Barbara Ann Williams: My Mother

My mom name is Barbara Ann Williams. She was the born March 7th 1957. My mom was the seventh child of 18. She meet my father when she was 16 and married him and move to Coffeyville, Ks. One year later when my mom was seventeen I was conceived. During the time of my mom pregnancy my dad lost his oldest sister who raised him on his birthdate in 1975. My Aunt Clara was my mom favorite sister in-law and that’s when she knew what she was going to named me.
My mom was a short petite seventeen year old young lady. She said she gain over fifty pounds during her pregnancy. She went into labor with me on August 8, 1975. She had a very difficult labor with me. Her cervix would not spread and she never would dilate past two cm. After 48 hours of labor I was going into distress and they gave my mom an emergency caesarean section. I weighed in at 8 pounds 10oz and was 18in long. During the time of my birth Coffeyville was just adjusting to black and whites in the same schools and neighborhoods. My mom said that there where towns that surround Coffeyville that didn’t allow blacks to enter or live there. I was five or six years after I was born she said that anything ever changed. She said that gas was around 75 cents a gallon and she could take twenty dollars and my groceries for two or three days. She wasn’t for sure what formula of milk I was on, but she does remember giving me goat milk when I was six months of age because I was not keeping the formula down. She used cloth diapers for me when I was born because that was the normal thing at that time. Very few people used disposable diapers during that time. When I was around six months old is when she bought my first bag of disposable diapers and they cost about four or five dollars, which during the late seventy’s …show more content…
When we started elementary school my mom started to teach me responsibilities of staying home with my brother and sister while they worked. During that time microwave was not around and you better not touch or turn on the gas stove. I became the best sandwich maker ever. My mom said racism was still going own while I was growing up, I didn’t get to experience none of the things that she endured as a child or even into her young adult years. She was happy that she didn’t raised in the south because she felt that was the biggest place we would feel the impact of racism.
My mom said that times where tough but, they was a lot easier and calmer than raising kids now. We didn’t have all the fancy phones, internet and big televisions like now. We played outside like kids do. We read books and went to the library twice a week and always had family day on Saturday’s. Nothing to traumatic happen during the time of my siblings or my birth that cause her stress. The only thing she really had to worry about is being called a “nigger” or her kids being called one and not show reactions to it. She always says that no reaction to ignorance is always the best reaction you can