Mom and Roberta, 1943
I think about my Mom a lot in January, the month when she was born, and in March, the month when she died. She never said any of the things below, but I decided to try to say them for her as authentically as I could. What lessons did I learn from her when I was a little boy? I decided on ten. I’ll never get the wording exactly right, and I’ll never be able to articulate all the lessons, because so many of them were nonverbal and taught by example. Ours was not a peaceful home, nor was it always a happy one, but there were times when my mother’s parenting was, as I think about it more than fifty years later, actually quite inspired.
Ten Lessons
- Each of our lives is tuned differently, so each of us produces a different tone. It’s the melodies that please God most.
- Books, and music, and ideas, and politics, and God, and talk. That makes this place, five thousand miles away from Ireland, an Irish house.
- You young people might be all right after all. Ringo makes me think so. He looks just like a Basset hound!
- Faith is stronger when it’s tempered by doubt. The men they tried at Nuremberg were True Believers.
- Those people working the pepper field over our pasture fence don’t look like us, and they don’t speak our language. How lucky we are to have them so close.
- You’re the one that burns a little hotter than the others. I need to be patient because I love you.
- We owe the poor our love and respect; we owe the rich prayers for good eyesight. It’s so hard to see a carpenter’s son planing His father’s wood from the great heights that they inhabit.
- There is no forgiving intentional cruelty.
- I will raise singular daughters and honorable sons.
- Life inflicts terrible wounds and unbearable pain. Just hang on. If the pain continues, just hang on. A time may come when you need to let go of it. Say goodbye with love.
A Work in Progress 