Commentary : A White Flower on Mother’s Day and Memories of Things Left Unsaid
It’s an old custom rarely observed these days, but come Mother’s Day I shall once again slip out to the garden, pick a flower and wear it to church just as my mother and grandmother did. A red blossom while your mother is living. A white one if she has passed on.
And, as always, that white flower in my lapel will remind me of how much was left unsaid until it was too late.
“Hey, Mom, you weren’t a failure,” I want to say. Fifteen years after her death it still haunts me that she didn’t think she had been a good mother. Only after raising my own family do I fully realize how wrong she was to harbor such thoughts.
I know now that I learned as much from her shortcomings as I did from her strengths.
Mom deplored her tendency to jet-propel herself into one project after another, then just as suddenly tire of it and drop whatever it was for something else, often equally short-lived.
Seeing her frustration at not finishing what she started, I vowed I would do the opposite. Admittedly, I’ve sometimes gone overboard, but the habit has paid off.
Family friends and co-workers know I can be depended upon to see a project through no matter what.
And whenever I keep plugging at something I’m tempted to quit and finally reap the pride of accomplishment that comes with completion, I think, “Thanks, Mom.”
“I’m just a jack of all trades, master of none,” she used to say, her tone wistful. And so I learned, without actually being told, not to fly off in too many directions, to channel my energy into more positive goals. Chalk up another one for Mom.
A strong sense of pride is part of my heritage, but, thanks to Mom, I’ve learned that too much can be less help than hindrance.
“I’ll never forget the time I was 11 years old and recuperating from rheumatic fever,” she told me one day. “Your grandma had just come up from the barn with two huge pails of fresh milk. Oh, how I wanted a drink of that milk! But I couldn’t bring myself to ask for it.” She paused. “Years later, when I told my mother about it, she said: ‘Why you little silly. How did I know you wanted some when you didn’t have sense enough to speak up?’ ”
Like my mother, I, too, often find it hard to ask for things for myself. But that story she told made me realize there are times when I need to speak up.
As for finances, Mom always meant to save for that proverbial rainy day. She just never got around to it. So vacation plans were scratched in order to pay an unexpected doctor bill, and I’ll never forget the day she hid our new radio so we’d have something in the house that wasn’t down as collateral for the new loan to cover the latest crisis.
“Don’t make the same mistake I did,” she told me later. “Learn to manage money while you’re young. Otherwise, it’ll probably manage you.”
Mom was outspoken, even brusque at times. And she had incredibly high standards.
Today’s child-rearing experts would no doubt have a field day denouncing her for being too hard on Dad, on me, and most of all, on herself. But how can she be faulted for that when those were the very traits that helped me curb habits that could one day cause grief?
“Do as I say, not as I do,” may not be the popular way to raise kids, but sometimes it works. Sure, as parents we’re committed to set a good example. But how many of us are perfect? I know I’ve made mistakes, but when I see my kids taking care to avoid making the same ones, I know I’ve done my job as a parent.
I remember telling my daughter that I was grown up and a mother myself before I realized just how much my mother had done for me.
Despite our differences, with maturity came the knowledge that Mom had done the best she was capable of, and I loved and respected her for that. I wish I could let her know how much I gained from what she viewed as her unforgivable mistakes. I want to say: “How could you call yourself a failure when you gave me so much.”
How I wish you could hear me, Mom!
