It is Mother's Day, and time for a story or two about motherhood, with a disclaimer right up front. I am very much aware that my experience with mothers is not universal, or even average. Like all mothers, mine was not perfect, but she was not the she-devil I've had the unfortunate experience of meeting on occasion. I've known women who are mothers inasmuch as they gave birth, but had their mothering been graded, would have gotten F's, even on a curve.
There are many things I learned from my mother, the most important of which is her dictum that if you make a commitment, you keep it even if something better comes along. While there are some marriages that probably should be terminated, if more people applied mom's wisdom, there would be a lot less broken homes and broken children. My mother's axiom has saved me much anguish and needless fretting about decisions. Once they're made, they are made. Recently, I had made a commitment to do a weekend prison ministry. Unfortunately, our granddaughters' school musical got bumped to that very weekend, and three of them were in it, one with a starring role, another with a solo and the third with a supporting role in the cast. It took some maneuvering to be able to attend the dress rehearsal, but the decision, while hard to carry out, was not hard to decide. The commitment had been made; I knew what I had to do. I would have liked to be there for the actual performance, especially since it was our Izzi's debut, but I couldn't get my mother's words out of my head.
I also learned years ago that teamwork was necessary for self-preservation with mom. My brother and I were playing dodgeball in the living room one day when mom and dad were away. It was not a friendly competition, and we were not on the best of terms. At least, not until an errant ball knocked a plaster figurine off the knick-knack table at the end of the couch. It wasn't a particularly attractive piece, and certainly wasn't valuable, but it did happen to have been a wedding gift, and my brother and I instantly called a truce and became allies in the task of reconstructing this shattered piece. Retrieving the pieces, we retreated to our room and with the aid of model airplane cement and paints, did a pretty fair job of reconstructing said figurine. When I say pretty fair, I mean we could have hired ourselves out for fine art reconditioning. It wasn't until after I was married that mom discovered her beloved figurine had somehow acquired a few hairline cracks, and that the gold painted base actually sported two different shades of paint. I learned that sins undiscovered are more easily forgiven years after the fact, probably not the best lesson one could learn from one's mother, but a lesson I am grateful to say I learned.
The other story involves my own wife, the mother of my children. I don't know how I knew it, but I did. When we were dating, Linda on more than one occasion told me that she didn't particularly like little kids. Teenagers were OK, but putting up with them getting there was not something of which she was fond. Nonetheless, I knew! So when we were talking about marriage, we talked about having kids. And I told her that I wanted her to raise my children-to-be. My exact words were, "If I wanted someone else to raise my kids, I would marry someone else." She didn't object, we married, and when our kids were small, she sacrificed her career to stay home with them. It wasn't until they were school age that she herself went back to school, matriculating from grad school with a 4.0 GPA. She became a marvelous teacher, and is still an outstanding mother, and now grandmother. I am a very grateful son and husband to have these two women in my life.
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