mo Mhàthar*

I'm going to go ahead and post this today - I don't know how busy I will be tomorrow with church-stuff and packing. But this is a little Mother's Day tribute.

I think, if you read my blog regularly, that I love my mother very, very much. And she and I get along very well. (I think we get along even better now that I'm an adult, but that's beside the point).

There are a lot of things I have to thank my mother for. I'm talking even beyond the "she carried you in her womb for nine months.." thing. I'm talking about the things she taught me, the attitudes she gave me, the time she shared with me.

There are a lot of things - I mean, Useful Things - that I learned from my mother. Because of her, I know how to do all of the various craft-things I do. She taught me how to sew by hand as soon as I was old enough to safely hold a needle and use cloth shears. She bought books of stuffed-toy patterns and showed me how to make my own "critters," something that's still just short of magical to me.

Later, she taught me to crochet and embroider, and then, to knit.

She also taught me other simpler crafts: that you can make t-shirt or placemat designs by drawing on the fabric with crayons, and then ironing it between sheets of paper. And how to press flowers. And how to make play clay out of flour and salt and water. And how to do papier mache. All that kind of stuff that some of my friends are frantically running to the Internet to find out how to do when their kids have a school project, are things I kind of take for granted that people know how to do.

She taught me how to cook. (Yes, I had the requisite "Home Ec" in junior high school, but really, you don't learn how to cook there. Not enough time - and the Home Ec I took was not well-organized). The nutritional information I know - which again, is something I take for granted that "adults" know about, but my friend the Nutrition teacher tells me most people are woefully uninformed in - is stuff she taught me. (And she isn't a nurse or anything. She's a botanist. I'm guessing she learned her nutritional knowledge from reading and common sense).

She taught me gardening. She also taught me a lot of the names of the common plants around where we lived. I definitely think I became a plant ecologist because of her early influence - oh, I fought it for a while, I spoke of majoring in French or linguistics, and later of being a geneticist, but ultimately I came back to the soft magic language she taught me when I was just a kid: Daucus carota. Populus tremuloides. Solidago canadensis. Melilotus alba..

She taught me basic first aid and some repair-type stuff - again, practical stuff that I assume a grown-up needs to know to make it as a grown-up. And I never experienced the pink-underwear syndrome in college because she taught me what things needed to be separated, and what temperatures water used, in the laundry.

In addition to the practical things, I absorbed ideas from her - attitudes. Some of them she made more explicit than others.

I credit the fact today that I don't feel the need to cram my feet into pointy high shoes to her influence. She dressed up when dressing-up was important, but she wasn't one of those women to torture herself into ill-fitting or uncomfortable clothing simply in the name of fashion. (Perhaps her knowledge of dressmaking played a role there - she knew it was possible to make garments that both looked good AND felt good, and so was unwilling to settle for things that pinched or bound). I don't wear very much makeup because she didn't deem it that important (even though she never did, and still won't, leave the house without lipstick on.)

One of the more explicit pieces of advice I got from her was to continue my education, and to make myself "employable." She once came out and told me: there are a lot of good men out there, but don't count on one to be able to take care of you. Things can happen. I assume that's because she had a sister whose first husband became disabled early in their marriage - and that sister had to work at a string of low-paying and sometimes demeaning jobs because she had left high school to marry.

(I may have taken my mother's advice to be independent a bit too far. But to her credit - she has NEVER made dire hints about my unmarried status or about the fact that I'm not providing grandchildren.)

I think the value of education was another of her attitudes I've absorbed. She was the first in her family to go to college - and she went on to grad school, even so far as getting a Ph.D. But it took sacrifices - her father went to the bank and took out his entire life-savings and gave it to her when it looked like she wouldn't be able to afford tuition one fall. And she has spoken MANY times (so many times I used to roll my eyes about it as a teenager) about how she worked for "thirty-seven and a half cents an hour, plus tips" as a waitress to pay at least part of her way through college. (37 1/2 cents an HOUR? Today, it boggles the mind...)

