2 posts tagged “love”

We mothers – we are merely rudders, guiding our children’s ships through the storms and over the turbulent seas of life – we guide them as steadily and as best we can, but we are not the only influence that determines the outcome of the journey...

Who am I today? I am a woman, a daughter, a wife and mother, a writer. I am confident with unexpected moments of self-doubt, calm with occasional thunderstorms, selfish but generous, affectionate but reserved, intelligent with a few Swiss-cheese holes in my brain, rational but prone to flights of fancy, a dreamer with her feet planted on the ground – and I see none of that as contradictory. I am my mother’s daughter.

My mother nurtured me with love and learning. My parents married young, with the understanding that both would attend and graduate from college. Did having a baby at nineteen deter my mother from her commitment? No! She told me once that my earliest bedtime stories were chapters from her college psych texts. If I am determined, efficient, and able to multitask, it’s because I was raised by a woman who could study, cuddle an infant, and read to her child simultaneously!

Astrologers might argue that the Pisces child, born on a Sunday, so near the pull of the ocean’s tides would naturally be gifted with creativity and a vivid imagination. But I contend that any innate creativity and imagination I possessed was nurtured by a mother who got down on the floor and played with me, allowing herself to be cast in the thousands of roles I invented for her. My love of writing was sparked when she installed a bulletin board in my room, and daily pinned a writing prompt – a quote, a photo, some whimsical item – to it, and supplied me with endless reams of paper and a variety of pens. (She later insisted that I learn to type; I later thanked her for it.)

I have a great appreciation for languages. If I can’t speak fluent French today, it’s not my mother’s fault! My mom’s answer to a whiney eight-year-old who cried out, “I’m bored!” was to enroll her in private French lessons at Berlitz. If I believed that college was just an extension of a child’s compulsory education, it was my mom’s doing – she was still working towards her Master’s degree when I was twelve! She made studying seem as natural as breathing, as essential as eating. Blame my mother for the fact that I started college at age twelve – the early French lessons, her schedule of classes from Kent State lying open on the bed, and my natural curiosity combined: “Do you think they’d let me take French I?” Well why not? With three years of French under my belt and my parents there to support my request, doors opened – and I was enrolled in summer school!

Okay, maybe I can’t speak French fluently today, despite eight years of lessons - but I have learned to entertain myself! If I love Oldies, it’s because my mother handed down her 45-RPM records and a phonograph; if my tastes are eclectic, it’s because she also made sure I attended the symphony and the ballet, met Beverly Sills, saw Linda Ronstadt and The Irish Rovers in concert, and took piano lessons. If I can appreciate fine art, it’s because one of my mother’s most cherished books was Jansen’s History of Art – and because she saw to it that I got to tour the Louvre.

While my mother built my confidence and self-esteem, she took care never to talk down to me, never to sugar-coat the truth, never to inflate my ego unrealistically so that the world at large could tear down what she had so carefully built. All her life, I could rely on my mother to be a trustworthy touchstone, an honest critic as well as a staunch supporter. If I am happy, content with who I am, it’s because my mother never allowed me to believe that my best wasn’t good enough. If I am able to appreciate constructive criticism and learn from it, it is because I had a mother who dished it out with love.

Eighteen years ago, I became a mother, myself. When I held my daughter in my arms, I realized the awesome responsibility my mother took on at the tender age of nineteen. For the first time, it hit me just how much I was loved. And that’s when I knew that the debt I owed her was marked “payable to my grandchildren.”

When my mom died – on Valentine’s Day 2002 – I lost not only my mother, but my best friend. Though she always insisted “It’s not my job to be your friend – I’m your mother,” she couldn’t help but be both. I miss her, but because of her, I am strong enough to wipe away the tears, smile, and go boldly forward in my own journey of motherhood.

.“Meaningful relationships” don’t always start out that way.

I first met my husband, J.J., while dating his college roommate. He was seeing someone else at the time, too. I don’t remember there being any sparks of passion – or even more than a casual, mutual respect – at the time. But I ran into him at a nightclub several years later, and suddenly, something changed. Never mind that he was tall, dark, and heart-stoppingly handsome. Conversation with the man provided irrefutable evidence of there being intelligent life on Earth. Sometimes that’s all the kindling it takes to start a fire.

For the next several weeks, I threw myself shamelessly at him every chance I got. For subtlety, I dragged my best friend, Liz, along. J.J. was working as a bartender and waiter at a popular Mexican restaurant. Liz and I ordered the same thing every time, several times a week: one order of Deluxe Super Supreme Nachos to share and “a tall glass of water, on the rocks, with a twist.” (That was the first drink J.J. bought me, at the nightclub, and my signal to him that I was there.) He would come over to our table, we’d exchange a few words of polite small talk, and he would dutifully return to work. If I got really lucky, Liz and I could twist his arm to join us for a drink, and maybe some dancing, at a nearby club when he got off work.

I found little excuses to keep him coming back to the table – more jalapeños, a refill for my water glass - but the man was diligent about his job and careful not to show any hint of “favoritism” to his most regular customers (I shudder to think, now, of the teasing he must have gotten). Liz begged me to do something – I’m still not sure what – saying, “If he doesn’t ask you out soon, we’ll both be so fat no one will look twice at us or ask us out!” One night, J.J. himself provided the opening, without even realizing that with one flippant comment, he was sealing his fate!

“There,” he said, plunking a large bowl of sliced jalapeño peppers in front of me. “I bet that’ll hold you for a while.”

“Bet it won’t,” I said, knowing I’d have dumped them under the table and demanded more, just to make him come hither again.

“What do you want to bet?” he asked, laughing.

Mama didn’t raise no fool. “If I can eat all these peppers, you owe me dinner Wednesday night.” (Notice I was specific as to the terms – none of this vague, “some time.”) “If I can’t, then I’ll take you to dinner Wednesday night.”

“You’re on. But you have to do it in five minutes,” he said, grinning. Then he winked. “With a spoon.”

Okay, so maybe Mama did raise a fool. She also raised an old-fashioned girl who thought the man should pay for the date, for it to be a real date. I ate those @#$% peppers, every one of them, in four and a half minutes. With a spoon. He bought dinner that Wednesday night, but I paid dearly for it.

Two years and plenty of more “meaningful” moments later, J.J. made reservations for our rehearsal dinner at that same restaurant where we had our first date. Twenty-three years later, my husband swears he would have asked me out – eventually – peppers or no peppers. But memories of that hot first date still make us laugh.