My mother grew up during the Depression in Hobucken, North Carolina – a coastal farming community. She is the smartest person I have ever known. As a young girl, she had an older sister who was actually her mother. She became a widow before she was old enough to collect social security and worked outside the home for the first time in her life at that time. She grew up with one “real” sister, and when she was in her seventies, she met a second sister (the youngest of the three sisters) who had been put up for adoption when Mom was a young adult. She had a complex life, but many would say – including her – that she had lived simply. Simply?
Until the third grade, I lived with my family in Marathon, Florida. My father was a commercial fisherman and was gone from home frequently for weeks at a time. While he was gone, Mom supported the family - 14 kids although not all 14 at once – with the money Dad left her. This money had to last until he made it back home. Mom never knew when that might be, and although she never said and I never considered it in the naiveté of my youth, she wasn’t sure that he would ever come home. When I was in the third grade, we moved to Sneads Ferry, North Carolina. Dad died a year later. By this time, I was the only child at home. I never did without, and she never complained. The woman knew how to stretch a dollar and to do it without anyone ever realizing she was worried about how she was going to do it. I grew up on pot roasts, butter beans, and spaghetti with meat sauce (very cheap meat and very cheap sauce). I crave cabbage, Mom style.
My mom loved to learn and loved to write. She told me that school was my privilege, not my right, and encouraged me to do well and praised me when I did. I think she would have loved to have gone to school past high school, but she had kids to raise. When she wasn’t raising her own, and often when she was, she was raising grandchildren. She never complained.
My mom was extremely patient. I was the youngest and possibly the most mild of the baker’s-plus-one dozen. She never spanked me and rarely yelled yet somehow she engendered a desire to behave and excel. In junior high, I often went to concerts with my two best friends. These concerts were hours away. My friend’s mom or brother would take us, drop us off, and pick us up later. My mom wasn’t just patient, she was a nurturer. She gave me room to become myself, even if she had to sit up nights and worry.
My mom once used my brother’s sports car to drag race down Marathon’s main street; my brother got a speeding ticket later that day for this event. In her fifties, she tried to grow a marijuana plant because she was curious. She once got back at a young marine for picking on her “grandma driving.” Stopped next to him at a stop light, she looked at her friend in the passenger seat and said, “Watch this.” She put her car in reverse and eased back slowly. She watched the young marine grip his steering wheel tightly. He thought his car was moving. One of her favorite questions was “How’s your hammer hangin’?” She only asked men this. I didn’t figure this out until well into my adulthood.
It seems almost cliché to talk about my mom this way. It reminds me of questions like “Who is your hero?” Us momma’s kids say “My mom.” Mom wasn’t intellectual in the typical sense, but perhaps she would have been if she hadn’t made the life choice to marry a fisherman and raise a large family. In the end, her choices made me feel safe, valued, and respected. This is how I want my students to feel, and I make choices in my classroom to help create what I deem to be a nurturing environment.
I’m still fumbling with who should be in my full metaphysical club because honestly, up to this point, I’ve been evolving as an instructor through trial and error and best practices shared via co-workers. This is an answer I need to keep working on!
No comments:
Post a Comment