She also valued books - perhaps this was part of growing up in a town without a library, and also growing up in a family without a lot of disposable income. (But probably also a result of growing up in a family with a father who liked to read, and who brought home books when he could. And a grandfather who taught himself to read as an adult, and was always seen reading thereafter - I have a photograph of my great grandfather, whom I never met, and he is reading in the photograph.) I've spoken many times of the weekly or twice-a-week library trips we made when I was a kid, and how she let me check out as many books as I could carry (and sometimes more; there were numerous times she carried some of my books). She also gave books for Christmas and birthday gifts (which I probably didn't appreciate as much as I should have when I was a kid). And, of course, she read to my brother and me. She has a picture - I would have been about 10 and my brother about 5 - of the three of us sitting on his bed. I'm wearing the last pair of "footie" pajamas that ever fit me and holding my beloved old Snoopy doll. The cat is sitting with us. And my mom is reading a book to my brother. I'm guessing that what happened is, she started reading, the cat came in (that old cat ALWAYS did that; he could detect my mother's "reading" voice I think) and then I came in and joined them. And my dad came and took a picture.

She still values books - we often exchange books, usually a "new" mystery series one or the other of us finds (she got me turned onto the Bruce Alexander novels), but sometimes scientific books as well.

I HOPE I also learned from her some of her patience and kindness. I don't think I'm quite as nice a person as my mother is - I have more of my father's temper, I can get pushed to a point where I don't suffer fools lightly - but I do hope I've learned from her and can moderate my responses to people. To remember that a soft answer often turns away wrath. I've had many people comment on how nice my mother is - well, of course I agree. But I hope I can live up to her example as well.

(I will say she once made the comment - it was actually about my brother, who was suffering some kind of interpersonal difficulties at school - that she raised us to be "too nice," and as a result, we sometimes got run over by ruder people. But now, as an adult, I'd question whether it's actually possible to raise your kids to be "too nice" - true, they may suffer some difficulties greedier or meaner kids might not, but I think they ultimately make better-adjusted adults).

In addition to the things she taught me, there are other things I remember and cherish from my growing up years. For one thing, the singing. My mother doesn't have a great voice (she has a GOOD voice, but not "great" - and she'd be the first to agree with that), but she likes to sing. And I remember her working around the house, singing the old hymns she learned growing up, and also sometimes old folk songs. And I associate that with happy times - everything is right, everything is as it should be.

I also remember that she would let my brother and me make messes - she'd let us paint, or cook, or build "things" out of scrap wood and paper towel rolls - and not get after us for the mess we made. I remember her saying that she'd rather have a happy family than a spotless house, and I think that's a good attitude to have.

Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of what my mother was and is can be summed up by the idea that the deep internal things are more important than superficial appearances - that what is really important is not the glossy sheen on the kitchen floor but that your kids baked you a birthday cake because they love you and because they know how to do it. Or that it's more important to be outside playing with your kids than to keep your hairdo perfect. (My mother didn't even really have a "hairdo" - she'd get it cut every few weeks and then take care of it herself: she didn't go to the "hairdresser" the way some of her friends did - and they would come home all teased and lacquered and couldn't really do the messy or fun things my mom did for fear of ruining their hair). I think a lot of that attitude got passed to my brother and to me. And it's been kind of a bulwark against the teachings of pop culture that decree only a certain sort of beauty is beautiful, and only certain sorts of interests are interesting, and, presumably, by extension, some people are more valuable than others. What my mother taught us was that PEOPLE are valuable. That you treat them with respect because they are PEOPLE. And that being true to yourself is important, even if it's not what's currently popular.

So anyway. Happy Mother's Day. I'm glad I get to see my mother on Tuesday- I won't be there for Mother's Day itself, but I will be there for her birthday this year.

(*"My Mother," in Scots Gaelic. My mother's most prominent heritage is Scots)