Mind your mom
Published 9:00 pm Monday, May 5, 2003
In honor of Mother’s Day, we asked our readers to share the best motherly advice they had ever received.
We had lots of responses. Some readers sent us the advice they received when they became mothers, some sent advice they received from their mothers and some sent advice they gave to their children.
Some readers shared stories about women in their lives who were like mothers to them. Some sent remembrances of crazy events involving their mothers. One proud mother sent a poem her daughter wrote almost 40 years ago.
The most touching story we read is a candid letter from Leilani Grove of Marysville. To us, it personifies mother love: the love of a mother for her child, and the love of a child for his mother.
I have been waiting 12 years to share this mother’s story.
Dec. 17, 1990. Happy birthday to me. Thirty years old, waitress, divorced, two children.
I cried, threw on my uniform and headed out to work. At least I had a job, roof over my head and two wonderful children.
At the end of my lunch shift at the little Mexican restaurant I was informed that due to a shortage of business and me being the latest employee I was being laid off. Numb.
I drove home to break the news to my daughter Tabitha, 8, and Anthony, 6, that we could still go to dinner as I promised but Christmas in one week was going to be a little harder to manage. They looked sad at seeing me so sad but what they did next amazed me.
My son went into our room, put on his dress shirt and pants, grabbed his boom box and made a poster which read "If you like my dancing throw money."
Mind you, I had no idea what he was up to — for all I knew he went into the room to cry. He came out to the living room and said her was going to the front yard and earn us some money. He set his boombox up, set his poster up, turned on the music and started dancing.
It was drizzling out and starting to come down a little harder but he was determined to help mommy. So I allowed him to go out, figuring he’d be back in a few minutes.
Next thing I know my daughter Tabitha is walking out the door with an umbrella to hold over her brother’s head while he danced.
I watched them for about a half hour, crying the whole time as I witnessed the best birthday present I have ever received.
As I write this letter today I cry as I do it because if it appears in the Everett Herald my son will be reading it from his prison cell.
This young man made a wrong choice one day, which cost him six years in prison for armed robbery. He apparently wanted his car fixed faster than our money allowed and suffers the consequence.
He’s on his second year in prison. I know he feels many times that he let me down and wonders why I hang in there and support him.
Well, this one story is my memory of his good choices in life. He danced for me and it’s my turn to dance.
My mom always told me to just say, "I’ll have the same," when my dates took me out for dinner, because they probably had enough money to order two of whatever they wanted.
My last boyfriend found it quite unique that I would always have what he had and I was always so thin, since he was 6-foot-three, 200 pounds, and always ordered two cheeseburgers, fries and a shake.
He ended up marrying me and was surprised that I really didn’t have that big an appetite.
2. Mom’s advice for shopping has always worked for me. "Always buy something really nice for your husband, too, and then he won’t really notice how much you spent on yourself." It worked for 33 years.
The best piece of advice I received was from my Grandma White. She told me as I was growing up to get an education.
She would say, "They can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your education" and "Education is freedom."
I took those words to heart as I grew up, as I now work on my master’s degree, and I also pass the advice on to my sixth-grade students.
During World War II, many young Midwest and Southern folks were recruited to work for the federal government in Washington, D.C.
I was a farm girl in Virginia and upon my high school graduation at age 17 I joined this group of young people heading to D.C. to "become a government girl." Nowadays this term is frowned upon.
Since two of my sisters worked at the FBI, that became my choice also. I applied on Wednesday and had an interview and was hired on Thursday. So I became a typist for the FBI.
My sister Mary was 16 when I was born and did not even know that our mother was going to have a baby. She said she bacame quite motherly when she saw me that very first day as a wee baby just born at home.
Sister Mary, not my mother, gave me the best pieces of motherly advice I ever got. In return, she offered me a place to stay free for two weeks in her apartment with her sons and husband. These were her suggestions:
1. Open a bank account. FBI paid cash in those days, not check or direct deposit.
2. Obtain health insurance.
3. Always be as "broke" before pay day as everyone else.
4. Never a borrower or lender be was her motto for number 3.
Did I use the advice? I most certainly did and still do today, 58 years later. I have always been grateful for the love and her guidance she gave me that day in 1945.
Now I am retired after seven years at the FBI and 26 with the Bureau of Census and live peacefully and content in my own condo.
As they say, what goes around, comes around, and it came true in our case.
Sister Mary has Alzheimer’s and in the early stages needed my help. I was able to help her sell her home, arrange for an estate sale and to assist her in her move to a retirement home. She lives there today at almost 91 years of age. She has been there 13 years, some of which were very pleasant but the disease is now taking its toll.
Mary told me during this period how much she trusted my advice. So she did some mothering to me, and as a mother to one daughter and two grandchildren I have done some myself. Hopefully as well as Sister Mary.
I cannot think of what was the happiest memory of raising our family because it was all wonderful. Of course we all have our moments, but that means we were normal.
My mother gave me much "food for thought" advice, but I have two favorites, which I also passed on to my children. They are: "Anything worth doing is worth doing well." It instilled the need to do my best.
The second one is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you want them to do for you."
This worked for me, and I feel it was also important for my own children.
I do have one memory that I feel would be my funniest story: I don’t remember how old my son was but when I knew he had done something wrong, he would ask me how I knew about it and I would say, "A little bird told me."
When he was older he told me after that he would look to see if there was a bird around before he would do anything he knew he shouldn’t do.
I feel I did something right in raising my children according to my own mother’s rules because I have three loving, caring children who now have their own families and are now in their midlife years. I thank my mother for being such a role model.
Two of the most enduring bits of advice I got from my mom, the late great Patricia Mahood, concerned bedtime in the spring and personal hygiene. The first you could probably print and the second … I doubt it!
When we would grouse about having to go to bed after daylight-saving time kicked in and it was still light out at bedtime, she would remind us, "If you close your eyes, it gets dark!"
When I got a little older and we were discussing the birds and the bees, we got on the subject of douching. After explaining what exactly it was, she added, "But if God wanted you washing it all the time, He’d have made it more accessible!"
I wanted to share my story about my mom.
In November 1978 I got married at the age of 23. Just five months later my husband was tragically killed by a drunk driver.
I was at home alone in our apartment when the police came to the door. We lived in Federal Way and my mom and dad lived in Edmonds. After calling them at 1:30 in the morning, they made record time and came down to pick me up.
As you can imagine, it was a horrible time for my family, but through it all they supported me and helped me to survive. I grew up that day.
The arraignment for the man who killed my husband was a month or so later. I was so filled with anger and hatred as I sat in that courtroom. I expected to see this monster who had caused so much pain for so many, and instead they brought this guy in and he looked so normal … so human.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, and I am sure that I was giving him "the look." My mother, in all her wisdom reached over, took my hand and said, "Remember Jan, somebody loves him too."
In that moment my heart was softened. I realized that we all are loved by someone and in that brief second, I forgave David Nance. By her wonderful, timely advice I realized that even those who can cause so much anguish are loved!
I have carried those words with me for the past 24 years. Now, once a month I speak for the Snohomish County DUI Victim Panel, and I share those words with all of those court-ordered attendees. I want them all to know that whatever the reason they are there … someone loves them no matter what they have done.
As for my mom, I am sure that she would tell you it was nothing, but I know that she too would realize, that it was her best advice. She always taught us (my two sisters and one brother) never to quit, to always have a sense of humor, to work hard and to know that someone loves us.
My mother had a gift for the unconventional and was only slightly off her rocker part of the time. She also she taught us more by example than mere words, of which there certainly was no shortage, but the way she responded to some of the challenges of life embodied what I would entitle, "Do What You Have to Do and Don’t Be a Wuss."
In the event of an atomic bomb, we were instructed to use whatever means necessary to get to an island where our grandmother lived, regardless of the fact that their relationship was somewhat hostile. If the ferry wasn’t running we were to steal a boat.
My little brother and I were 8 and 11 as the great Columbus Day Storm of ‘62 escalated. Circumventing the possibility of us hiding and whimpering under our beds, she brought us outside to witness history, blowing our minds as she talked about safety tips like parking the car and tractor in the middle of the pasture far away from trees and power lines.
One time, while driving through Snohomish County in a thick fog, she pointed out how to follow white lines on the road. When she came to an intersection, she turned off the motor, rolled down the window and listened for traffic before proceeding.
Later on, in conjunction with a divorce settlement, I think she was fired from a waitress job. On a summer afternoon she had my brother and I packing up the ‘56 Nash Rambler with all the necessary camping equipment, including our Siamese cat in a travel cage that cramped my style only slightly since it fit nicely behind the driver’s seat. I always sat behind my little brother riding shotgun in the front. I was a privilege he had and for some reason I never gave it much thought. Sometimes now though, I wonder if it wasn’t one of her rare subtle ways of showing him equality as a male, leadership and partnership in one glorious package.
