Wanda Jean Zoeller (left), who grew up very poor, tells her partner, Susan Herndon, about her mother—the most important person in her life.
Originally aired May 9, 2008, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Wanda Jean Zoeller (WJZ) and Susan Herndon (SH)
SH: Who would you say is the most important person in your life?
WJZ: Oh definitely it would be my mother. I think I had the greatest mom in the world. We were very poor. And you know what was the beauty of it? I didn’t realize we were poor probably until I was a teenager. And I attribute that to my mother. She always kept a nice house. And I can remember times sitting in the dark – and of course kids, you know, it was a game for us – but we had the choice between food or utilities.
SH: Mmhm.
WJZ: So if we had a lamp in the living room and we wanted a lamp in the bedroom, we’d take this lightbulb out of the living room and carry it to the bedroom and there might have one or two lightbulbs that moved around the whole house. And it’d gotten to be a joke in the whole family because my dad would always add to the grocery list when we were growing up lightbulbs and toilet paper. Mom would never get the lightbulbs and the toilet paper ’cause you’d have to get food instead. And, um you know, my mother – bless her soul – she pretty much let me do whatever I wanted to do. And I’m sure there’s a lot of things I did she probably preferred she didn’t know about. But she never hit us or whipped us. Although there’s trust me there’s times I wish she would’ve just spanked me instead of sit down and tell me, you know, that she was disappointed. She sat down and basically taught us that there’s consequences to everything you do and if you can live with those consequences then go ahead and make those decisions. And, when mom died the whole family was with her. I was laying in the bed next to her, holding her. And, uh, telling her it was okay to let go. Because I knew it was probably hard for her to let go of us. So we had to make sure she knew we were gonna be okay. And the very last thing she said to us, uh, was that she loved us. And, um, she was a huge influence in my life.