Of course, we all know that the lessons we’re taught don’t always come from those who stand before us in our classrooms. Among the many who have taught us something useful — be they our friends or co-workers or others we briefly pass on our life’s journey — perhaps today is the day when we should pay homage to our mothers, who, indeed were our very best teachers.
Certainly I don’t want to diminish the role of fathers, but, in my case, my father was often the one assigned the role of supporting the family. He drove his many roads selling steel and copper wire for his company, Central Steel and Wire Corporation, in a job that generally saw him overnighting in hotels two or three nights a week as he covered his accounts throughout Ohio and Indiana.
So for my sister Joanie and me, we were under the care and watchful eye of Mom — the woman with the distinctly beautiful name of Cavell, whose beginnings were in a place that sis and I also felt made her more special than generic moms, Nova Scotia — born, she used to say, about halfway between Digby and Antigonish. As for her name, well, some of my St. Charles Elementary pals used to substitute Mom’s name at Christmas time when it was time to sing the chorus of “The First Noel,” as in “Cavell, Cavell, Cavell and Cavell, born is….”
When it comes to those special lessons that mothers impart, well, it shouldn’t be too surprising that they are the greatest lessons in a lifetime of learning because they were our very first. Often, it seems to me, the paternal lessons that we learned came on down the pike a bit when we were older.
In my own case, Mom covered the standard maternal lessons: the ones about respecting my elders, being mindful to the needs of others, admitting my mistakes and the importance of showing gratitude. However, there was one more lesson that I truly believe to be the one that has served me pretty much all the days of my life, long after her passing in 1988 just a week after her seventieth birthday.
That lesson had its beginnings in my birth city of Chicago and really began to be reinforced with greater frequency after our family’s move to Lima just weeks before my second-grade St. Charles debut, in a school where the Sisters of Charity predominated the faculty with some assistance from some lay teachers.
Sadly, for Mom, during my early St. Charles years, my behavior often was considerably substandard, a fact reflected by several failing marks in something that was always included on grade cards, conduct. It was those failing conduct marks that often brought Mom to school to speak with my teachers and listen to the details of what her son was doing and, more importantly, not doing while she was at home carrying out the same housewife routines that were the norm of most houses in the 1960s.
But through all those, what I’m sure were disappointments and listening to my promises to, as moms so often used to say, straighten up and fly right, my mother was really pretty unflappable. I think she realized that eventually I’d be able to understand the important distinction between finding my voice and knowing when to use it. If you talk to men my age who grew up in the 1960s, they’d tell you that they never spoke of their transgressions that were serious enough for calls home to be made and for Moms to come to school because they knew they’d “get it double” at home.
However, that was never the case in that three-bedroom ranch in the middle of the 1500 Block of Latham Avenue, My dad pretty much turned all the disciplinary messiness over to the one who was at base camp each day who had a better read on the situation. While I didn’t share the smaller transgressions that didn’t reach the calling-home phase, it was never for fear of getting it double. I just didn’t want to make her sad. And, anytime there were issues which she did become aware, Mom never overreacted, which is what spawned that most valuable lesson she ever imparted.
I guess I could best sum Mom’s lesson up by saying that she constantly reinforced to me through my many missteps that a bad day should never be construed as equaling a bad life.
In a lifetime when surely I’ve had my share of bad days, I’ve reflected on Mom’s lesson so very often and now, some 35 years after her promotion to a celestial position, I remain eternally grateful.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers out there, both in this world and to those who earned their wings. They have always been and remain in perpetuity our first and our very best teachers.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
