Happy Mother’s Day

My mom was diagnosed with a Stage IV glioblastoma on February 12, 2015.  In honor of Mother’s Day and in light of the not-so-subtle nudge from mortality, I sat down and made a list of the most important lessons I’ve learned at the knee of my mother.

25 Things I Learned from My Mom

1. A girl can never have too many shoes.  I’m not saying my mom is Imelda Marcos, but I was recently in her closet, and she has fabulous shoes—lots of them.  I did not inherit her petite and beautiful feet, but if you want to admire some stylish shoes that didn’t cost as much as your first car, put your head in her closet.
2. Pay more for a quality pair of shoes, and your feet, back and legs will thank you.  Have one or two pair of shoes that feel good and look great, because that’s what you’re going to wear from day to day.  You can tolerate beautiful yet uncomfortable shoes for an evening, but your everyday shoes have to feel as good in the morning as they do at the end of the night.
3. There is nothing so attractive as a well-educated and sharply dressed woman.
   • My mom graduated from nursing school at a time when students took all their chemistry and biology classes at Augustana College. Let me tell you from first-hand experience: those science classes at Augie are like bouncers on steroids.  They will knock you flat in a heartbeat.  So, to all those doctors and chemistry PhD people who were sweating through organic and inorganic chemistry, my mom was right there with you, and she was making good grades while she did clinicals!  I’d like to see today’s pre-med majors do that.
   • On Graduation Day, she put on her starched white uniform, and I have never seen a more gorgeous or kick ass picture of my mother. She stands proudly in her nurse’s uniform looking perfectly feminine and perfectly able to handle any crisis that comes her way.  She is smart, she is in control, and she is going to take your name.
4. Never let a man control your money.  She and I have both learned through trial and error on this one, but she is smart with numbers.  When my dad walked out, she had to raise two kids on her salary plus small child support payments from my dad.  (Those were the early days of divorce in the Dakotas.)  She paid for all my uniforms, fees and lessons mainly with her salary.  There were tears over it at times, but she always knew where every penny was, and we never went without.  You need to know where the money came from and where it’s going.  All of it.
5. Life is better with a book.  For as long as I could remember, Mom ate lunch with a book in one hand as she ate with the other.  She would often read at night as well.  I understand now that reading a book is an escape when you have children.  Get out of the land of crushing demands and find some peace in the pages of your book.  I read some of my mom’s childhood Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames books when I was a girl, and when I eat lunch now, I often have a book in my hand.  Take note of the smart and competent female protagonists from her childhood favorites.
6. Avoid debt like the plague.  That’s a lesson I wish I had always followed.
7. Do it right the first time.  No one has time to go back and correct the thing you did wrong in the first place.
8. If store-bought tastes just as good as homemade, get the monkey off your back and buy it from the store.  Don’t make yourself crazy with the expectation that it all has to be made by your own hands.  I’ll never forget when my mom told me that yes, homemade pumpkin pie tastes better than the one you get in the freezer section, but no one was complaining about the Sara Lee pumpkin pie at the Thanksgiving table, and it was one less thing she had to do.  Get over it.
9. Have a creative outlet.  My mom paints, does cross stitch and knits.  She cross stitched baby blankets for all my kids, and she even chose patterns that were going to take twice as long as the average pattern just because she wanted them to be beautiful.  I don’t have the patience for cross stitch (or much of anything crafty, really).  My creative outlet is my piano playing, but the concept is the same.
10. Choose a dress that is classy but has something extra so that you stand out in a crowd.  My mom is always the prettiest belle at the ball, because she chooses designs that look good on her and have something special in the cut so that she is just a little bit edgy or a little bit unconventional—all while she looks perfectly age appropriate and feminine.  If it can be worn in a shade of purple, that’s even better.  She’s a rock star in this department.
11. Nothing says Christmas or Easter like a new dress.  Whether she made it or bought it, I always had a new dress in December and then again at Easter, and it always met her standard of being just a little bit out of the ordinary.
12. Laugh out loud.  My mom has a hearty laugh, and I have seen and heard her laugh through the best and worst of times.  I looked at pictures of her in college, and she is frolicking and making fun with her friends the same way she does now.  If it’s funny, she’s gonna laugh, and she doesn’t care if you hear her.
13. Be the last one to leave the dance floor.  Somebody paid the band, and you may as well enjoy it ‘til the last song.  My mom is a great dancer, and some of my happiest times have been watching her and my stepdad dance or else dancing along with them at parties.
14. It’s good to plant some flowers so that you can have a walkabout in the summer evenings.  After the heat of day, Mom likes to stroll around her flower beds and see how her plants are doing.  Sometimes she bends down to pick a dead bud, cut a flower or water a thirsty plant.  I did this several times with her and my grandmother as well.  It’s a lovely ritual to end your day.
