My mother was a rebel from the time she was born in the Midwest in 1913. She grew up in Grinnell, Iowa and Chicago, and during the Depression, she was paid to go to nursing school.

To say my mother was a character would be an understatement. She was brilliant and funny and she intimidated my friends…especially my boyfriends. My mother used to say she was a witch (appropriate since Halloween is next week), and my best friend still says, “…and I believed her!”

Since my mother grew up before televisions were invented, she developed quite a knack for telling stories, and we would make her tell our favorite ones over and over. The skill of storytelling is almost a lost art these days, but I still have vivid memories of some of these tales.

My mother’s first degree was in chemistry, and she followed that with a year in medical shool…her health was not good and she was unable to finish the program before my father decided to move to Portland, Oregon to set up his medical practice. While she was there, she started oil painting and photography. Her mother taught her how to develop photographs that were blue like blueprints – the chemistry background certainly helped her understand how to create the solutions.

She also fly fished and wore jeans in the 30s and she refused to wear a bra unless she needed to dress up.

My mother was also a perpetual student and I recall one story about her classes in architecture many years ago. She actually designed a green home in the 50s that was to be built out of concrete with terrazzo floors sloping to drains, and suspended furniture so you could hose down the interior. Her idea for the windows was to dip rags in concrete for mortar around colored bottles. Her idea was that concrete was inexpensive as a building material and the energy saving for heating and cooling would keep the utility bills low.

She was also a minimalist and she loved mid century modern design. No elaborate moldings for her! I remember our second-hand orange fabric-covered sectional sofa and a red area rug on hardwood floors. The walls were white and decorated with a few of the oil paintings that I still have in my home today. Mother taught us about color, values, proportion and scale. We spent many hours wandering through art museums and talking about architecture. Needless to say, there were stories about each of the subjects, too.

After my parents divorced, she went back to school and completed her masters in bacteriology, and again, her health was not good and she wasn’t able to work. We lived in a small house whose axis was northeast/southwest so our home wasn’t overheated wtih the morning or evening sun.

She gardened, organically of course, and we were the slave labor that tilled the ground and planted the seeds. We planted fruit and nut trees and worked hard to dig up the rocks from our yard to create beds for our vegetables. We grew up eating brown eggs and day old bread, and we canned our own vegetables and picked peaches that we froze. To this day, you can’t get me to garden, pickle or can!

Because of mother’s interest in recycling, organic gardening and conservation, we composted and even conserved electricity and water. To this day, I turn off my faucet after I moisten my toothbrush, and we only turn on lights in the rooms we are using.

Mother also planned her routes so that she conserved gasoline, and did all of her shopping on one day per week. Even in the 50s, she was concerned that the world would run out of oil.

Since she was also chemically sensitive, so we used biodegradable detergents and cleaning supplies including vinegar. We reused aluminium foil, paper and plastic bags. We even took cans and bottles to be recycled.

All of these lessons stuck with me though I am not as diligent as she was with budgeting. Her experience during the Depression formed her personality and her habits. She didn’t believe in credit, and she was a diligent saver. We could all learn something from her during this economic crisis.

Green design isn’t a new concept to me, and it is great to see that it is becoming more popular. I think of her every day when I do these simple things to conserve. I’d love to hear your stories about green design and what influenced you.

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