Laying Around Gramps House

I can vividly remember my childhood years I was a sickly boy diagnosed with severe asthma before the age of three. I recall the terror not being able to breathe and gasping to wheeze in my next breath like it were yesterday. I would be jumping rope one minute or running around playing without a care and the next falling to the ground gasping for air and crying for my mother. I was too young to have knowledge of any deity or higher power so I called out the name that always would comfort me or bring me peace even rescue me from my terrors, momma.

My mother, Gwendolyn Johnson named for her mothers sister is a woman of short stature five feet five inches tall and weighs about one hundred seventy pounds. Her soft skin is the color of deep caramel not unlike her lightened brown eyes for which she draws many compliments. My mothers deep black hair which is home to the occasional brown highlight from fading colorings past is usually cut in a short style resembling a bob. Mother also has a rather queer habit of sucking her thumb which has over the years affected her smile pushing her teeth to protrude outward. I can recall funny stories of how my grandparents would repeatedly try to discourage this habit to no avail. I just took it as a sign of her strong will.

Little did I know as that sickly child crying and gasping out for my mother with what was seemingly my last breath that she would keep on rescuing me throughout my years. If you cannot tell from the beginnings of this writing my mother was and still is my hero. I was raised in a two parent home in Baltimore, Maryland my father worked on the railroad and later drove trucks for a living. Most of my time was spent with my mother and I would say most of my values and beliefs shaped by her.