A few memories of my mother Ilean

Share some memories you have of your mother, Gertrude Ilean Hansen Poulson.

Again where to start.

Last week I wrote about dad and the same problem is present today as I try to write about my mother.

Mom was a great teacher and a great friend as well. I remember family home evenings with her and listening to her teach the lessons along with dad. She also helped each of us when it was our turn. She was not my teacher at all in elementary school but I did have classes with her several times in high school, however she was an English teacher at home constantly. She would more than once remind us of how to correctly say something in English and how to spell words correctly. I don’t know that I appreciated that then like I do now.

Mom and dad loved books and I don’t know which one was the driver of the fact that every Christmas one of our gifts was a small quote book. I used them all the time when I had to give talks in church as a youth and in fact have used them even as an adult. I know that I have often referred to stories that I read in those books through my life. I didn’t gain a desire to read a lot back then but since then have learned to love reading and it was all instilled into my brain at an early age by mom.

I learned many lessons from mom about other things in life as well. She taught me cleanliness and her example of daily bathing helped me to develop the habit of daily showers. Of course I shower mostly because I want to control my hair and it is always easier when it has been cleaned in the shower each morning. I even carried that habit into my week long scout camps and always felt pretty dirty (which I most likely was) when I couldn’t get a shower each day. I was able to shower most of the camps that I went on but it was with a lot less water than I cared for each time.

Leesa was a year older than me and I still remember one day as we were driving home from town and I was in the back seat that Leesa was sitting in the front seat and for some reason, which I can’t remember, spelled the word “bra” to mom. I thought it funny that she would spell the word knowing that I could spell but maybe it was a little less embarrassing to talk to mom about it when I was in the car if she spelled it. Mom talked to her about it and didn’t see the need to continue the spelling part with it. I really can’t remember any of the rest of the conversation just Leesa spelling out the word and mom continuing with no worry about the fact that I was in the back seat.

Mother wrote to me regularly during my college and mission years. She also wrote to us after we were married but not quite so often. I think back now on the number of times I wrote to her and except for my mission it was far less often than what she had written. Now as I have the perspective from a grandparents point of view I was way too negligent in my communication with her in her years when she most likely longed for seeing her grandchildren. We sometimes now take the internet and our phones for granted since we can communicate so much more frequently with our families.  Marie and I after our children were pretty much grown would spend a week or two a year with her in Duchesne while photographing at Alan’s store in town. I cherished those visits which ended way to early.

Mom was supportive in my scouting experiences and desires but I often felt she didn’t really realize how important they were to me and to my boys. I pretty much realize now though that she was thinking more along the line for Marie and our relationship rather than scouting. That seemed to change one year though when Marie had gone to stay with her for a few days while I was at camp at Bennion Creek. We were headed to Arizona the Friday at the end of camp so Marie was coming to pick me up there and would have mom with her. They got there and we went home so I could clean up a bit and then we headed south to St George and then to Arizona. Well Marie commented that the car had overheated a little bit coming from Duchesne but I couldn’t find anything wrong so we headed out. Well all was pretty much OK except for it getting a little hot on a couple of the passes on the way to St George but after we gassed up in Hurricane and started up the hill toward Colorado City we suddenly had major problems. The radiator blew apart at the top of the hill. I looked at it and knew we were in trouble so I turned around and went back down into town. Well a scouting friend of mine from the wood badge courses for the two years prior to that lived in town. I called him and asked for advice on where to take the car. His father-in-law just happened to own a repair shop so we met him over there. His father-in-law determined it would need a new radiator but would have to get it from Las Vegas the next week. Well we had to be in Arizona the next morning for a family wedding so he told us to take his van and we would exchange cars when we got back the next week. Well we were able to go on and complete the photography for the wedding and have an enjoyable visit that next week with family in AZ. After returning to Hurricane we got together with my friend and went to the garage where the car was ready. His father-in-law then told me that if we made it to the top of the black hills then we were on our own but to comeback if it didn’t work prior to that time. Well we were only a few miles up the canyon when it overheated again so we turned around. I had called my friend and he met us at the exit from the freeway with his wife and father-in-law. We transferred our things into their van and his father-in-law then drove our car back to Hurricane and we rode with my friend to Mapleton. They stated that they needed to get away and left their children with grandparents so they could take us home and then they stayed with a friend in Alpine for the night before returning home. Mom could not get over what they had done for us and I then explained that they were only part of the friends that we now had all over Utah that would help in a minutes notice just like we would help any of them as well. It was a brother and sisterhood that had all developed because of my time spent scouting.

She wasn’t so adamant about cutting back after that on my scouting work in the district and council.

Mom was a good cook but she loved to teach us to cook as well. She had Clair cooking the bread for the family each week until he went on his mission and then I took over until I went on my mission. It wasn’t long after I left that she bought a bread maker and used that to make her bread.

Mom loved genealogy and spent many hours collecting pictures and making books of each on the four lines of our family. I would often go with her and photograph picture that some of her cousins would have and then I would give them to her. She and two sisters, Helen and Carma, were working on one for the Charles and Alvira Hansen line when she passed away in 2001. Helen and Carma then came down to our home several times after that for the next four years and we completed the book which ended up being around 600 pages. Mom had a good share of it done and the skeleton of the complete book so all we had to do was complete the final copy. With help from Mike Hendriksen, Helen’s son-in-law, we were able to put them into pdf files for all of the family. These advances in technology would have made mother very excited since now it was all so easy to share. 

I loved my parents and am so thankful for the efforts that they made to teach me the gospel and to teach me to love others like they did. Thank you mom and dad.