Amanda Horne: Happy to be 'turning into my mother'

How often have we heard ourselves say, "Oh boy, I'm turning into my mother!" I know that I say it with regularity -- and it isn't always in a good way, either.

And yet, why? My mother, Diana, was an incredible woman -- strong, smart, funny and quite the daredevil, who accomplished so many things during her always-interesting life.

She grew up in England during World War II, evacuated out of London to North Wales and as a child she never received a formal education. She and my uncle had a governess who taught them reading, writing and nature, what else do you need, right?

Mum loved to read and was a copious letter writer. She would write to my brother and me every single week when we were away at boarding school, and not just a small notecard -- her letters ran to four of five pages, front and back. They may have been hard to read, as her writing was "interesting" to say the least. But she never missed a week.

As we grew up and moved away from home, she continued her weekly missives until the day she died. She kept up friendships around the world through her letter-writing, but never quite managed to master the art of emailing!

One of Diana's favorite moments to recall whilst growing up in North Wales was being invited to the naval base and dancing with the future Duke of Edinburgh -- Prince Phillip of Greece, before he married Queen Elizabeth II. She, of course, called him "Pip" and only realized afterward that he really was a prince! She did not care for snobbery and treated everyone she met with the same good grace.

Her sense of adventure and headstrong ways led her to Africa after her parents died. Unbeknownst to her, she had married a con man and philanderer who eventually went on the run, pursued by Interpol. Left alone and with her younger brother to support, she talked her way into a job as a secretary to a friend of a friend. Her father had sent her to live with an aunt and go to secretarial school when she was 16. Her poor aunt had no idea that she only went to half her classes, but that was enough to get her through!

Diana made friends wherever she went; she loved people and never met a stranger.

Throughout her life she loved to take on a challenge, whether it was sailing, climbing, race car driving, farming -- you could guarantee if you told her she couldn't do something, that she would do it.

I found out recently that she had always wanted to play the piano but never got around to it. My husband, John, and I started taking piano lessons this past January, and when our fabulous teacher Jen

nifer said, "you may not like this song . . . we can skip it," I, of course, have been working extra hard to master it. I must have learned that stubborn streak from my mother, right? Hmmm I am seeing a pattern here, or at least my husband tells me so.

When Diana met and married my father they started farming tobacco, maize and cattle. She taught my brother and me via radio for the first two years before we needed to go to a "real" school. It was then she realized that the farm children had no school to go to, so she started a school in a barn a couple of days a week to teach the children how to read, write and do basic math -- the woman who had never finished school.

Nothing daunted her. If she did not know the answer to something she would find out, she would master whatever skill she needed and get the job done -- apart from cooking, as she hated to cook!

When Mum left us five years ago, she left behind more than 100 closely typed sheets with stories from her life. She did not get to finish her story, but what she did leave us was an insight into her life, her heartbreaks and joys and for this I am forever grateful. Reading through her life story makes me realize how similar we are -- and how happy I am that I am "turning into my mother."

Amanda Horne, community relations coordinator for the Women's Resource Center of Manatee and the board chair at PACE Center for Girls of Manatee, can be reached at amobamanda@gmail.com

This story was originally published July 12, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Amanda Horne: Happy to be 'turning into my mother' ."