Mom had trained us well to be ready for any expedition she might take a notion to. Even the dog knew he was supposed to jump into the back seat during packing and not get in the way.
How much of this particular vacation was actually planned is up to speculation, but it seemed to last an incredible amount of time. What we had assumed to be a couple of weeks turned into a good month or so it seemed, of Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon and plenty of driving experience.
Even though my brother and I were not always eager students, it was her nature to take every opportunity she could to teach and expose us not only to the weather and culture, good restaurants and the arts, but also how to drive. Now we were ten and thirteen years old. What a gutsy woman!
Somewhere in Arizona we got caught in a hailstorm. We pulled off the road and waited for it to subside.
Back at the farm a few years earlier she had insisted on riding my horse who had a habit of bucking. She refused to be dissuaded, the horse bucked her off and she broke her ankle.
In her ever-amazing ingenuity, knowing my brother and I could not carry her, she instructed us to get two chairs and bring them out to the pasture. We helped her into the first chair, then to the next one, rotating chairs until we got back to the house. After this incident she carried a cane.
Fast forward to the Southwest; There was water over some of the roads after the hailstorm. Mom would get out of the car and wade through the water, poking with her cane to make sure the road was still there, then motion to whoever was driving to come on through.
In our teen years she began showing signs of alcoholism. "The Cane" was a multifunctional piece of equipment that was used on my brother’s or my behind for disciplinary purposes. It somehow disappeared into a clump of laurel bushes.
In the words our older brother, "Today they call it child abuse. Heck we were just beat on".
We weren’t quite old enough for a driver’s license but were designated drivers long before the phrase was coined. And were the envy of lots of our friends because we could drive.
She died in a one-vehicle accident in ‘85, coming for a visit. It was dangerously foggy and she was emphatically advised to not come.
Whether in the middle of a storm or living in one of her own she taught us how to be independent and relatively fearless, which sometimes needs to be tempered with wisdom.
During the 1960s, Rowena Bogue of Everett received four black bowls as free gifts for filling up her gas tank.
Her daughter, now Joan Cook, would come home from high school and have a bowl of ice cream and chocolate syrup, driving Bogue nuts scraping the bowl.
In summer 2001 Cook helped Bogue pack up her house. They came across the bowls. "I didn’t want those things," Bogue said.
That Christmas, Bogue wrapped the bowls in and sent them to Cook in Colorado as a Christmas gift.
Not to be outdone, Cook sent the bowls back to her mother as a birthday gift in January.
The following month while in Seattle on a business trip, Rod Cook, Joan’s husband, had dinner with his mother-in-law and sister-in-law Peggy Jones of Everett. Bogue sent a box home with Rod. Sure enough — the black bowls.
Back and forth the bowls went, for Valentine’s Day, covered with red stickers. Hidden under the pillows, decorated with St. Patrick’s Day stickers in March. In a trail of goodies before Easter and back again by Easter Sunday — at church.
For Mother’s Day, Cook sent the black bowls to a florist in Snohomish County, who added bowls, a bottle of chocolate syrup and an ice cream gift certificate to the flower arrangement.
Bogue had been expecting the black bowls but not this way. She was overjoyed to find out about the florist willing to help continue the saga of the black bowls, just in time for Mother’s Day.
When our daughter, Kristi O’Harran was very young, her Grandpa Pete passed away suddenly on a Mother’s Day. As a tribute to him she spent that afternoon writing a poem about him.
It was so touching that we had it framed for all to see. I believe she was polishing her future skills in the field of jounalism. I am proud of her for that skill.
My Grandpa died this morning at six,
The necessary arrangements, we now must fix,
So in tribute to my Grandpa, I’ll write a poem,
Rest his soul in the beauty of God’s home.
He loved green and all that grew,
I hope it’s green in Heaven, don’t you?
He loved animals, birds, dogs and cats,
There’s animals in Heaven, I’m sure of that,
He lived for his family, He was the best,
It’s good to know in peace he’ll rest,
He’ll never be gone, in peace he’ll stay,
I’ll strive to join him in my own way,
I’m glad he died happy, for you see,
My Grandpa Pete was an image to me,
Strong and willing, peaceful and deep,
Now in peace he will always sleep,
He’ll always be happy in our minds,
And someday, we are sure to find,
Our Heaven along with Grandpa Pete,
What else could make our life complete.
Kristi Brayton (now O’Harran)
May 10, 1964
