Mah Mama Done Tol’ Me

[Cross-posted from Vox]

… when I was in pig-tails … 

Nah, no pigtails here.
But if she were still around, my Mama would tell me "do not post to
your blog after you've been drinking grappa". Of course, my Mama died
in 1998, when blogging was just a twinkle in someone's eye. So the
likelihood of her passing on this kind of wisdom seems rather remote.

My
mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in early June that year. She
had survived cancer (twice) and had just had surgery to repair some
nerve damage in her wrists and was recovered enough to start bowling
again. She wore white Reeboks, had just painted her bathroom
pepto-bismol pink, and drove a bright blue Neon that her grandchildren
referred to as "Grandma's sports car". She was proud of having mastered
playing cribbage and other card games on the computer. She was just about
to learn how to use the Internet, by which I mean that I was planning
to head home late June to give her a few lessons on how to connect
using dial-up, how to "surf the web" (a new term then), and how to send
and receive e-mail.

What I would give to have archived e-mail from my Mom.

She
was 74 when she died of an aortic aneurysm. Sometimes things happen so
very fast. The actual blow-by-blow drama of these seven days is worth
its own post … but that is not what is on my mind today.

Actually,
I've been thinking about posting about my mother for ages. I can't
imagine saying all I need to say about her in a single post. So this
may be the first of many.

The things my mother taught me could
fill a hockey arena. What fascinates me is the separation between the
lessons I've integrated into the very fabric of my being, and the ones
that I have to keep re-visiting. 

The number one all-time chart-topper lesson my Mom taught me is resourcefulness.
Here is an example of how she did it: one evening I was craving a
grilled cheese sandwich in the worst way. I would have been about nine,
I think. I must have been having growing pains or something. There were
12 people in our house, which made the possibility of actually having
some cheese in the house to make a sandwich from a bit touch-and-go. We
lived on a farm, so, if we were low on cheese, it wasn't a matter of
running out to the store and fetching more. Tentatively, I went to the
fridge to check out the cheese situation. There was a sliver of cheddar
– the cheese equivalent of a dribble of milk left in the bottom of the
milk carton and the carton being placed back in the fridge in the hope
that no one would notice. To my nine-year-old mind, there wasn't nearly
enough cheese to even mention, let alone make a decent sandwich out of.
I believe I pitched a small fit at this point.

Mom to the
rescue. I remember she told me to hush my whining. She took two slices
of bread and patiently, carefully, slowly sliced the remaining cheese
into almost toothpick sized slivers. Easily enough cheese, once melted,
to fill the space between two slices of bread. I'll never forget the
magical transformation of this tiny hunk of cheese into exactly what I
had been craving. It was a loaves-and-fishes moment and I remember
feeling the nine-year-old version of humbled.

I've started two
businesses, rescued nearly defunct projects, and directed plays based
on this moment in time. For me, the message was "work with what you
have – don't waste time whining about what you don't have". More
pragmatic than "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade" … but in
the same ballpark … or arena. I hear myself saying things like "well,
we'll make it work somehow" or "what have we got to work with?" and I
realize I'm channelling my mother. And I'm ok with that. Sometimes I
get cocky and I think I can pull off a project with the equivalent of
kleenex, spit and bailing twine … usually it works out. Focusing more
on the people and their skills rather than the "things" one does or
does not have access to has distinct advantages. So does applying a
lesson from another great teacher, Captain Kirk, and his rule-changing
approach to the Kobayashi Moru. Always a winner, that one.

I
have so much now, in terms of "things". I feel very blessed, and yet,
if all my "things" went away tomorrow, I know I'd be ok. I'd start
again … by making grilled cheese with almost no cheese. I've done it
before, so many times.

Is grilled cheese becoming a theme in
this blog? Hm … sorry about that … 🙂 … ok, I've had too much
grappa to really be coherent in discussing my mother's lessons …
there will be more to follow …