Here are some truths about mom….

She was born in 1936 and grew up in West Virginia and her dad said he wouldn’t pay for her to go to college so she earned a scholarship to UCLA as a National Merit Scholar. And she went, where she met my dad at a party in Malibu as a senior. She was President of her class who majored in Retail Merchandizing. I remember she sewed all our homes’ curtains and clothes, including our bathing suits growing up. She married my dad who was a Real Estate developer and they moved about the country through their lives together, including twice in Europe. They were married 60 years, Dad passed last year. Mom always approached life as an adventure and with a sense of optimism she conveyed to her three children. To this day she sees the positives and wonder in everything. She was an Art History docent at Stanford museum and collected art all her life. She has an enduring appreciation for nature and visual esthetics including landscape architecture.

Today she continues to throw her arms wide open to the mountains of La Quinta every time she sees them. She brought her friends together for monthly birthday celebrations she never forgot and endless dinner parties. Even in dementia, having lost clear language capacity she shows the interest and care for others that was her lifelong trait. Mom was an avid reader. She read to her kids and I remember going to the library where we got the maximum number of books, 13 each. She read Time Magazine at long stop lights, and needing very little sleep she read in the wee hours of the morning late into her 80s, always passing along to us her latest read. She was a voracious learner. Mom played tennis and golf all her life and continued to walk her neighborhoods at a brisk pace wherever she lived.

In their early 40s my parents sold everything and moved to Paris to experience more adventures. Mom went to the Cordon Bleu cooking school for fun when in Paris. They took the kids with them and made it a mission to travel all they could from Egypt to Greece to Scandinavia and Great Britain for the year. Mom was the advocate for this big journey; it came to define their life and character as brave adventurers to their friends and family. Mom embraced life in a big way and knew she could overcome obstacles and meet challenges successfully. She both showed and taught this. I remember as kids we were not allowed to say “can’t”, mom always made us say we’d try.

– Margot Gibson