Lem's mother
How old is Lem's mother supposed to be? She looks 60 (and the actress was 60), but she has a 10-year-old daughter, which leaves me slightly puzzled.
shareYou're right, though I really didn't think about it given that the actress who played her gave such a wonderful, touching performance. Perhaps she was like... mmm... 55? And gave birth her younger daughter at 45? It's kind of common that people who live in the countryside -since they work hard under the sunlight- look older than they really are. But, again, it was a truly fantastic performance. Such an expressive face and able to convey happiness and pain equally well.
Animal crackers in my soup
Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop
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Living with a husband like that would make any woman go gray early and have a careworn appearance that makes her look older. We don't know how many pregnancies she had between the son and daughter that ended in tragedy to take the youth from her looks. It was a rough life. She would have seemed radically different if she had acted as if she were proud of her appearance, been up to date on fashions, bobbed and dyed her hair, wore make up, and went on a "slimming diet" as they called it then. However, she did have beautiful skin which you wouldn't expect in a woman on a farm in that era, so a city 60 would be a farm equivalent in 1930 of maybe 50 or less. I imagine she thought of herself as a plain, hardworking, God-fearing woman, which was just what her husband wanted her to be and her son expected her to be. Her daughter-in-law had lived so differently she made a huge impression on the men, and I'd venture to say, on her mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
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