StoryCorps Interview: My Mom

By Kelsey Nelson

I interviewed my mom. It went well and my mom answered the questions honestly and opened up to me about things I don’t think would ever come up in a regular conversation.

My mom saw at 9-years-old, that her parents getting a divorce was a good thing because they fought a lot. My mom always stayed close to her dad even after he left because he still cared so much about them. She never felt super close to her mom because her mom was always busy with stuff, but she got really close to her in high school and college.

My mom got angry with her mom and her step dad because they paid for her freshman year of college but they didn’t tell her they had money issues so at the end of the year they told her they couldn’t pay for the rest of her college, so she had to take a gap year and work for the money to pay for college. This is where she thinks she gained her independence from.

She told me about the time she got in the most trouble is when she was 10. She was with her friend, and they saw wet cement outside a brand new house and decided to write their names, phone numbers, birthdates, etc. and ruined the new cement. She admits that writing all that was not the smartest idea because the builder easily found them and went to their houses and told their parents what they had done and they got in a lot of trouble. They made a deal with the builder that they would work for him. My mom went but her friend would never go because she was always sick. One day when mom was working, she stepped on a rusty nail and had to get a tetanus shot.

My mom used to spend her days in Southern California working nights and imagining how her life would turn out and she says it didn’t turn out a lot differently from what she thought. She tells me one of her most influential teachers was named Miss Day and she was strict, taught well and had high expectations. She learned great work ethic from her. Miss Day was a tough teacher and my mom told me because of that, when she got praised by her, it meant so much. One day my mom was watching a guest speaker on OPB and the speaker was talking about an amazing teacher they had in high school and my mom remembers thinking about how much the description sounded like Miss Day. At the end of the speech, the guest speaker wanted to thank her teacher for everything and used the name Miss Day and my mom was so proud and amazed.