she would think she had done the best she could. But yeah, I I definitely think she would have seen that at times she had to try to do whatever was going to keep the peace with him and let me be, you know, I I like I said I was you could take care of yourself. I could. I you know, I look back and and I think a lot of people look back on their childhood and they have things that they think damaged them or and you know, and some people deal with horrible things that I can't even imagine. But uh, you know, for the most part, a lot of times those things just kind of make you who you are and you can you can choose to make those good things. Um and I think they get they gave me a lot of uh you know, a lot of freedom and a lot of um I was an only child, but I wasn't just handed things left and right. Uh like I said, they instilled a very good work ethic, I think, in me. But I did grow up with, you know, money to go to college and opportunities that, you know, might not have had had there been six children or something like that. So I understand that.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

We've talked about or may. Uh your father also had a very interesting mother. Uh, what was your mother's relationship with her?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Um, I think she just tried to keep the peace and tried not to get too involved. I I think my dad's mother could have been a little overbearing with stuff. I think it was probably a typical, you know, typical kind of relationship. I know when I was small, she would get aggravated because they would want the her in-laws would want to pop down at eight o'clock at night and see the baby while the baby was asleep, you know, and my mother, I'm sure, was exhausted and you know, they didn't understand why we don't just wake the baby up.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

We're we're here. Yeah. And they were community leaders uh in Smyrna?

SPEAKER_00 30:05

They were. My grandfather was big in the civitans and historical society and things like that. So I think they could they could be kind of irritating. I don't think she had a particular adversarial relationship, I think it was just there, yeah, just there.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

You've talked a little bit about some of the ways that you're like your mother. If if you're looking now at this is what I've inherited from her, and not the financial stuff or whatever, but this is what I carry forward that she gave to me. Uh, what would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Like I said, probably my stubbornness. Um she was someone who could, I think, look at a situation and not let it get her to bog down. She just figured out a way to to do it. Um she I I think just my relationship with her, looking back, and and one of the things I can say, if I can go back just a minute to uh after my dad died and then she got sick, I feel like immediately things changed a bit for me and that I was sort of in a caretaker position. Not necessarily daily, not necessarily, but her ability to look after herself changed sort of suddenly because of the illness. And I just became a little more of a, you know, caretaker from a distance. I had to do a lot of that from from over here. But uh, you know, I I like I said, I see that she was usually able to, whatever it was, she just overcome it. She fell one time. This was after she had, you know, come through the other part, and she was getting older then, and I think a lot of people thought, well, this will just be the thing that does her in. And she had shoulder surgery, and she had, you know, she was in her late 70s, almost 80, and she went to rehab. This was a second time through rehab for her, and I think a lot of people would have given up, and she just she just kept going. Um, so I think that stubbornness, I think my in looking at my relationship with her and probably some other relationships in my life, it took me a long time to realize this, but something I've learned is that sometimes just because people aren't doing exactly what you think they should, or helping you in a way you think that they should be doing, sometimes they're doing the absolute best they can for that point in time. And I do look back at what all she dealt with and think, well, you know, she wasn't, she wasn't the PTA mom, she wasn't the Kool-Aid mom, but she was, I think, in many cases, doing the the best that she can.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

You know, I think uh in talking to women about their mothers and we're talking about mothers who have passed away. I think there becomes that realization as you go through the stages of your life that you're looking back that they went to through. Right. And you know, at 40 or 50 or 60, you can understand better where they were at 40 or 50 or 60 that just you you couldn't when when you were uh a child.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

I often think about, you know, there was only 20, 21 years between us, which made her a you know a little bit of a younger mother. And so there are a lot of times in my life I think back, I'm like, wow, my mom was, you know, this age when this happened.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

She was still growing up in in a in a way and having a baby. You have um you don't have children, but you have uh a lot of students that you work with that are very special to you. Uh you've been at the university for 25.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

20 years.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Um so there's been a lot of young people come through over that time. You've got other uh children and young people that are important to you and are important in your life. So what are you passing down? Is it you know, is there some advice that your mother gave you that you're passing down, or is there just uh what you learned through the years with her and through the transitions in her life that you are now passing that on, uh passing her legacy on and your legacy on as well?

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Right. I I can't think of too many things she said. She wasn't the type of person that sat down and had a deep meaningful conversation or anything. But there's not a lot of uh Diane. No, there's there's really not. There's not quotes or not things that I I remember her saying so much. Uh, but but I think she passed on to me to, you know, a a certain strength. I guess that's you know, I've said that. And looking at being, you know, being open to people having, you know, doing the best that they can where they are. Also just that it's never too late to have a good relationship with your mother. Um, like I said, after after dad died, we had a very different type of relationship. Probably one thing that as I was going through, you know, the ideas before doing this uh session, I was trying to think of of things that I had or found after she died. And she wasn't always somebody to say, I'm proud of you. As she got older and got to be that little old lady, you know, you could tell she lit up when I came to to visit her. Um, she'd say, I've been looking for that little red truck all morning, you know, waiting for me to drive over from uh from Mississippi. But I did find a card, and it was obviously for a daughter, and so I'm the only one she had that I know of. And um said something on the front about, you know, those those uh my favorite, those three little words or whatever, and he opened it up, and the three words were that's my daughter. And that really hit me hard when, you know, because I think I think I could see that some in her, especially as she got older, that that she was proud of me and pleased that she just became a lot less judgmental about, you know, anything in my life. And now she still would tell me if I was wearing the wrong color or something like that. You could, you know, did you mean to do your hair like that? Things like that. But but that was that was a big thing. She never got around to sending that card, but I do feel like she got that card with the intention of giving it to me.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

That's neat. Um, yeah, in that way, I I'm good at buying cards. So I'm thinking about them at that moment. She just stuck it somewhere. Um, so with that, are there some things that you saw that maybe you later you learned that she was proud of you? She really was. Maybe she didn't tell you. She probably told other people. I mean, that's one of the things you see also that she's telling everybody else about her daughter, but she never tells you. Oh, yeah. Um has that informed how you relate to other people with whether it's students or young people or or whatever, and how you've seen the relationship that you have with her, has that affected other other relationships that you have or with your students or or anybody?

