Things My Mother Taught Me

There's a quote I've seen circulating on Facebook for a while that says something like, "The voice you use to talk to your children will be the voice they use to talk to themselves."  As a parent, that thought is both inspiring and terrifying, with enough emphasis on the terrifying that sometimes we might hope it isn't true.  But as someone's child, all of us know that the truth in it is enough--we all recognize that voice inside our head.

For some of us, that parental voice is loud and overpowering; for some, it is quiet, hidden, and we must strain to hear.  Every parent, bound by imperfection as are all of us, speaks a mix of truth and falsehood in our memories, and the messages are altered also by the way we remember them, interpret them, understand them.  Most of us, however, are fortunate enough to have parental voices that speak more good than bad--that encourage us, instruct us, remind us, and empower us--and I am one of those.

I believe the first time I realized just how often I thought of or spoke aloud some advice, saying, or thought of my mother's, I was already a young adult and college student living away from home.  In a group of friends, I had made some reference to a saying of hers--which one exactly is now long forgotten--and someone replied with joking exasperation, "Can't that woman ever leave us alone?!?"  That was the beginning of my coming to understand the way that, even as adults, whether they are physically present or not, our mothers come with us wherever we go; and that this seems true for my mother, in particular.

I have long been in the habit, when I receive any particularly profound compliment, of deferring any credit to my parents.  There is so much truth in this that it would be impossible to give anything like a comprehensive account of what my mother taught me, or how she shaped me, or influenced me, since the implications of the person I became, simply by being born into my family, are so far-reaching they cannot be articulated.  However, on Mother's Day, here are just a handful of Mom-isms that have served me well, and that I hope I've managed to pass on to my own boys also.

1.  "Don't act lousy, and don't throw your trash around."  Actually, the credit for the wording on this one goes to my brother, who, on a long car trip, was anxious to get out at the rest stop, and didn't feel like waiting on Mom's version of the speech to be delivered before we were allowed to exit the vehicle.  So he pre-empted it with this shorter version, his best summary of all Mom's many admonishments about decent public behavior.  If I had to give a one-sentence version that actually came from Mom, I guess it would be, "Try to act like you've been out in public before."  But the sentiment is the same, and it is this.  Your behavior matters.  Everyone else might throw their wrappers on the ground, but you don't have to.  Everyone else might be an inconsiderate jerk, but you don't have to.  You can make a difference.  You can set the example.  People are watching you, and it will make more impact than you think.  One person doing right, behaving appropriately, acting with grace, is valuable and important, even if you are the only one. Especially if you are the only one.  Be that one person.

2.  "There won't always be someone around to help you fold a sheet."  This means you might as well learn how to do it yourself.  You can be just as strong, capable, and independent as you set your mind to be.  If there's someone there to help you, great.  Teamwork is awesome.  It can be easier and more fun when you can share every task with a partner.  But life isn't always like that.  Many everyday things, and yes, even many hard things, you will have to do alone.  You can do it.  Figure out how.

3.  "Never just wait."  Don't get me wrong.  There are times in life when waiting is appropriate.  Sometimes you just don't know what to do, and waiting is the only thing.  Sometimes it just isn't time yet.  Waiting with patience was something taught, practiced, and prized in my household.  But this advice was given in the kitchen, with cookies in the oven.  When something's in the oven, you don't just stand and wait for it to come out.  There are dirty dishes everywhere, baking supplies that need to be put away, and probably laundry lurking somewhere that needs attention.  Look around, see what needs to be done, and do it.  Take the initiative.  Be a contributing member of the team.  Don't wait around for someone else to have to tell you what to do.  When you know the task, when you have the time, don't waste it.

4.  "You shouldn't just be ignorant."  I've written about this one before, in a previous post that described my parents' attitude to learning.  This statement is the perfectly logical reason my mom gave me for her need to learn something "about Normandy".  As I said in that earlier post, I learned from my earliest days that learning itself is fun, exciting, and important, that ideas and information of all kinds are valuable and relevant, and that this continues in all areas of life, indefinitely.

5.  "You meet the need of the moment."  In relationships, there is no keeping score.  Marriage, or any other relationship, contrary to popular belief, is not a 50-50 deal.  No two people can ever move forward together successfully in life, bound by the idea that you meet the other person's needs as they meet yours.  Life is hard.  Things change fast.  Bad stuff happens.  We are in it together.  We don't earn our place, not in marriage, not in friendship, not in family.  We don't merit love by doing.  We don't say to each other, "Well, I feel so bad about everything you've done for me when I've done nothing for you."  (Or even the other way around--"Here's a list of everything I've done for you, but what have you done for me lately?")  That isn't how it works.  Love, by its existence, out of its abundance, meets the need that is now.

