I grew up in a family of five kids. My youngest brother is several years younger than me.

50 years ago cloth diapers were used almost exclusively. I remember the “diaper pail” in the bathroom where my mother would rinse the diaper in the toilet and then let it soak in the pail filled with water and bleach. It is a smell I will never forget. Once a week she would haul the pail to the laundry room which probably weighed 50 pounds or more, ring out each diaper, wash them and then hang them to dry out on the clothes line in the sun. 

My mother was a petite woman never weighing more than 115 pounds her entire life. One afternoon as she was carrying the pail to the laundry room she slipped a disc in her back. She lay on the couch the rest of the day until my father came home from work and took her to the hospital. She returned home a few days later and it was as if nothing had happened. 

Many, many years later she was diagnosed with osteoporosis in her spine. We were told that her bones were the consistency of chalk and if she ever had a bad fall she would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Through all of this I never once heard her complain of pain or say if she was ever even uncomfortable. How is this possible? I have been suffering with a compression fracture in my back for months now and cry out nearly every day! Am I a wimp or was she a warrior? Maybe both are true. 

I only think of her now with the utmost admiration, for who she was and for her kind and gentle nature.