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Well, I I I feel like it has. Um I am one thing I think I try to really tell my students when they ask, I mean, when we're having some of these talking sessions, not just uh I often tell them they're much better than they think they are. Um but I want them to be confident. And these these are young adults that are going through veterinary school, which is very difficult. And a lot of times their their confidence is just usually a little lacking. And in most cases, um like you're you're better than you think you are. And also you have, you know, you have us to fall back on to call if you need that kind of you know, mostly in a professional way, but sometimes in a little bit of a motherly way, you know, if you've got this. And I feel like maybe my mother had that with me, but not always when I was younger. I I think she in her mind successful would have been me getting married and having a family. And I think she always, you know, she made me feel like that was a a shortcoming rather than, you know, the but I think she was proud of my professional, professional life.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

We had a uh a symposium a few weeks ago and we had a student panel, and one of the things that they said, because they were talking to faculty, this was a faculty training, and they said, Don't call your students kids, because they're not kids.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Now they're young adults, but they're new at it. They're learning how to be adults. Uh, and I think that influence on those young people that they're not children anymore, they're not kids. They really are adults, but they don't know how to be an adult yet. Yeah. And in the vet school, they're a little bit older than that, but still they're there's a lot that they're learning how to to do. Uh and and I mean they're in medical school basically, so it's a lot of responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

They're usually incredibly smart, they're very motivated, but but they are, they're having to learn how to do life. And sometimes that's where, you know, sometimes I get a chance to help with that.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

So as we wrap up, is there is there anything that surprised you when you look back that surprises you about your mother or uh that you think, you know what, I didn't realize that at the time?

SPEAKER_00 40:24

The one thing that comes to my mind, she was very witty. I don't think I would have thought that at all. And maybe it just came out so much more as she got older and loosened up a little bit. Loosened up, got out from under the influence of my dad. Uh maybe, again, she was very proper. She always, you know, did her hair just right. And I'm sure there was a, you know, she had a certain hold on, you know, saying things too quickly or whatever. But as her mind started to slip, I guess that little governor was gone now. And she was a very witty person. I did not inherit that. I think I have a good sense of humor, but I am not witty. But she would just pall off with something that was usually usually kind. She wasn't just throw, but it was a yeah, she was pretty quick witted.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

So have you have you ever talked to her Girl Scout friends about her? Did you have a chance to do that after she passed away? Because it'd be interesting to see how they described her. Right. Which might be probably very different than a daughter. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Yeah. I've never spent a lot of time. There's one, one was her her best friend growing up, Dot. And I've talked with her just a little bit, but not so much. She, you know, she would say how reserved mom was and things like that. Just, you know, we'd love for your mom to come to that, but I'm sure she won't. You know, those type of things. Uh mom was very, again, into appearances in that time when she was really, really sick in the hospital. She had said she did not want anybody to come in there and visit her because mainly that she didn't want them to see her with her makeup off and her hair. And I I called Dot though, and I said, I think you should come. Because we really didn't think she was gonna live through that. That's when she was waving at dad outside the hospital window and all that. So um I said, I don't really care what she says, I think Dot should should come be. And and she did, she came and visited. And but that was that was about 10 years before mom actually passed away. So she came through that one. But yeah, she was she was very witty. So I only assume maybe as a child she was she was a little more that way, but I never saw that until she got older.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Well, probably during the time that you're raising children, you don't there's not a lot of witty things. No, you're just trying to make it through from one day to the next. Uh well, thank you for being here. I think this has been a great conversation. Uh and I appreciate you sharing your story and your mom's story.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Well, thank you. Thank you for doing this. This I hope is gonna reach a lot of a lot of people, the all these programs that you're doing, the continued podcast and stuff. I think it's a it's a really great idea, and you're an excellent person to be doing that.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Well, the interesting thing you've said, and I think so far everybody I've talked to, they've said, Well, I don't, you know, my story, it's kind of boring. I don't know. But I think there's so many things in each story that people can connect to or go, yeah, my mom was like that too. Or maybe even people whose mother's still around that they can say, Oh, you know, maybe they get some insight even to the relationship as it is right now. So I'm hoping that it uh that it will resonate. So thank you also, listeners, for uh joining us on this episode of A Daughter's Inheritance. I hope something in this conversation stays with you. Maybe it's comfort or connection, uh recognition of Maybe a similar story that you have with your own mother, and you know, maybe a laugh or two here and there. If it did resonate with you, please follow the show so you'll never miss the next daughter's story. And if you have an inheritance story of your own, I'd love to hear it. Until then, in the words of my mother, be patient, be kind, and be fair, but I think that's a good idea.