My mom was born on April 13, 1921. She grew up on a farm in Idaho. She knew from a very early age how to milk cows, fry up chicken, and plant and harvest potatoes and corn.
At the age of 18, she was the sole woman graduate of Walt Whitman College in Walla Walla , Washington. She majored in the German language and was so proficient that she was hired by the War Department in early 1940 to interpret German high command war messages.
When the Allies captured the E-MACHINE- a typewriter that allowed encrypted German messages to be de-coded-she was selected as one of five to work in a top-secret office decoding German war messages. She stayed in that position for the duration of the war and hoped to make a career doing the same job. When the war ended, her job ended and she was told that she was being replaced by a returning army officer- a man. She was told to go home and have babies, like a good woman should.
To a “modern” woman, these events would have proven the mantra of the time- that women were enslaved, second-class citizens, denigrated by a disgusting male power structure.
In the 1960’s, it was the time of the “sexual revolution”. The birth control pill was-according to the media-liberating women from a life of slavery, drudgery, male dominance, and control. New visions of what it meant to be a woman were emerging, all asserting that women were being liberated from a repressive society. Motherhood was being attacked as servile, degrading, and unworthy of a freedwoman.
My mom did not buy into any of this”nonsense.” Indeed, her outlook was the exact opposite. Being a woman, being a wife, and most importantly being a mom was the absolute highest calling. Being an employee of the war department was enslavement because it meant that her highest calling in this life was to play word games in German.
She looked out upon the universe and very much saw the hand of God in all that was visible and all that was not. She lovingly and with great love and admiration for the creator of the universe asked if he truly intended her to play those word games. The answer of course was that he really cared not for her job as an interpreter. “The creator of the universe” she would tell me “holds nothing more valuable than creation. And he gave me something that no man has, and nor ever can attain: he gave me the power and the ability and the desire to create with him the new life he so values.
At a very early age, I remember her telling me that it is in being a mom, in creating and sustaining a family that she was truly free.
Not the freedom to burn your bra or dance naked in a bar. She called that freedom for chaos.
By Freedom, my mom meant “FREEDOM FOR EXCELLENCE.”
If you give a teenage boy a set of golf clubs, take him to a PGA golf course, hand him a ball, and tell him to tee off, he has the freedom to do that very deed. But, without instruction, training, and guidance, his freedom is freedom for chaos: he will slice, shank, and divot the hell out of the course. He will never however play Golf.
If you, however, teach him over weeks, months, and years the game of golf, the techniques to play well, and if you instill in him the discipline needed to be a PGA-level golfer, he will have a very different kind of freedom. He will have the freedom to play the game the way it was meant to be played. He will have the freedom to drive the ball 300 yards to just the right position in the fairway; the freedom to hit his second drive onto the green; and the ultimate freedom of sinking that birdie putt that you have never been able to hit. He will, in short, have the FREEDOM FOR EXCELLENCE.
It is in Motherhood that my Mom felt she had her best chance for such Freedom. She knew in her heart that if she worked very hard at being the best mom she could be, if she disciplined herself to place motherhood above all other values, and if she developed the good and needed skills all good moms have, she would achieve the excellence in her life that would enable her to be truly free to the very best person her God meant her to be. And she would be a freedom fighter in his world.
My mom achieved that excellence. From a very early age, I remember how truly dedicated she was to developing in herself the “excellence” of being a mom. From the relatively trivial (she got up very early every day to make me oatmeal for breakfast. Eggs on Sunday. Brown sugar on payday. She made me my lunch- peanut butter and grape jelly- and always put a note telling me to do my best) to the far more substantial( she taught me the classics-Aristoltle, Socrates, Plato. By fifth grade, I was reading Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and Chaucer) she was dedicated to creating, nurturing and sustaining the family she knew God meant her to have.
She came to my football games. She watched me hit home runs on my baseball team. She was my source of wisdom, careful thought and devotion to civility. I guess more importantly she taught me true Christian love. She was the most Christian person I ever met. She taught me to love family, to lovingly participate in family dinners, family holidays, and she taught me to place family above all else.
She worked as hard as anyone I ever met to being the very best mom and grandmom she could be. She strived for “mom”excellence and her mission was to not only give me life thru birth but to nurture me into being the man that she felt God wanted me to be.
She did her job 24/7. She never relented but always worked with me trying her very best to develop in me excellence in my thoughts, words, and deeds. ( That is not a comment about me, but about her and who she was. She strived for excellence in being a mom.)
As my mom approached the end of her life, she told me her prayer: that her death would be a peaceful one. I remember telling her:”Mom, it will be more than peaceful. For all that you have given to me, to our family, God must be smiling.”
To me, she died a truly free woman, brought there by her commitment to achieving the highest calling she knew God gave her: Being a partner with him in creating new life and nurturing the souls of his sons and daughters. HER FREEDOM WAS NOT THE FREEDOM OF CHAOS BUT THE TRUE FREEDOM GAINED ONLY BY EXCELLENCE.
When I met my wife, when I first looked into her eyes, I was filled with wonder. I saw beauty on many levels. I was filled with the thought that I had met the woman I wanted to marry.
Of all that I saw though, what I was most struck by was that I saw in my wife the same thought of motherhood that I had seen in my mom. She found greatness, not poverty, in creating life. She found joy in family and all that it entailed. Being a good mom, and achieving excellence in the life of her children, gave her the same freedom my mom had. I don’t know anyone who is as free in their thoughts and their beliefs than my beautiful wife- for she has found the freedom God gave her by achieving the excellence of being a mom to her children.
So too my daughter and my two wonderful daughters-in-law. Each has followed their own path; each has achieved their own life. But, somehow, someway each developed the same notion as my mom: Momhood is life; is excellence; is freedom to be the absolute best person they could ever be.
As I stated in the title, I am going to celebrate Mother’s Day and there is nothing you can do to stop me. And I will fight anyone who wants to take away from my mom, my wife, and my wonderful daughters their desire to achieve the FREEDOM TO BE EXCELLENT.
I say HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to them, and to every mom out there who strives mightily day and night to achieve the same excellence and the same FREEDOM.
God bless Momhood.God bless the moms who find freedom in being excellent.
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