6.  "When you love someone, that doesn't mean you think they're perfect; it means you see their faults and flaws, and you love them anyway."  First hearing this statement, riding somewhere that I don't remember with Mom in the car, the initial shock was finding out that she did not think my dad was perfect.  Here's why that is significant--it means that even though she didn't think him perfect, as far as anyone could see, she loved as though he was.  Now, as an adult, I've come to understand this as the bedrock of every successful relationship, whether parent and child, husband and wife, or loving friend.  I've written often about being the Beloved, and how that is, according to Henri Nouwen, "the core truth of our existence"; it's a difficult truth for many people to grasp, and I've often been asked why it seems to come so easily to me.  This is why.  From the first moment of my existence, this is the way love was understood, practiced, and taught for me.  My worth and value as a person, my worthiness of being loved, was not based on my performance, or on my perfection.  Love was given by grace; I, by existing, was enough.

The older I get, the more I see what it looks like to try to go through life without this last understanding, the more I realize how everything, everything, depends on it.  All the previous items on this list can only be accomplished with this belief underlying them all.  Knowing this, constantly, unshakably, every day, is a gift I was given that I have continually grown to appreciate and that will never leave me.  I hope it's a gift I manage to give my children in the same way it was given to me, and that someday, someone somewhere has to ask them if I will ever leave them alone; and I hope that the answer for them is the same as it was for me--nope.  Not ever.  Thanks, Mom.

An Open Letter To My Kids, On This, The Most Ridiculously Overscheduled Week Ever

Boys, 
                                                                                   

This week will be a rough one.  I know we are all busier than we want to be, you are both balancing more than you are used to, and there won’t be much time for many of the things you usually enjoy.  And worst of all, at least for me, I will not be able to give each of you nearly as much of my own time or attention as I would like.

No one will be nagging you to take out the trash or clean up your mess—you will have to notice the things that need to be done and make the effort to do them yourselves.

No one will be chasing around after you and obsessively looking out for you—you will have to look out for yourselves and for each other.

I have confidence in both of you to handle all this well.  Don’t gorge yourselves on soda and video games just because no one’s looking.  Get as much sleep as you can.  Eat a fruit or vegetable—I spent money on them specifically so you could stay nourished this week while no one is feeding you.  Pause a minute to take some deep, cleansing breaths if you need to.  Remember your priorities.

Please know that I am immensely proud of both of you—not just for your many talents which are keeping us running this week, although those are wonderful too, and it’s great to see you both finding the fit for your own unique strengths and gifts—but even more than that, for the ways I see you take responsibility, show initiative, and exemplify compassion, as you work together to keep this family running, make this house a home, and care for each other and me.  These things speak volumes about the young men of character you are becoming.  I’m grateful for the privilege of being your mom, and there’s nobody I’d rather be in it with when the chips are down.  We’ve got this.

Love,

Mom

The (Non)Pinterest Woman of Proverbs 31

"Strength and dignity are her clothing,

And she smiles at the future.

She opens her mouth in wisdom,

And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the funeral service of my 98-year-old grandmother.  (98 years, 2 months, and 28 days, to be precise.)  It was everything I expected from the celebration of such a long life, so well and faithfully lived.  But also, there was something unexpected, at least for me.  I heard, for what I believe to be the first time, one of the most famous passages of the Bible, used for its original intent.

This might not seem so noteworthy to you.  But as someone who was born and raised in the church, who holds an actual college degree in "Bible", who has spent the last 35 years hearing the Bible preached and taught and studied and written about in every imaginable context, it was remarkable.

I love the work of blogger and writer Rachel Held Evans, and one of my favorite pieces of hers is entitled 3 Things You Might Not Know About Proverbs 31.  In it, she writes about how Proverbs 31, rather than being intended as a prescription for becoming "God's perfect woman", is meant as a hymn of praise to women, for lives lived with courage, strength and integrity--women of valor--and its intended audience is men.  Rachel tells how, in the Jewish community, it is the men who memorize Proverbs 31, who use it to praise and honor the women in their lives, for the things they have done, not the things they should do.

I have always loved this piece, and I believe it has changed, both for me and for many others, the way we view Proverbs 31.  Because, I confess, I had come to resent and--dare I say it--hate that Proverbs 31 woman.  I have often felt as though she is both the whip used to enforce my compliance to the image others have prescribed for me, and the icon used to shame me for my failure to do so.  I had become accustomed (and I don't believe I'm the only one) to mentally picturing her as some excessively modest, overly maternal, rigidly conservative, super-pious, glorified Pinterest mom.  (Wait--did I leave out homeschooling?)  But Rachel connects the dots between the woman of Proverbs 31 and the only other "woman of valor" mentioned in the Old Testament, Ruth.  I have written in an earlier post about my affection for the story of Ruth and Boaz, so this comparison for me was an eye-opener.  Ruth, Rachel writes, "is identified as a woman of valor, not because she checked off some Proverbs 31 to-do list by getting married, keeping a clean house and producing children, but because she lived her life with incredible bravery, wisdom, and strength."  She talks about how she and her friends cheer each other for their own personal and varied daily acts of courage with the salutation "eshet chayil!", the Hebrew for "woman of valor", because "it is not our roles that define us, but the integrity and bravery we bring to those roles".