15. Tell your kids how much you love them.  I confess that my mom does not love well with words.  Neither did her mother, and it always left me (and her) wondering where we stood.  I’m almost 47 years old, and a year ago I was crying to her on the phone that I never lived up to her expectations.  She was taken aback and cried that she has always been proud of me.  I make a point of telling my kids of my admiration and affection so that they never wonder.  I wish her mother had done the same for her, because my mom has been an absolute model daughter, but she rarely received the praise she had earned.
16. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.  We are children of the Dakotas.  We farm.  We garden.  We mow the grass.  We fix broken bikes.  A woman needs to be able to take care of the basics and not wait around for a man to get it done.  One of my earliest memories is my mom turning over rocks with me as we looked for bugs.  She also let me collect an entire Styrofoam cup full of snails to take home when we were on a camping trip.  Dirty hands mean you’re fully involved in life.
17. Rhubarb tastes really good in just about everything.  Pie, jam, crisp, bread….it’s all good, and it’s hard to kill, at least up North.
18. If life forces you to make a new tradition, then do it and move on.  We always cut our own Christmas tree in the Black Hills, and it was one of my favorite traditions.  We even did it after my parents divorced.  She loaded us up with hot chocolate and mittens and we put the tree on top of the car.  That all came to a screeching halt when she married my stepdad.  He lasted one tree expedition, cursed “Are you kidding me?!” as Matt and I headed up a snowy embankment with saws in our hands, and the next year Mom bought a beautiful fake tree with lights.  End of story. Buy a live wreath if you miss the smell of a fresh cut pine.  Move on.  The memories are still there.
19. Save a few of the things that have meaning, and get rid of the rest. Don’t fill your attic or garage with stuff from your past.  Mom has saved pictures, some of the old Christmas ornaments we made as kids, and one or two of the outfits she made us as kids.  The rest was passed on to someone else.  It keeps your body mobile and your mind uncluttered.
20. Shut up about it and fix it if it’s bugging you.  This has also been a source of contention between my mom and me.  I like to process things out loud.  She just decides what she can fix and forgets about the rest.  I call it denial.  She calls it selective inattention.  It works for her, and sometimes it works for me.  The last thing she wants to hear is you bitching about something you aren’t willing to fix.  Fix it and be done with it, or stop bellyaching.  Nobody wants to listen to your whining.
21. It’s okay to demand respect.  My mom is a no-fuss type of person, but my brother and I showed up to Christmas dinner one year in our sweatpants.  She burst into tears.  We never did that again.  As she pointed out, why should she make an elaborate dinner while we lounge around in sweatpants?  And then we don’t even have the courtesy to change into appropriate attire to show our appreciation for her efforts?  As I recall, we set the table with china and crystal the next year.  We also dressed up.  No one wants to make Mom cry.
22. Help your kids be the best at what they love.  My mom paid for piano lessons up the wazoo, fought with school administrators to keep music in my schedule, let my brother raise gerbils, tolerated all his attempts to take apart appliances and wire random things together, and never gave us grief over what we weren’t good at.  She let me paint a really bad mural on a basement wall and still has my brother’s truly impressive artwork hanging prominently in her house.
23. It’s okay to scare people with your game face.  Mom and I both go into cold-hearted witch mode when we’re overwhelmed or uncertain.  We pretend we know what we’re doing until we really do know.  I’m not saying it’s the healthiest coping mechanism, but we are our own worst critics, and sometimes you just have to remove the emotion and press forward.  Eventually people find out that we’re tender and vulnerable on the inside, and we will ask for help if we need it.  We aren’t haughty: we just have a tough exterior at times.  Just get through it and cry about it later.
24. Serve your community.  Mom took us to deliver Meals on Wheels when she was a stay at home mom.  She was the room mother (me….not on your life).  She raised money for the Children’s Miracle Network.  She serves on a national board for Eastern Star after giving most of her post-retirement time to raise funds for the Shriners Hospitals for Children.  I’m not saying I liked competing for her time and attention, but I learned at a young age that life is not all about me.
25. You are who you are, and you may as well make peace with it.  Mom is not one for therapy.  She deals with life with the cold precision of a nurse.  She assesses the situation, puts on her game face, and keeps the patient alive while juggling as many beeping machines as possible.  She knows she’s not touchy feel-y like I am, and she reminds me that she never will be.  She tries to meet my needs, and she apologizes when she can’t, but she knows that a giraffe will never be a moose.  There is an economy and simplicity in her approach that is instructive.

I hate this brain tumor.  Since my mom had surgery to remove most of the tumor, she gets confused about time and dates.  She sometimes calls me by my given name, which she has NEVER done.  She has sent me crazy texts and said really funny and inappropriate things.  Still, my mom is handling this cancer as she has handled all of her life.  She does what she can and doesn’t freak about the things that are out of her control.  She goes to radiation and takes her chemo meds without complaint.  Her friends and I are more openly upset than she is.  I know this tumor is a wicked enemy.  None of us know how much time we have left, and if I had to choose an enemy, I would never choose a glioblastoma, but nothing is going to steal my mom from me.  Nothing will take away the parts of her that have become part of me.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  You raised me well.