Things my mother tried to teach me

The DJ’s on the morning show I listen to read letters to their mothers this week to mark Mother’s Day.  One of them did a list of all the things he’d learned from his mother and that got me to thinking about things I had learned from mine.  So today, on Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share these things I learned from Marion Hunter Moore.  Or at least, what she tried to teach me!

1.      Just tell yourself….  Lots of things my mother said started with these three words.  “Just tell yourself that you won’t have cramps”.  “Just tell yourself that you’ll feel better”.  “Just tell yourself that you’re going to get over that”.  According to my mother, she never had cramps or morning sickness or hot flashes.  All because she “told herself” that she wouldn’t.  She was definitely the queen of the power of positive thinking.  I remember a letter that my father wrote to his sisters, telling them about his cancer and what had happened up to that point.  My mother added a little addendum that went along the lines of “I firmly believe that everything will be ok”.  A variation on the theme.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to know that she told my father “Just tell yourself that the cancer will go away”.  It wasn’t just a ploy, though; she really believed that you could overcome stuff by having a positive attitude.  Believing that everything would work out in the end.  I’m probably the most negative person on the planet and I always believe that the worst is going to happen.  Maybe I’d have been better off taking these words more to heart.

2.      Be sweet.   My mother said this a lot.  And it meant more than just those two words.  It meant be nice to people, don’t talk ugly to people, don’t fight, don’t pick on people, don’t be rude or mean, don’t be selfish.  For much of my life it meant “don’t be yourself, be fake”.  It was hard for me to be sweet.  It never felt like people were sweet to me, so I started off being mean or rude or self-centered.  Most everyone liked my mother.  Most everyone doesn’t like me.  I think it’s because my mother was always nice to people and she smiled at them and she didn’t say a mean thing about them (until they were gone).  People like that.  They gravitate to that.  I wish I had paid more attention.

3.      Go to college.  This was super important to my mother.  My brothers and I grew up knowing that we would go to college.  There was never really discussion about going, the discussion was more around where we would go.  My mother believed that an education was important and that you would make more out of your life with a college education.  She made that a requirement for marrying Daddy; he had to go back to college and get his degree.  This is one thing I never questioned.  I always knew I would go.  And I was always glad that I did.

4.      Live at home until you’re married.  I think I’ve mentioned this before.  My mother always made this pronouncement whenever I talked about getting an apartment.  I have since found out that my mother actually did live on her own for a bit in Kannapolis.  Well then.

5.      I am the mother and you are the child.  Next to “just tell yourself”, this was the other thing I remember hearing most often from my mother.  She typically said this when we were in trouble and we questioned why we were being punished.  The whole “I’m in charge” and “you are going to do what I say” thing.  I thought this made her seem like a big old meanie.  I swore I would never say this to my own children.  I dare you to ask my dog if I’ve ever said it to her.  J

6.      Don’t go over to boys’ houses.  I thought this was ridiculous.  But I guess my mother thought that it looked bad.  That you were some kind of “fallen woman” if you went to a boy’s house alone.  Like “hanky panky” was going to go on and that people would talk.  Which leads me to…

7.      No sex before marriage.  Except I don’t think my mother ever used the word “sex”.  You just didn’t have “relations” before marriage.  You were supposed to be a virgin on your wedding night.  I don’t know if this applied to the boys, but it sure applied to me.  I guess, to my mother, if you weren’t a virgin on your wedding night, you were a floozy or a slut.  I know that my parents traveled together when they were in Europe, before they were married, but they also were not alone.  So I believe that my mother followed this tenet of hers.  I sometimes wonder if she ever realized that I grew up in a different time and that guys had their own ideas about this.  Surely she did….

8.      Do what men say.  Ah, this one nearly made my head explode.  I remember telling her one time something that my then-husband wanted that I did not and she made the comment “well, if that’s what he wants, I guess you’ll have to do it”.  I couldn’t even imagine that.  I think she let Daddy make decisions and she did do what he wanted.  I don’t know if she was always so Zen about it as that “do what men say” pronouncement sounds, but I also know, now, that Daddy always looked out for Mother.  He wanted her to be happy and he was always thinking about her.  Maybe if I had ever had a relationship with a man who wanted to make me happy, I wouldn’t have been so quick to fight this.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I’m too selfish to ever just “do what men say”!

9.      Tell them you’ll take any job, i.e. don’t be picky.  I think this kind of went back to the “women’s work” thing.  That what I did wasn’t as important as just having a job.  This came up when I had been laid off from a job early in my career.  I was struggling to find another job and had applied at a local retailer.  She wanted me to tell them that I would be a sales clerk, just to get a job.  I was horrified, because I didn’t want to seem like I was (a) desperate and (b) slumming.  In her world, if I had to work, then it shouldn’t matter what I did.  Especially since, at the time, I had a husband, who could “take care of me”.  I think the “don’t be picky” thing translated to other aspects of life too, but I couldn’t help but be picky.  I want what I want – something she didn’t teach me.

10.   Family is important (unless it’s family you’re not that crazy about).  We did lots of family things, not only within our own family, but with our extended family.  Traditions were important, celebrations were important, special days were important.  And all of that revolved around family.  Most of our vacations when I was growing up had to do with visiting family.  Sometimes it was a week at the beach.  With family.  Or a trip to Boston and seeing all the sights.  But family was there.  Where family wasn’t as important to her was when it was family she wasn’t crazy about.  She didn’t like being inconvenienced when some of my father’s family would stop by to visit on their way from Michigan to Florida.  That bothered me, because, to me, they were still family.  We didn’t see them often and they wanted to see us, particularly after my father had died.  That was brought home to me a few years ago when my brother Paul and his family came home from Europe the first time.  I wanted us all to get together as a family while they were in town and my oldest brother didn’t see the need to try to work his convoluted schedule to accommodate that.  It caused a fight that I’m not sure is completely healed to this day.  They rearranged their schedule that time, but ever since then they will not rearrange schedules to accommodate the rest of us.  We have to work around their schedule.  Somehow I don’t think Mother would approve.

11.   Everything can be cured with Coricidin and Bufferin.  This was Mother’s answer to everything.  You have a cold?  Take a Coricidin.  You have a headache?  Take a Bufferin.  You have the flu?  Take both.  A little simplistic, but Mother was not one to make a big deal out of not feeling good.  When we were kids, she took us to the doctor like she was supposed to, but once we were older, she either suggested some kind of over the counter medicine or some old wives’ tale remedy.  This hit home for me when she got sick.  In 1998, she ended up in the hospital with this overwhelming “illness”.  She probably had a stroke, she may have had a mild heart attack, but she was never the same after that.  During this time, we discovered just how much she didn’t like going to the doctor and just how much she would avoid doing things that would help her get better.  We found out that she had not been to a gynecologist since she had given birth to my youngest brother.  She had not had a physical, maybe ever.  If something didn’t feel right, she took a pill.  Coricidin or Bufferin, usually.  She never really regained strength in her lower body, because she really didn't want to do the work it required, and was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.  Because she was not active and also because she wouldn’t tell you when something was wrong, she died younger than she might have.  I learned from this that Coricidin and Bufferin don’t cure everything.  I sometimes don’t deal with minor things, but I don’t let the big stuff get by me.  I go to the doctor, I pay attention when things aren’t right, and I won’t let the same things that happened to my mother happen to me.

12.   If God wanted you to have holes in your ears, you’d have been born with them.  I’ve talked before about my mother’s aversion to fashion and makeup and all that.  When I wanted to get my ears pierced, she wouldn’t let me.  When one of my cousins visited and had pierced ears, I tried to get her to let me do it then, but she wouldn’t.  And then one Christmas, Mocha came to visit and she had pierced ears!  My uncle Bo, who was a pediatrician, had pierced her ears with his handy dandy ear piercing gun.  And not only Mocha’s, but my aunts’ and my two girl cousins’ as well.  My mother was defeated.  When we went to Sugar Mountain for Thanksgiving that year, Uncle Bo brought his ear piercing gun and I got my wish for pierced ears on Thanksgiving morning.  But my mother really thought that your beauty was what was inside you, not what was on the surface.  I’m pretty sure I needed all that surface stuff to make me feel like I was ok.  Because what I had never felt good enough.

13.   Always show respect to adults.  I always interpreted this to mean that, from her perspective, adults were always right, even when they were wrong.  What I’ve learned is that adults aren’t always right, but when you’re a kid or even a young adult, grownups know things and have lived things that you can learn from.  Just take the time to listen.

14.   Always tell the truth.  I haven’t always.  For many reasons, but mostly to keep from getting in trouble.  Which didn’t always work.  But she was right.  Telling the truth was better.  And you never had to worry about messing up your story if you were telling it truthfully to begin with.

15.   If you look for your presents, you won’t enjoy Christmas (or your birthday or any other gift giving occasion).  This one, as it turned out, wasn’t true.  One year, when we lived in New Jersey, we found where my parents hid the Christmas presents.  It was in an unlocked closet upstairs in the finished attic.  Where we played a lot.  And where I can’t believe my parents didn’t realize we would open the door to a closet that wasn’t locked.  We were caught looking at everything.  And my mother, forever after that, told people that we didn’t play with the toys we got that year because our Christmas had been “spoiled”.  That actually wasn’t true.  Or any of the other years that I found the list and knew what I was getting ahead of time.  It just heightened the anticipation because I knew I was getting something I’d had my heart set on.  She probably would have told me not to read the end of a book because “it would spoil the ending”.  But I do it anyway and it never is disappointing to me.  I actually enjoy finding out how they get to the ending.  That I already know.  Even now, I think I always want to know what the end is so that I can feel ready, no matter what the outcome.

16.   Santa Claus is real.  Just tell yourself that Santa Claus is real.  And then he will be!  It all comes full circle, doesn’t it? J

Every Mother’s Day, I miss my mother.  But I think about her.  And I believe that she is looking down on me and smiling, because she knows that I always loved her in spite of her weird ideas and crazy homilies.  Happy Mother’s Day, Mother!