Everyone else is going to regale
you with charming, witty stories about moms wonderful qualities, so I thought
that Id take on the role of airing some dirty laundry....But mom didn't have any
dirty laundry. but I do have some
anecdotes about mom that involve dirty laundry. One of moms qualities was that
you could take whatever she said at face value--there was no manipulating,
guilt tripping or subterfuge. Except one time in the middle of a water fight
during which the younger siblings were getting doused royally by the teenage
Dan, and Guy and their ilk. Mom came out on the upstairs porch over there and
yelled at Dan to come over immediately to empty his dirty laundry from his
basket which was a large metal replica of a Pepsi can. Given the uncustomarily
stern reproach in her tone (she hardly ever raised her voice) he dutifully
slunk over with his ponytail lank between his tall shoulders hunched a little
in contrition. And as soon as he got close enough, she upended the can on him,
but it was full of water, not laundry. We all let up a cheer for mom for evening
the score for us little ones, and in that moment my mom became my heroine. I
felt this surge of pride and realization that she was willing to overthrow
tyranny with wily cunning, that she was willing to resort to deception to help
us Davids defeat Goliath and, given the twinkle in her eye and mischief in her
smile, she thoroughly enjoyed it. She knew how to have fun and she had an
excellent poker face to boot.
That poker face served her well in
other respects, especially when it came to gently nudging others to change
their behavior for the better without being harsh or overly critical. There
were very few things that mom found to criticize in others, but she did very
gently try to suggest ways in which I could improve my way of dealing with my
own laundry both figurative and literal when I became an adult. But the lessons
I learned from her are not all about laundry, she also demonstrated an amazing
capacity to adapt to all sorts of situations that I subjected her to.
1. She and Dad tried to raise us as
worldly and cultured people, and one of their ways of doing that was by
routinely exposing us to something that was always prefaced by this familiar
sound That Peter Pugh and Adam Shapiro will help me replicate 1&a 2 & a
3 hit it ...RONDEAU. Thank you Peter and Adam...sometimes trumpets speak louder
than words. This theme music from
masterpiece theater felt like the soundtrack of our youth accompanying a steady
diet of BBC programs on public television to foster in us a respectable
appreciation for other cultures or maybe just Anglophilia. But mom& dad
were willing to branch out and visit me in places that had never been featured
in Masterpiece Theatre, not even as colonial outposts in the British Empire.
They hadn't had much opportunity to travel while we were growing up, and given
how much they loved their rituals and their home here, i was a bit apprehensive
that they'd be high maintenance travelers, but they quickly adapted, were flexible,
and easy-going yet still able to maintain some of their charming little rituals
wherever they were. When they visited me in Senegal, at first mom wouldn't let
go of my hand as we wove through the teeming markets of Dakar and I don't blame
her but by the end of the trip, they were going off on their own misadventures
with Adam as their chaperon all of them
speaking Franglais to get where they needed to go without me., At first they
were leery of the food sold in the the makeshift cardboard and corrugated iron
stands along the roads, but by the end of the trip they were delighted to drink
coffee and eat baguettes in a fly infested stall by the ferry landing on the
muddy banks of the Gambian river, and savored their cocktails with no ice in a
mud hut in the steaming mangrove swamps
by my village. Mom privately
expressed to me her dismay at having to eat fish with the head nestled in the
bowl alongside her meal, and she declined to choose the chicken in the backyard
to be slaughtered for our dinner when we stopped in at a restaurant to order
fried chicken but she used that poker faced grin that never let on her
discomfort and no one in the village was aware. By the time mom & dad and
adam joined me when I was living in Mexico several years later, mom didn't even
need to use her grin as much as they were even more seasoned travelers, willing
to 4 wheel up a mountain in Mexico on a dirt track in my truck with the back
filled with my Mexican adoptive family
& friends, hiking the rest of the way up the mountain to join some hard
drinking companions and cooking over an open fire in the wilderness with them.
Not only was she a surprisingly
easy and flexible world traveler, but she also taught me about being accepting
of all sorts of people and sharing her
loving presence with a diversity of friends.
2.When I asked her what her secret
was for being so admired and adored by so many people, her advice to me
was--Don’t antagonize people—I think that was intended specifically for me, so
I’m trying, but she did treat everyone like they were her special friend. She
found ways to connect with all of us children according to our interests. She
took pottery with me when I was in elementary school and jazz dance class with
me when I was a teenager, dancing jazzily with her signature shoulder shake in
the back of the room). She also made the effort to find out exactly what each
grandchild needed –In the case of my own children, for Adam, a shovel and pipes
to build his own sewer line in the backyard, We are still unearthing remnants
of Adam's makeshift sewer line and the shovel is still used to this day, even
though it is tiny. And she has spent hours playing fiercely competitive games
and doing various needle craft projects with my children and helping Alana
organize her room. Now Alana cleans her room on her own, but there were a few
years when Id ask her to clean her room and she say that she couldn't clean
without Gma so it would just have to wait 3 months until Grandmas next trip out
to California.
Even though she possessed this
gentle acceptance and patience with me and my family's eccentricities andt
amazing gift for diplomacy,
3. She didn't let everyone walk all
over her. Mom taught me not to be afraid of identifying injustices that should
be addressed even in the most unlikely of circumstances. My first memory of her
explaining an instance of sexism was an incident which many of you undoubtedly
have heard about regarding mom&dad getting lost while transporting a pig in
a burlap sack in the back of the station wagon. By the time they were desperate
enough to ask for directions, the pig had gotten loose and defecated in the way
way back of the station wagon, but had subsequently gone to sleep in the pitch
dark,so the only sign of life was the ripe smell of pig excrement. So, when the
man whom they flagged down for directions leaned way in the passenger window,
ignoring mom to speak directly to Dad, and getting a solid whiff of pig stench,
Mom said he got his just desserts for being sexist and not trusting her to be
able to navigate. She stayed true to her convictions when it most mattered to
her and was my adviser in that respect, putting up with my numerous phone calls
to get advice, recipes or just to gossip. WWMD What would mom do has become my
mantra both personally and professionally especially when I find myself in
sticky situations.
Amazingly, even in the last few
weeks of her life, she was still taking care of us when we were trying to care
for her. She'd gently ask me if I was having trouble sleeping if I tossed in
the bed next to her, rather than kicking me out and telling me to stop acting
like a mewling kitten unable to give its mother some peace and quiet. But she
was so hard to give up because she wasn't just my mother, she was, what many of
you probably feel too, my best friend.
Her parting words to me were, We're
lucky to have each other, and looking at this amazing group of friends and
family gathered here, I truly believe that she was right--we are all so lucky
that she blessed us with her presence and that she made it possible for all of
us to have each other in our lives.
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