My Mother's Voice

My Mother’s Voice

My mother had unique ways of teaching me morals. When I was about ten years old, as my mother and I walked down a city street, a large burly man came toward us. After the man was out of earshot, she asked, “Did you see what that man was doing?”

“Yes,” I said, “He was smoking a cigarette.”

“Do you know that smokers suck on their cigarettes, much like a baby with a pacifier?”

I began to laugh, picturing the macho guy with a baby binky in his mouth.

As a teen-ager, I could not see cigarette smoking as sophisticated or desirable because of the image my mother has implanted in my mind.

She chose an attractive lady spewing out vomit over a railing to give me a lesson on why over drinking “is not all fun.”

On another occasion a man with muscular dystrophy sat in a wheelchair waiting with us for a stoplight to change. My mother greeted him in a friendly manner, ignoring the fact that he was drooling and swinging his head back and forth in a strange fashion. She waited patiently for him to finish speaking and offered to push him across the street. I felt frightened of the man and tried not to look at him. Again, after he had waved good-bye, she turned to me.

“Do you realize that could be us tomorrow? We don’t know when an illness will strike us, or we could be hit by a car and become mentally impaired. You need to think of how you would like to be treated. Would you like to be ignored or would you like to be treated like everyone else?”

My life has been greatly enriched by this advice. Handicapped people, blind, deaf, and mentally challenged people were guests at our home, and they became my friends. Some of their stories became my first book, “Stranger Friends”

She also made a point of telling people who did the caretaking of relatives, children or friends who could not take care of themselves that they were her heroes. “Can you imagine, day after day, for years, feeding them, cleaning up after them, bathing them?” She explained to me. “Who notices? Hardly anyone. People who rescue someone out of a burning building or risk their life after a plane crash, are heroic in one instance and probably get their name in the paper, but they don’t do these things everyday.”

She encouraged me to get acquainted with older people.

“What do I say?” I asked.

“Ask them about their childhood, things they enjoyed doing, where they came from. Do not ask about their health or you may be there all day and it’s usually negative. Tell them about yourself. When you leave, ask them if they would like a hug. They miss being touched.”

I ended up having many adopted grandmas and grandpas and enough stories to fill several books.

Once, when I lied about something, she said, “Do you want your life to be more difficult or easier?”

“Easier,” I said, knowing she had me once again.

“When you tell the truth, you never have to cover yourself. Never have to remember who you told what. Your conscience will not pinch you like new shoes. Lying is like digging a hole that just gets deeper and deeper and finally you cannot get out. No one really trusts you and trust is the basis for loving relationships.”

I never had a problem with stealing, but I remember she admonished me not to “steal the limelight.” She noticed someone telling a story in a group and I had to tell a story that topped that one.

“Let other people shine, listen, and applaud. It is one of the secrets to being well liked.” As a public speaker and all-around blabber, I still have trouble keeping quiet

She encouraged me to do a little “window dressing” as she called it, keeping myself up nicely on the outside. But then, she also drew my attention to women who had improved themselves on the inside, charming women, intelligent women, women who helped others. “Later in life these traits will be your best assets.”

She also told me that if you keep trying new things you are not old. I have never stopped doing this, even when I have been scared.

She told me to look at the sky every day. This has been a special gift. The sky is never the same. You must stop your hurry to do this. However, here is the reason she told me to do this: “If you ever think you’re really something, look at the sky, you are a small speck in the universe.”

Two days before my mother died at age ninety-one of a stroke, she lost her ability to speak. She said, “I love you” in the way she squeezed my hand, she said “Thank you,” when she smiled while I brushed her hair and gently washed her face. When I sang to her, I saw her tears and understood every word she said.

My mother has been gone many years, but her voice is in my head and my heart, and I still listen.