Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 1:01am
My first teacher is still 21
Column: Life at First Sight
My mother wouldn't have had a "real" birthday this year. Being a leap-year baby, her true birthday came around only once every four years, which means she'd still be 21 this year, although a death certificate dated six years ago records her age as 80.
There were discernible signs of age beginning to bend her slender frame ever so slightly in the months before the sudden heart attack that ended her life. But the challenge her dove-colored eyes tossed back at the world, even then, always made her seem so much more like a feisty young adult.
Her only grandchildren, our now-adult kids, join us at this time each year for Ayyam-i-Ha (Days of Joy), the four-day (five in a leap year) holiday we celebrate as a Baha'i family. These days occur just before a 19-day period in which we'll fast during daylight hours and each take a kind of spiritual inventory as we wind down toward a new year that will begin when the spring equinox arrives.
It is always especially easy to remember my mother during these Ayyam-i-Ha happy days, which focus on sharing hospitality and reaching out to others. If anyone ever embodied the true spirituality — and joy — of what such acts are really about, my mum sure did.
Mothers truly are our first teachers, which may explain why we can feel so inexplicably alone once they're gone. What they teach will include things we'll eventually come to prize, even if we didn't initially. With each passing year, it becomes more obvious how many of the things I value in myself can be traced to a military spouse whose life didn't turn out anything like her 21-year-old self imagined it would.
A young British war bride, my mother held down the fort in her family's remote north-England home after the handsome Yank she'd married returned to France for duty during World War II. During the years my dad was at war, she cared for my older sister, then a newborn, as well as for an elderly relative suffering with cancer, and several children who'd been evacuated from London. I recently learned that my newly post-partum, first-time mother also hooked rugs in order to generate income to compensate for the meager wartime rations on which her crowded household had to subsist.
Having been a young mother now myself, I wonder how she ever found the time to do these things, and marvel that she took in those young evacuees at all. She knew, however, what kind of life they'd face back home in the city during wartime, because her young face already wore nasty scars from her service as a fire warden during the Blitz.
If anyone modeled for me how to welcome change gracefully, it was this woman who came to a new culture to meet her Boston-Irish inlaws, then proceeded to make a home for her family — over and over — in locations throughout the world where her career-officer husband was stationed. Her deliberate and dedicated "nesting" efforts are some of my oldest memories. They gave every place we lived that consistent feeling of home that I could recognize anywhere.
If life in a military family meant I had to keep making new friends, she, as with most everything, encouraged that this be an adventure. She made it easier to nurture friendships by always welcoming playmates at our house and utterly charming them with her warmth. (They usually loved her accent, too.) Friends still talk about how inviting it was at our house, while I just grew up believing that's how it was everywhere.
Because she was such a canny yet unobtrusive ally in assisting our friendships, my sister and I each find it easy to make friends wherever we go, to be the one to go talk to someone standing alone at a party, as we often saw her do. With her lively writer's and reader's mind, she always had friendly, interesting questions that would coax people gently into the nicest conversations, even if she had to ask them in a language she was struggling to learn.
Long before the days of what the '60s would label Women's Lib, military spouses like her were already demonstrating women's versatility and capability, strong models for their daughters — and sons. When you're so often the only parent on the scene, there's no room for the kind of thinking that's limited by gender bias.
Among other invaluable gifts, she offered a kind of listening that could make you feel priceless. She also taught me how to value and use my own time — not just to be efficient and accomplish things, important as that is, but to also savor and enjoy something worth enjoying.
It makes me more than a little sad that I can so easily recognize these things now that she isn't here to thank in person, but I also know that millions of parents have gone to great lengths for their children and never received acknowledgment of that personally.
" ... a father and mother endure the greatest troubles and hardships for their children; and often when the children have reached the age of maturity, the parents pass on to the other world," the Baha'i Writings describe. "Rarely does it happen that a father and mother in this world see the reward of the care and trouble they have undergone for their children. Therefore, children, in return for this care and trouble, must show forth charity and beneficence, and must implore pardon and forgiveness for their parents." (Baha'i World Faith, pp. 329-30)
After my mother's death, the one thing I heard most consistently from the many people who loved her was how much kindness and help she had always shown them. It's quite clear, therefore, how I can best honor her memory, and that is likely the most important lesson this first teacher has ever given me.
