What I learned from my mother

This piece was written as a sermon for the Norway UU Church back in 2007.



Mother’s Day Sermon Gay De Hart, 2007
Well it is Mother’s Day. And I have no better proof of this than that all three of my children are sitting here in church. Because they don’t come every week (nor do I) but they do come when it is important to me and today is important to me.
Several years ago, I gave a sermon on “What I learned from My Father.” Somehow it always seemed one-sided and I felt one day, I would have to give a sermon on “What I learned from my mother.” So here is my chance.
Usually, I write far in advance of a due date. And in that custom, I started this sermon quite a few weeks ago, but I got just so far and stopped. Nothing more came. At 5:30 AM last Saturday; I got my inspiration for how to continue and decided to talk about motherhood in the context of the months of the year. But even that hasn’t worked very well. I found myself immersed in thinking about my mother while writing and it crept into my everyday thoughts. I felt I had too much to say, too little time. But I will try.
What I learned from my mother, is both who I am, who I want to be, and who I don’t want to be. Mother’s are the first person we meet, spend time with, and learn to love from.
Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."
In therapy one time, my therapist and I were discussing being a loving person. “You learn that from your mother” she stated blithely. “Your mother couldn’t have been so bad, because you aren’t.”
This was startling new information for me. Until then, I held the belief, popular in my family, that my mother was just about evil incarnate. Alcoholic, vindictive, downright mean. I had to relook at a new version of her from that point on in therapy, and I am still trying to understand, that while those other things might have been true of her, there were other things that were true of her as well.
January 9 is my mother’s birthday. When we were younger, she never told us how old she was, and when she was older, she didn’t have to; we could do the math. I never understood why she didn’t want to tell us her age. I surmised that it was something to be ashamed of, unladylike. It definitely kept an air of mystery about her. From that, I decided that I would never be secretive about my age; I would be proud of earning my years and try to send the message to my kids that age is nothing to be ashamed of.
I don’t think it worked. They still tease me about being old (if only they knew!).
The last of six children, my mother was 40 when I was born. And that was long before 40 was a popular, career-related age to give birth. She was always older than the other mothers—so am I. I didn’t quite reach her record, my first child was born when I was 32 and my last when I was 37. But those birth dates, destined me in some ways ‘to walk in her moccasins” and know some of how she felt.
I could be my children’s grandmother, and in the culture that they are being raised, I have met many grammies who are my age. I don’t feel as fit as I would like to be, yet my mother never complained of aches, or pains, or not being able to do things even after I was in adulthood and she had terrible bone spurs in her back that made sitting, standing, lying and walking all painful. She took heaps of aspirin and didn’t complain.
What is interesting about looking back at my mother as she was when I was growing up, is how much she was a product of when she was born, 1914, the outbreak of WW I. She came of age during the depression. One of her favorite stories was telling me of one Christmas when they had all resolved that there would be no presents because money was scarce. She and her sister and brother, went to the five and dime and all bought presents for each other at the same time. There was delight and camaraderie in her voice, telling how they ducked down behind counters and wrapped things in tissue so the other wouldn’t see. She recalls it as one of the best Christmas’ ever.
It sums up her lack of materialism. Christmas remained very special growing up. Each gift was chosen with care, was meaningful and more often than not, “just what we wanted.” She was good at listening to what we wanted and had a knack for giving us the things that mattered most, without giving us everything. It is a skill I continue to try to master—each Christmas I am wracked by anxiety trying to both to live up to her ideal as well as to keep up with the precedent I have set in earlier years.
February 10 was my mother and father’s wedding anniversary. From what I know, (and I don’t know much about this) it was a small wedding. My father, already 35 at the time, was taken with my mother, the story goes, when he saw her dancing on stage at the local operetta club. Much like members of own OMHPA, she loved to dance and sing; and that is where he first saw her. I think their courtship was short.
I don’t know if my father knew it at the time, but it was a second marriage for my mother. She was married a few years before, for how long I don’t know, to a man who was abusive. There is some recollection of hearing that he kicked her down the stairs when she was pregnant. Fortunately, she was a very strong person; she left that marriage immediately, or so the story goes.
Consider the time, 1939, divorce wasn’t exactly widely accepted. I didn’t learn of that first marriage until well into my early 20’s. My parents kept it a secret all that time; but I know my father knew about it at one time, because he took me aside as an adult and showed me where my mother’s divorce papers were kept, in case I ever needed them for some reason. That privacy of my mother’s past, seemed out of respect rather than shame and made me think that he loved her very much.
