Happy Mothers Day

High School Graduation 1931

  Geneva Goodwin was born and raised on a farm in Shapleigh, Maine on August 27, 1913.  She had 3 sisters and one brother, so the farm work was shared by all.  There was never much cash money but the family shared a good life in other ways.  My grandfather never owned a car or truck but used horses and oxen for his farm and his work in the woods.  I remember the time Hollie asked her what kind of doll her grandmother had when she was a girl and mom said "I never had one"; she made doll clothes for all of her grand daughters.
  She and my dad got married in 1934, neither family could afford a wedding so they eloped to a neighboring town and were married by a minister in Acton, Maine.  They lived in a small little house in Sanford where dad work in the Goodall mills.  In 1936 they bought a farm in Lebanon, Maine, my home town, the farm consisted of a house connected to the barn by a shed and about 8 acres, mostly woods, there was also a detached forty acre woodlot, the "crop" was chickens and eggs, and a pig.
  My brother Lysle was born in 1937 and I followed in 1940, and that was the family unit in which I was raised.  Mom was good glue and held it all together no matter how hard I tried to make things worse.  She and my father were strong in the Christian faith, and strong on family there were many many trips to see grandparents none of them far away.
  Ma, as Lysle and I called her died in March of 2011, ten years after her beloved husband Stuart, she was ready to go all of those years but was patient in waiting.
  Happy Mothers Day ma.

My mother with me early in 1941