My Mother | Cecie says | ENTERTAINMENT
My Mother
May/10/08 07:33 PM Filed in: Cecie says
Everything I do, I have learned from my mother.
Whether it is the way I create a first draft of a
note, or the way I respond to my partner, or to
my children, it is my learned belief in the power
of the positive that allows me the life I live.
It is the lessons I have taken from my mother that mark and make my days. My mother is not perfect, she is very human. Yet, she instilled in each of her six children an abiding sense of faith in themselves, in trying there is success, in encouragement, there is the making of the future.
She has touched the lives of hundreds of
students, and thousands of parents. She changed
the world for her adjunct children, those who she
found at different points in their lives and made
her friends, gave responsibility to, loved and
trusted.
Each of these relationships has healed the “children,” and each has enlarged the world my mother inhabits. I have her habits, made now my own, in folding, and cooking, and caring, and reaching out. The time I spend with my mother is never focused on me, it instead allows me the opportunity to give more to the world.
Those who do not live in my mother’s orbit may find it hard to believe how, in her day-to-day life, she engenders giving. A day spent with her may involve being assigned to assist an elderly acquaintance, being given the gift of a day, or a week, with the children of her employees or friends or a woman she met at the grocery store, rescuing a family member, or not, from some unforeseen situation, or running errands and doing accounts.
There is no control over time, nor even an understanding of time as your own. It is a life lived in the moment, a life that constantly seeks to aid others, to survive in the moment, doing the most you possibly can. It is not what you have envisioned, or planned on, it is a full participation in living There are times, many, when I have wanted to escape that sort of unknowing, the kind that leads to missed appointments and forgotten goals, but it serves people, and that is a gift, not a burden.
Growing up there were a minimum of ten people in our household, my parents, the six children, my grandfather, the assorted household help, the assorted guests (short or long term, adults or children).
There was always a formal dinner in the dining room and a seated breakfast in the kitchen. My father made a custom table top for our kitchen table, they did not manufacture round tables in that size, so we could seat the numbers required. I was the oldest child, and eldest of five daughters.
I spent my thoughts on how to have a cleaner house, how to have a quieter dinner table, how to arrange one’s life so they could pick up their children on time. Yet, as an adult, aside from some political beliefs that put us at odds, I believe in my mother and her ways wholeheartedly.
There is no better way to parent than to love, and her form of love was to believe in us.
We have made what successes we can all our own because our mother set us free to find them. She gave us opportunities to succeed. She used her words to encourage us, she used her talents to inspire us, she used her beliefs to empower us. With her adamant opinions on rearing small children she instilled in us an independence and faith in our abilities.
She does not save these gifts for her biological children; instead she brings them to every table. She offers them at every opportunity. She is a maker of friends, and a finder of people, and a saver of those in need.
I seek, in my own organization of life to know what lies around the corner and prepare for it, however, I am also blessed to know my mother’s philosophy of “fluidity” (which means since we don’t know what to expect that we simply expect things to change) and cheerfully, I hope, receive each day, its challenges and opportunities, with joy.
It is the lessons I have taken from my mother that mark and make my days. My mother is not perfect, she is very human. Yet, she instilled in each of her six children an abiding sense of faith in themselves, in trying there is success, in encouragement, there is the making of the future.
Each of these relationships has healed the “children,” and each has enlarged the world my mother inhabits. I have her habits, made now my own, in folding, and cooking, and caring, and reaching out. The time I spend with my mother is never focused on me, it instead allows me the opportunity to give more to the world.
Those who do not live in my mother’s orbit may find it hard to believe how, in her day-to-day life, she engenders giving. A day spent with her may involve being assigned to assist an elderly acquaintance, being given the gift of a day, or a week, with the children of her employees or friends or a woman she met at the grocery store, rescuing a family member, or not, from some unforeseen situation, or running errands and doing accounts.
There is no control over time, nor even an understanding of time as your own. It is a life lived in the moment, a life that constantly seeks to aid others, to survive in the moment, doing the most you possibly can. It is not what you have envisioned, or planned on, it is a full participation in living There are times, many, when I have wanted to escape that sort of unknowing, the kind that leads to missed appointments and forgotten goals, but it serves people, and that is a gift, not a burden.
Growing up there were a minimum of ten people in our household, my parents, the six children, my grandfather, the assorted household help, the assorted guests (short or long term, adults or children).
There was always a formal dinner in the dining room and a seated breakfast in the kitchen. My father made a custom table top for our kitchen table, they did not manufacture round tables in that size, so we could seat the numbers required. I was the oldest child, and eldest of five daughters.
I spent my thoughts on how to have a cleaner house, how to have a quieter dinner table, how to arrange one’s life so they could pick up their children on time. Yet, as an adult, aside from some political beliefs that put us at odds, I believe in my mother and her ways wholeheartedly.
There is no better way to parent than to love, and her form of love was to believe in us.
We have made what successes we can all our own because our mother set us free to find them. She gave us opportunities to succeed. She used her words to encourage us, she used her talents to inspire us, she used her beliefs to empower us. With her adamant opinions on rearing small children she instilled in us an independence and faith in our abilities.
She does not save these gifts for her biological children; instead she brings them to every table. She offers them at every opportunity. She is a maker of friends, and a finder of people, and a saver of those in need.
I seek, in my own organization of life to know what lies around the corner and prepare for it, however, I am also blessed to know my mother’s philosophy of “fluidity” (which means since we don’t know what to expect that we simply expect things to change) and cheerfully, I hope, receive each day, its challenges and opportunities, with joy.
|