Their marriage was filled with convention, family, and friends, but after a while, and in most of the years I can remember, alcohol. My father was the traditional breadwinner, and my mother took care of the house and kids; all six of them. She always had meals on the table (though she was a terrible cook), the house was clean (though not that clean.). She actually changed beds once a week (a habit that I have been completely unable to emulate).
Yet, as conventional as the life was that she was leading as a wife and mother, there was at her core, something radically unconventional. She didn’t wear make up, rarely wore “hose,”
She made sure her five girls could go to college if they wanted to. She had never had the chance, and she wanted to be sure that we did. Remember the time frame now, her girls were coming of age in the 1950s, the era when most girls, if they went to college at all, went to get husbands. My mother did not have that in mind—it was never clear what she did have in mind, but we knew, against my father’s natural prediclictions, that we could go to college—it was one of the few things that she insisted on from him. And I do not think he resisted her on that one.
I went to college and have no way of knowing if that is something I would have done without her influence or not. She wanted me to apply to Radcliffe and Vassar, the elite schools of the East Coast. She thought the best of me, and though I didn’t think I could get in, (and didn’t) I was very pleased that she thought well of enough of me to believe I could. I don’t remember expectations for good grades or high performance in school—for me it was just there, an inner drive. But I think it came from her, setting that early expectation that “her girls would go to college.” Four out of the five of us went, three of us finished.
One who didn’t finish, got pregnant her freshman year; I was ten at the time and again, never knew that second deep dark family secret until years later. My mother had wanted to raise the baby, but instead arranged for my sister to go live in Baltimore with another sister until the baby was born and adopted. How painful that must have been to loose a grandchild. She loved children (remember, she had six of them). I remember the day I told her I was pregnant with Sam—I think it was definitely one of the better moments we had together.
March is my birthday month. Birthday’s were simple growing up, and that tradition I retained. A favorite meal, choice of cake and a simple present were all the fuss we ever got; and my own kids get about the same. There was a special party she gave me once, though. Apparently it was a tradition of my older siblings that she was reviving for the occasion. Somehow, with the help of those siblings, she created some sort of trip to outers pace. The details completely escape me—I only remember being lifted up in a way that felt like I was weightless, a zero gravity lift. This was around 1960—10 years before we would walk on the moon.
My mother never wanted to give or do anything, unless it was the right thing for a birthday or Christmas. It is a standard that has stuck with me, and paralyzed me at times. I never feel that I can quite live up to the Christmas’ she put on, or the birthdays. I am always trying to measure up. And sadly, I probably won’t know until years later, from my own kids—how well I have succeeded. But at coffee hour, you can put them on the spot and ask them.
April, often the month of Easter. Sunrise service. We only went once—up to the rim of the mountain behind our house (this was northern New Jersey now, the mountains were pretty small) but I remember going. I can’t remember the sunrise itself, or who else was there, (was it just me, my siblings, did my father come too?) but I know it was she who made it happen and I remember being very cold and having a sense of wonder and mystery. It is all I took away—but isn’t that a lot—and what better gift?
We had Easter baskets, and a jelly-bean hunt. The only variation I have made in the tradition for my own children, is that there is a present at the end of the hunt. That would have been considered excessive by my mother; because I wouldn’t describe her as generous—though she gave me a lot.
Religion and church was something she tried—and later, admittedly failed at. She thought she should send her kids to church; so took us to Sunday School and she went to the church service at the local Congregational church in town. My father never did. Though, I think she thought it was her duty to educate us in religion; her heart just wasn’t in it. I think if she had found a UU church, that could have been different. She would have fit in better here.
May and Mother’s Day. I have no memories of honoring this day for her. What does that say? What does it indicate? Will my own children remember honoring their mother every year—I get to choose what I do that day, go to church or not, work in the garden, buy plants, have breakfast in bed, or go out to breakfast or lunch. It is truly my day and they have always honored that. Why didn’t we growing up? I thought maybe that Mother’s Day wasn’t commercialized by then, but I looked it up, and indeed it was.
June was probably my mother’s favorite month. It was the month she got to go to Bailey Island. The cottage had been in my father’s family for three generations. Closed up during WW II, he took my mother there to see it some time in the 40’s and she never stopped going back for the next 50 years.
I think it was where my mother felt most herself, and her lack of convention was just perfect for island life. She went there with no electricity, no running water, no phone, an outhouse, and four children, at least two in diapers: remember they would be cloth diapers at that time.
It was a measure of her love for the place. And it brought out the fun in her. She became the island den mother; she organized baseball games in the field, took the kids roller skating in Brunswick, taught the island children to swim, and indulged her love of singing by organizing song fests around the pump organ. “Rip Black would be on bones, and Lynwood on the washboard and Skeet on the organ.” It was where I learned “Going Round the Mountain,” “ Goody Goody” and “Tittley-Winky Winky-Winky Tittlely-Winky- Woo,” and “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You.”
And as I watched the gathering from the stairs, long after I was supposedly in bed, it was where I learned about adults having fun. It is where I feel I have failed my mother and my kids the most. Though there have been other good things, it doesn’t feel like there has been enough fun in our family life.
But I have tried to create some fun. After my mother died, we took our two-week vacation at Bailey Island. It became our “fun” family time. The kids spent hours swimming, playing on the rocks, we took walks, played soccer in the field, cooked marshmallows, had 4th of July parties and in the later years went sailing. Our vacation at Bailey Island was our time to be together. That place, is probably one of my mother’s greatest gifts, and in writing this, it is hard to write about it without tearing. It is certainly one of the gifts I have tried to pass on to my children.
September we returned to school—literally the day before it started and not before. We left the island late in the day; in the early days, the suitcases packed flat in the old Woody station wagon to make a bed so we could sleep. How hard it must have been for her to return to routine and convention—as hard for her as it was for us. Her best friend was on Bailey Island; she lived right next door. And she was as unconventional as my mother. Her son is our good friend today; and how good it is to have someone know my mother as I knew her there.
October and Halloween. Store-bought costumes were never good enough for my mother. We had to use the trunks full of old clothing she had saved from various households and create our own costumes out of beautiful coats, and white dresses and little boots and parasols from another era. And fortunately or unfortunately, I maintained a similar tradition with my own children. I don’t think they had a storebought costume ever unless it was borrowed. I can still remember Abby in her pink plastic princess outfit with yellow plastic mask. She was just as proud of that costume as any home-made creation we could muster, so perhaps all my efforts were wasted.
November was Thanksgiving. I think it was my mother’s favorite holiday. We had inherited big fancy mahogany furniture from both sides of the family. The sideboard was marble topped-the china cabinet fronted with glass, filled with beautiful china and silver. Everything was the same, every year. We cleaned all the silver the day before. The table was extended and all the good china came out for the feast. Place cards, white linen napkins and tablecloth. She cooked the turkey and “all the trimmings” and there was an air of excitement all day. There were cocktails (Shirley temples for the kids) and hor’ oeuvre’s before dinner, shrimp cocktail and bologna rolls (I thought they were so special then, and my kids still enjoy them). My father carved and served each plate individually. There was no passing of dishes at that table. Of course pumpkin and mince meat pie. There were cordials after dinner
My mother was a story teller when she had an audience and at Bailey Island, she frequently did. Many times I heard her tell the story of the fancy preparations for Thanksgiving dinner and then one year, taking the turkey of the oven, all ready to put on the table, and dropping it on the floor. I can’t remember the rest of the story, whether we ate it or not, but by that point in the story she was roaring with laughter and her listeners were laughing right along with her.
That and a few other stories were oft repeated. As the years went on, we hated to hear them as the alcohol that got her started had set in a lot deeper by then. But still I think of them now—how as the only woman on a sailboat race, she cooked for my uncle and his crew between Newport and Bermuda. Her foot braced, pots sliding off the stove in the stiff breeze. Much waving of arms—much laughter and whoops while telling. I cannot come close to imitating her but now, with the softening of time—it makes me smile to think of her telling it.
After my father died, my mother moved from our seven-bedroom, three-story house in Montclair, New Jersey to Bailey Island. She divested herself of most of the trappings of not just her former life, but the lives of several generations who had come before her. My sister took most of the mahogany furniture, my other sister the china cabinet. Some family members wanted nothing to do with any of it. I took a few things that could fit in my house at the time. I would have taken much more if I had then, the house I have now, because, I shared my mother’s love of age, and quality and tradition. I carried that with me. I took as many of the old pictures as I could, the yellowed scraps of genealogy she had preserved and traced. I took many of the old books from the playroom and I took as much of the silver as I could—all of it mismatched but the initials I believe, go back to my great-grandmother . The hutch she had found at a yard sale possibly way back before I was born. Some of the things no one could or wanted to take, she sold. And always frugal, enjoying a good deal, she delighted in the prices they fetched.