So, thanks for everything, and happy almost-birthday, Mum. You'll always be 21 to me.
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring
There were discernible signs of age beginning to bend her slender frame ever so slightly in the months before the sudden heart attack that ended her life. But the challenge her dove-colored eyes tossed back at the world, even then, always made her seem so much more like a feisty young adult.
Her only grandchildren, our now-adult kids, join us at this time each year for Ayyam-i-Ha (Days of Joy), the four-day (five in a leap year) holiday we celebrate as a Baha'i family. These days occur just before a 19-day period in which we'll fast during daylight hours and each take a kind of spiritual inventory as we wind down toward a new year that will begin when the spring equinox arrives.
It is always especially easy to remember my mother during these Ayyam-i-Ha happy days, which focus on sharing hospitality and reaching out to others. If anyone ever embodied the true spirituality — and joy — of what such acts are really about, my mum sure did.
Mothers truly are our first teachers, which may explain why we can feel so inexplicably alone once they're gone. What they teach will include things we'll eventually come to prize, even if we didn't initially. With each passing year, it becomes more obvious how many of the things I value in myself can be traced to a military spouse whose life didn't turn out anything like her 21-year-old self imagined it would.
A young British war bride, my mother held down the fort in her family's remote north-England home after the handsome Yank she'd married returned to France for duty during World War II. During the years my dad was at war, she cared for my older sister, then a newborn, as well as for an elderly relative suffering with cancer, and several children who'd been evacuated from London. I recently learned that my newly post-partum, first-time mother also hooked rugs in order to generate income to compensate for the meager wartime rations on which her crowded household had to subsist.
Having been a young mother now myself, I wonder how she ever found the time to do these things, and marvel that she took in those young evacuees at all. She knew, however, what kind of life they'd face back home in the city during wartime, because her young face already wore nasty scars from her service as a fire warden during the Blitz.
If anyone modeled for me how to welcome change gracefully, it was this woman who came to a new culture to meet her Boston-Irish inlaws, then proceeded to make a home for her family — over and over — in locations throughout the world where her career-officer husband was stationed. Her deliberate and dedicated "nesting" efforts are some of my oldest memories. They gave every place we lived that consistent feeling of home that I could recognize anywhere.
If life in a military family meant I had to keep making new friends, she, as with most everything, encouraged that this be an adventure. She made it easier to nurture friendships by always welcoming playmates at our house and utterly charming them with her warmth. (They usually loved her accent, too.) Friends still talk about how inviting it was at our house, while I just grew up believing that's how it was everywhere.
Because she was such a canny yet unobtrusive ally in assisting our friendships, my sister and I each find it easy to make friends wherever we go, to be the one to go talk to someone standing alone at a party, as we often saw her do. With her lively writer's and reader's mind, she always had friendly, interesting questions that would coax people gently into the nicest conversations, even if she had to ask them in a language she was struggling to learn.
Long before the days of what the '60s would label Women's Lib, military spouses like her were already demonstrating women's versatility and capability, strong models for their daughters — and sons. When you're so often the only parent on the scene, there's no room for the kind of thinking that's limited by gender bias.
Among other invaluable gifts, she offered a kind of listening that could make you feel priceless. She also taught me how to value and use my own time — not just to be efficient and accomplish things, important as that is, but to also savor and enjoy something worth enjoying.
It makes me more than a little sad that I can so easily recognize these things now that she isn't here to thank in person, but I also know that millions of parents have gone to great lengths for their children and never received acknowledgment of that personally.
" ... a father and mother endure the greatest troubles and hardships for their children; and often when the children have reached the age of maturity, the parents pass on to the other world," the Baha'i Writings describe. "Rarely does it happen that a father and mother in this world see the reward of the care and trouble they have undergone for their children. Therefore, children, in return for this care and trouble, must show forth charity and beneficence, and must implore pardon and forgiveness for their parents." (Baha'i World Faith, pp. 329-30)
After my mother's death, the one thing I heard most consistently from the many people who loved her was how much kindness and help she had always shown them. It's quite clear, therefore, how I can best honor her memory, and that is likely the most important lesson this first teacher has ever given me.
So, thanks for everything, and happy almost-birthday, Mum. You'll always be 21 to me.
— — —
Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring