Here is what I learned from my mom:
(This could be a very long post!)
1) That The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes rocks! (see Kiddie Lit post)
Do you know the story? I listed it in the KL post as a story I always wanted to crawl into....because of the colors, beautiful colors! And, now thinking more about the story (thanks to Songbird) I realize I chose it also because it feels like home. It's about a little brown country bunny who has 21 children and dreams of being an Easter bunny one day. All the rich white male bunnies laugh at her and tell her to go home and take care of her children.
So she does. She teaches them all jobs and routines and how to have fun doing the things that need to be done, and then when they are able to take care of themselves and each other, she goes out and is the best damn Easter Bunny ever!
Let me tell you a little bit about my mom. She was born in 1931 (and I love the fact that she doesn't care that I tell you that) in Tallahassee, FL, which (despite being the state capital) was pretty small-town. She lived in an emotionally interesting family situation & survived it; she was editor of the school newspaper and Governor of Girls State her senior year. She earned degrees in Speech Pathology and Education and started her career in the Fifties, when her peers were still working openly on getting Mrs. degrees. She got divorced (because she had to) before it was "cool." She was a single mother, before it was "cool." She remarried and moved halfway across the country, had more children, continued her career, and became a mainstay of our church. She was the first female Lay Reader at the church, which was a big deal for some reason (this was in the Seventies PECUSA).
When my sister and I were babies, she stayed home with us; but as soon as we were old enough to go to nursery school, she started giving private speech lessons at a local church preschool. We all went to school together every day. When we started elementary school, she taught at the preschool in the mornings and at our house in the afternoons, so she was home when we got there. Once we were old enough (4th - 5th grade) we were letting ourselves in after school, and she was still teaching other places.
She had her first office outside our home when I was in high school, and I'll never forget coming home from college a few years later to see her new office -- in a huge steel and glass office building on Westheimer. I thought, with surprise, "My mother is a PROFESSIONAL!"
Ummmm. Yes! There's that self-centred person that we tend to remain until about age 25 - "all the world revolves around ME, and how strange that people should have any roles other than the ones I have assigned to them!"
The point is, of course, she was ALWAYS a professional, AND a mom, and a Christian, and a Sunday-School superintendent, and many other things. As an adult, what I have learned from her is that OF COURSE I can be all those things too (though I am going to hold off on the Sunday School thing for now!)
more things Mom taught me...
2) That moms are the most amazing people in the world and can do anything and everything, and generally do...
3) That if you have a choice between cleaning the house and sitting on the patio with your little ones making salt-dough Christmas ornaments, there's no choice to make...
4) That having children and a career go exactly together. Up until now, I've always been one of the youngest in my field (stay in one small field from age 22 on and that will happen to you! now I am 40 and one of the most middle-aged in my field ;) Over the years, I've watched numerous other women worry about how to manage their careers and families, particularly since we tend to travel a bit. I never saw the disconnect, but now I realize that THEIR moms probably did not work, but stayed home with a full-time job of managing everything...
5) That a woman supports the family financially (as well as in every other way)...
6) That your family and your relationship with God are most important. After that, you're going to have work to do, too...
7) That other women are for supporting and helping you, not for tearing you down. I'm sure Mom ran into some of the latter kind, but she cleverly screened them out so that we never saw them. That's the kind of woman I want to be...
8) That my mom thinks I am wonderful, too...
love you Mommy!
So, what did you learn from YOUR mother?
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