After she moved to Bailey, she had one favorite seat that gave her a view of the ocean. She did everything from that spot—talked on the phone, ate, paid her bills, drank. Bailey Island is a very different place in the winter time, bitter cold wind, barren, the horizon crystal clear, the view stark, and darkness comes early. She didn’t complain about the cold or the loneliness she might have felt there. I visited her as often as I could with three young children.
During a storm, she watched the waves, and she would call me with a thrill in her voice “I just had to call you; the breakers are just rolling in!” And on December 21, she would call me and tell me with equal excitement that the days were finally getting longer.
In her last year, she didn’t make it to December 21. She died December 19, 1995. She spent almost all of her last days at Bailey—bedridden for the last five months. I think it was too hard for her to say good-bye there; and when my sister from Florida, who was taking care of her, finally wearied of the cold and the prospect of a long winter on Bailey Island, my mother agreed to go to Florida to be taken care of there. She died two weeks later.
So much of her legacy lives with me; as mother’s live in all of us. I have told you mostly the good, hinted at the not so good. This is the rite of passage of every child, especially daughters, who often become mother’s themselves. We must sort through who made us, the context of the time we grew up in and who we learned from, what it means to be a loving person, what is to be treasured in life, what can bring joy and delight—and how to be true to what we really love. And even what to be afraid of. My mother was always terrified of lightning. But we didn’t know this when we were little. The thunder storms on Bailey Island could be ferocious. The sky over the water would be lit with each flash and the thunder would make the whole house tremble. We dared only to get out of bed and race to my mother’s. She was right to be afraid of it. I am glad she didn’t live to see our house and barn devastated by the lighting. She loved our house and barn as much as we did,
I haven’t been able to be the mother that I wanted. A blend of who my mother was, and the mother I imagined I would be. We all have to do that too—reconcile who we are, versus who we wanted to be. I had this image of myself, PTA, Brownie Leader, all around school volunteer, home when the kids got on the bus and home when they came home from school. I’d been able to have that role for six glorious years, and I am exceedingly grateful for those six years. But they were gone at one point, and I had to reevaluate what it meant to be a Mom. If I couldn’t do what I had been doing what did it mean in the context of what I was doing.
Interestingly enough, though many things changed when I went to work full-time, many things continued as they had been. I was still the one the kids brought papers to sign, the one they asked if they could have a friend over. I took them shopping for clothes, checked in on their homework. Yet I was no longer the one to do the food shopping and cooking, I was often out of the house before they were off to school. I didn’t know what they did every day after school and wasn’t there to insist they watch only PBS shows on TV. I still took care of birthday presents for their friends, read them stories and tucked them in at night, made them clean their rooms and brushed their teeth. Many things, my mother didn’t do for me.
And there is a closeness now with my kids, that I know my mother never had with me. I cherish the fact that they want to stay around the dinner table most nights and visit. That Abby wants me to go get her hair done on the day of her prom, that Charles loves to go sailing with me and Sam comes and sits down while I am writing this, just to visit. As a teenager, I never did these things with my mother. By then, she was pretty unreachable.
After my mother died, as I grew older, I would look in the mirror and see her face. It is startling how closely I resemble her. Kind of scary. But someone once told me that my mother was a beautiful woman, even towards the end of her life when her face was puffy and red from alcohol. So I guess if there was beauty there, looking like her might not be that bad after all.
Last spring, Abby and I were meeting a friend of mine at a restaurant. My friend had not seen her since Abby was ten. We got there before her, and while I was in the restroom, my friend came in and picked Abby out of all the people at the tables. When I asked her how she knew it was her, she laughed and said “because she looks just like you.” So I guess, she can like it or not, my mother’s legacy lives on in my daughter as well.
The organizing principle of time, has in the end, worked for me in this sermon and I hope for you. As it has through life. For it is only over time, that we can understand what lessons we have learned from our mothers.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Please join me in singing “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep you.”
Closing Hymn