My mother had taught shorthand and typing to support us since my father died, and secretly she hated it and hated him for dying and leaving no money because he didn't trust life insurance salesmen.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My mother was a great typist. She said she loved to type because it gave her time to think. She was a secretary for an insurance company. She was a poor girl; she'd grown up in an orphanage, and she went to a business college - and then worked to put her brothers through school.
My father believed a real man didn't read, and my parents hoped I'd get some sense and find a job in insurance.
My mother taught me how to write.
My dad was in the life insurance business, so I learned about selling when I was about 14 because I started working as a secretary.
My dad died when I was 15 and worked way too much.
I learned a great lesson from my mother on her deathbed. She counseled me on the importance of taking care of myself so I wouldn't end up in an unhealthy body like she did.
My mother Molly had a nervous breakdown after my father Chic died, aged 50. He was a very generous man who ran a shop in Dundee giving a lot of people tick. When he died, a lot of people hadn't paid their bills, so he died with a lot of debt. After he died, my mother went doolally.
My mother speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety.
While they would have provided financial support if I had needed it, the greatest support my parents gave was emotional, psychological.
My grandmother died in childbirth, and my great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet. She never knew how to read or write.