What I Learned From My Mom
You know you have a cool mom when your Friday night date says, “We can just hang out at the house with your mom and watch TV.” Don’t get all hyper...it’s not because she was one of “those” moms. She was just so easy to be around, funny, and was a fantastic cook. I don’t know of anyone who didn’t love Ruth Vickery.
As I approach my 36th Mother’s Day without my mom, I’m thinking a lot about what I learned from her and asking myself how I’m doing at actually living it.
I have to give a disclaimer – I did not call my mother Mom while she was alive. That would have been just plain weird. Mind you, I’m from Texas. It was Mama and Daddy, never Mom and Dad. She and her siblings called their parents Mama and Daddy, and my daddy called his parents Mama and Daddy. That’s just the way it was.
I’m not sure at what point I began using the term Mom instead of Mama. I’m going to attribute it to peer pressure. Chip and I got married, moved to California (by way of a year in Alaska), and I gradually started talking like my Aunt Joyce who lived in California as far back as I can remember. Whenever she would come to visit us, I would ask Mama, “Why does Aunt Joyce talk funny? She sounds so plain?” This coming from a girl who regularly said “ain’t,” “fixin’ to,” and “y’all.”
Sadly, to use the word “mama” now feels as awkward as using the word “mom” would have felt growing up in Texas. I’m sure my gradual acquisition of the West Coast dialect (or lack thereof) is part of that. But I think it’s also because it’s been so long since my mama has been here. For some time after she passed, probably years, it seemed she was still close enough that for me to call her Mom would have prompted her to ask her celestial coffee-and-dominoes buddies, “Who is she talking about?”
When I sink into the memories, “mama” rises to the surface. Just like when I visit Texas or talk to my Lone Star State family members on the phone, a “y’all” or a “fixin’ to” is liable to slip out here and there.
I learned a lot about life from Mama. If I had to narrow it down to three things, here’s what I would say.
Learn to be content.
I always loved hanging out with my mom. Like I said before, she was just so easy to be around.
Most nights, she would whip up something really Texan (Rotel hot cheese dip or tomato gravy and biscuits or Frito Pie) and we’d sit in the living room and watch TV together – Fantasy Island, Love Boat, Happy Days, Hawaii 5-O. Or she would sew while I did homework.
I realize now that the reason Mama was able to be in the moment so well is because she was content with her life. There was no brooding sense of restlessness about what she should be producing or accomplishing. I never felt like there was something more important that she needed to do or somewhere she’d rather be – when we were together, she was just there.
Before I came along, my mom had been a successful executive assistant for the president of the prominent McCullough Tool company in Houston. They helped sponsor the movie The Alamo, and Mama got to meet John Wayne. She said his pants were too short but he was very polite—in case you were wondering. I never knew the mom with the sleek business suits and gold earrings. I knew the mom with the polyester pants, the knit shell tops, and the Keds sneakers with white cuffed bobby socks.
She fully embraced what was in front of her, whatever the season of her life.
For most of my growing up years, she took care of her elderly parents who lived next door to our trailer house (it would be called a mobile home if we had a skirt around the bottom to hide the wheels and a set of steps at all three doors). Every afternoon after my grandpa and grandma would take a nap, Mama would go over and have a cup of coffee with them. Sometimes the coffee would be accompanied by sweet treats – Mama’s homemade orange slice cookies, spice cake, or banana pudding.
She loved raking leaves, sewing, cooking, and family get-togethers. She liked crossword puzzles and could have probably finished the ones you find in airplane magazines without peeking at the back for answers – she was just that smart.
One of her favorite things was her weekly hair appointment. Washing, drying and setting your hair was reserved for professionals. She never touched her own hair but instead slept in a silk cap, preserving the precise style created by Marla at the White Oak Beauty Shop each Friday.
She loved her red leather-covered Bible with her name engraved in gold on the front. There were lots of notes in the margins.
I don’t know if Mama was always a contented person. Maybe it was something she learned along the way. Whatever the case, I was blessed by the presence of a mom who was content with her life and, therefore, could be fully present.
Appreciate what you have.
For most of my life, we lived in the country (otherwise known as the woods or the boondocks). For a while, we had cows, so we went to the feed store quite often. Some ingenious livestock feed manufacturer decided to ditch the rough brown burlap feed sacks and instead sell their feed in soft, pretty cotton sacks featuring various prints and patterns. Mama would carefully choose the ones she thought would make the cutest dresses, and she and the other moms in our rural area would trade feed sacks based on what they wanted or needed for their projects. Some made quilts, others curtains or dresses. The possibilities were endless. I just know I was so proud to wear my cross-back jumpers with matching bloomers specially made for me by my mama out of feed sacks.
Throughout elementary and high school, she’d pick me up from school and tell me she had an idea for an outfit she wanted to make me. Sure, back then she was saving money by sewing my clothes, but she was also showing love in one of the best ways she knew how. And she was teaching me the art of appreciation — you don’t need to have what everyone else has to be happy. We’d go to the fabric store where I’d pick out a Butterick or Simplicity pattern, and then we’d search for just the right fabric to bring the pattern to life. Sometimes the fabric would pick itself if it was pretty and on sale. Even the zippers and buttons required careful consideration. She made everything with love.
When I announced I was getting married, it never crossed my mind, or Mama’s, for me to get a store-bought wedding dress. We decided on the same simple pattern she’d used for two other dresses I’d worn to my proms. But for this dress, she added rows and rows of white lace and countless tiny seed pearls sewn on by hand. In the midst of her battle with lung cancer, she insisted on making my wedding dress. This was her last labor of love for me at her sewing machine.
From the homemade clothes I wore to our single-wide mobile home in the woods to my mom’s Chevy Impala that I drove, I learned from Mama that you don’t have to own expensive things to be rich. You just have to appreciate what you have.
Show kindness whenever you can.
I saw the kindness of my mama’s heart demonstrated throughout my life. One time. in particular, stands vividly in my memory.
We lived in Whitesburg, Georgia, for a year or so when I was in 3rd grade. I went to a small brick school with wood floors and the best merry-go-round ever. Somehow, my mom ended up on the list of substitute teachers. She had never been a teacher, but it was a little country school, and my mom had won over the hearts of everyone there. So they often called her to fill in when a teacher was out sick. I loved it when Mama would substitute in my class because everyone said how nice she was, and of course, I felt pretty special being able to call the teacher “Mama.” There was a little boy in my class I will call RH. RH came to school dirty, hair disheveled, clothes and shoes looking like they’d been run over by a tractor. After a couple of times in the classroom, my mom realized that this was RH’s normal everyday appearance. She didn’t call a committee together or announce her actions so everyone could see. She just went to the store and bought groceries and took them to RH’s family. And she bought RH a new pair of shoes and some clothes. This is what the originator of the notion “random acts of kindness” had in mind.
Lord, I am so deeply grateful for the mother you gave me. For the first 18 years of my life, I got to have one of your best. I don’t always get it right, but I really do want to live the lessons I learned from my mom. Give me the grace to live in this moment -- content and at peace. Give me a heart of appreciation for the simplest of blessings every single day. Give me eyes to see opportunities to demonstrate kindness and the willingness to get out of my own way and just do it. Amen.