Sitting in the service yesterday, hearing the words of Proverbs 31 read in exactly this way, something about these familiar words from Rachel finally clicked into place, more deeply than ever before, and I was able to see, not only that woman of Proverbs, but my own grandmother, in a fresh way.

Many people, in this last week since my grandmother's passing, have told me how they loved my stories of her.  This weekend was full of stories, new and old, some shared with others and some just privately recalled.  Many of them were funny and full of the joy she always exuded in even the smallest ways.  Many were stories of how, as a teacher by nature and not only by profession, she shaped the lives of others.  And some were simply the familiar stories of her life, with its remarkable landmarks and accomplishments.  I have never thought of Grandma as a Proverbs 31 woman, likely because my own memories of her are so different than the image of that woman that has always been portrayed to me.  The stories told about her by others were not of a perfect wife, a flawless mother, a domestic diva--nor are these my own recollections.  

I remember instead, baking a cake with Grandma in the kitchen while she told me a story, one she no doubt invented, about a king with a young son who came of marriageable age, and all the ladies of the kingdom were brought to the castle and told to bake cakes to see who would become the young prince's bride.  The poor peasant girl, unlike the fine ladies, was not afraid to get her hands dirty by wiping out every drop of egg from the eggshells, and was willing to work hard by beating her cake batter until it was light and fluffy, and was careful not to waste a thing by scraping every bit of batter from the bowl, and so, predictably, her cake was the best, and she married the prince--a story which summed up the virtues of Grandma's world.  I remember, a bit older, swinging with Grandma on her porch swing on a sweet, late-summer afternoon, watching the birds swoop and dive through the trees in her yard, while she told me that all of our words are like that, like little birds that fly from our lips, and once we have released them, no matter how we might want to, we can never call them back--a much harder lesson that I still struggle to master every single day.  I remember her telling, and often, how as a new bride, she produced a batch of biscuits so bad that, in her shame, she took them outside and buried them, and when the dog dug them up two weeks later, even he would not eat any.  I remember the way she left all the other guests at my bridal shower in a smoking trail of dust on every. single. game. with her quick wit and amazing recall.  I remember her advice for a long and happy marriage, which she told me when I called to congratulate her on her 71st wedding anniversary: "You just have to love 'em and respect 'em, even when you just want to kick 'em."  I remember, on what turned out to be our last visit, as we hugged goodbye, after we each said "I love you", that her final words to me in this life were, "You're doing a good job".  Pinterest mom?  No.  But a woman of valor, this amazing person who survived the loss of her mother at age 11, who became the woman of the house and surrogate parent to seven younger siblings by age 12, who attended college at age 60, who gave her life to teaching for 36 years and in faithful marriage to my grandfather for 73?  Absolutely.  Now that's a Proverbs 31 woman.

I think the favorite new story I heard about Grandma this weekend was told by the former student of hers who spoke at her funeral service.  He and Grandma had a running joke that dated back to the year she filled a one-month emergency vacancy for their district's eighth-grade classroom position.  He was in her class for that one month, and all the talk was speculation about whether man would land on the moon.  Grandma, in a sentiment not uncommon at the time, told him that she believed God would never allow man to get to the moon.  After the outcome of this debate, they have often teased each other about that conversation over the years, mentioning the moon and their prospective trips there.  He told how Grandma would sometimes draw a picture of the moon inside his Christmas card.  Several weeks ago, he visited with her for the last time, and, as he was leaving, he said, "Well, Esther, you still haven't gone to the moon."  She replied, "Oh, I'm not going to stop at the moon, Kenny.  I'm going much farther."  Eshet chayil, Grandma.  :)

My Christmas Tradition

A while ago, in a group of friends, we somehow wandered onto the topic of everyone's personal movie kryptonite--you know, that movie that you've seen a million times, but you just can't help watching again anyway?  Even if it's already halfway over, or you were already on your way to bed, or you only turned on the TV to watch something else?  I know there are some movies like this that have their own almost cult following, like The Shawshank Redemption.  Or, in my dad's case, The Outlaw Josie Wales.  Everyone in the circle was sharing their own favorite.  Someone turned and asked me, "So Lisa, what's the movie you always watch whenever it's on?"  I answered immediately, without thinking, "That's easy.  Talladega Nights."  There was a silence.  Glances exchanged.  Then someone said, "Really??"

So maybe the Ballad of Ricky Bobby doesn't hold the same appeal for everyone as it does for me.  But at least at Christmas time, I ask you all to indulge me.  I won't try to write about it again.  But I will link to what I wrote about it last year.  Give Ricky Bobby a chance, folks--that's all I ask.

I Like to Think of Jesus