LEARNED AT MY MOTHER'S KNEE

What did you learn at your mother's knee?

One thing I learned was how to swear. Fluently.

My mother had four older brothers and three older sisters. No matter how vigilant Grandma and Grandpa were, older siblings will be older siblings. I suspect the boys were the more accomplished swearers, though.

And it didn't take me long to learn where and when swearing was tolerated--not many places and not often.

But the best thing I learned from my mom was how to be a Positive Person.

Not a family pic--but this is how women
looked in the 1940s.

I knew all six of the Jenkins girls: Dessie, Grace, Sarah, Mom (Doris), Dorothy (Mom's twin), Virginia. It was a rare moment when all six happened to be together, so I got to know them in smaller groups when they met at Grandma's house to can green beans or help clean house or just because they wanted to visit and Grandma's house was central for most of them.

Picture this: Grandma sitting at her big round kitchen table, waited on by whichever daughters showed up. A pie is cut and served. The coffee pot is never allowed to go dry. Voices mix and mingle and soar. The decibel level rises to ever greater heights.

What did they talk about? Everything. And I learned a lot from the corner where I sat and listened (they thought I was reading--well, I was, but I was listening, too). What I learned was this: There was nothing too big or too personal or too sad or too upsetting that it couldn't be laid on the table, commented on, hashed out, maybe even solved.

These women faced the problems in their lives.

They acknowledged the problems.

They shared them with each other.

Then they got on with life.

And always, they laughed. By the end of the pie and coffee and the afternoon, someone's burden was lighter.

-----
When I think about my mother and her sisters, I realize they taught me many useful approaches to life. Such as:

-- Stand up to adversity.

-- Share your burden.

-- Laugh if you can.

-- Cry if you can't laugh.

-- Be honest; don't say it's worse than it is; don't lie; give the benefit of the doubt, if you can.

-- Walk away, if you have to (though I don't remember much of that, not permanent leaving).

-- Apologize if necessary.

-- And a very practical lesson: Clean the house--it's great for anger management. (Not to mention you'll have a cleaner house.)

-----
As you can imagine, the above lessons were the ones I caught by example. No one gave me instructions or a list called How to Live as an Adult. I suspect most of us learn by the examples we were given.

Which makes me wonder what my children would write, if they were asked what they learned at their mother's knee. I grow faint just thinking about it.

-----
Whether or not you have children, you were once a child yourself, so you had a mother. If she's still on this planet, wish her a happy day, and thank her, if you can, for what you learned from her example. If she has passed on to another place, salute her for the lessons she gave you.

Mine showed me how to be positive, even when life gives you lemons and you don't have a pitcher or enough sugar to make lemonade. Her smile, even when she was dying of cancer, was genuine; she wasn't trying to deny death. She was still saying "yes!" to life.