2: Childhood: Anchored in My Mother’s Love

One of my earliest memories is my mother singing to me while giving me a bath when I was about 5 years old. She sang songs like Mairzy Doats and The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Her maiden name was Joy Vencill. She grew up in Galt, Missouri—a small town in northwest Missouri. The population today is 275 and I don’t think it was much larger when she grew up there after her birth in 1911. Before my mother died, she wrote about her life. As a child, she slept on a cot in her parents’ room till she was in sixth grade. There was no electricity, and kerosene lamps lit the home. Until she was 6 years old, there was no furnace so the kitchen stove and a burner stove in the living room kept the house warm. The toilet was outdoors. She remembers her mother singing to her when she was young. There were books in the house and one that my mom liked to look at was John L. Stoddard’s Lectures (1897). These books contained pictures of different countries from around the world. Her favorite section was Japan and she wrote, “I can still remember those huge wrestlers and their houses made with lots of paper.” My mother died before she met my wife, Midori, who is from Japan, and I am sure she would have loved learning more about that country which I have come to love.