Mama On: Disaster And Faith

"Sometimes you just have to pray."

The news has played the disaster over and over, and it is beyond anything any of us can imagine.  People are wondering how and why God would let anything happen like the earthquake and tsunami that swept Japan.  There have even been the terrifying recordings of the earth rumbling before the horrific events, and it is awesomely frightening -- a reminder of how small and insignificant we are in God's Grand Scheme. 

The amazing thing, after the earth stopped moving and the water receeded, has been the grace and efficiency the Japanese people have shown in their recovery efforts.  There has been a request for international support and the nuclear implications are more than scary, but the survivors are carrying on.  The weather is cold and thousands have been found dead, but there is something else.  Something that is incredibly atypical of events like this. 

We are not hearing about looting, fighting for food and water, price gouging, or other social abuses.

We are hearing requests for prayer for the people and the nation.  We are hearing about the daily prayer and the groups who come together to pray.  We are hearing more and more about the school children who gather to offer prayer for the souls of those lost to the disaster.  We are even hearing that members of the rescue groups are wearing traditional prayers in and on their uniforms as they face the rescue attempts.

Somehow, I don't think that this is an acident or coincidental.  I think that this might be called faith, and the true Mamaknologist understands and appreciates the biblical definition of faith:  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) 

The true Mamaknologist understands that faith is not faith until it is all you have.  Moreover, the true Mamaknologist understands that the only way to go forward after disaster is with the assurance and confidence that God hears and answers our prayers.  This is one of those times when we all just need to pray.  My prayers are with the people of Japan for recovery, for health, and for the determination to continue to hold fast to their prayers and their faith.

Amen.

 

Mama On: Daddy

Leon McFarland
1923-2011

"You only get one -- and one should be enough."

I was fifteen when my mother said this, and I have to believe that in and with all of her Mamaknowledge she knew that this day would come.  My daddy passed last night.

As sad as that is, it is more cause for celebration than for sadness.  At age 87, he'd covered a lot of ground -- most of it good.  A soldier, business owner, artist, husband, and father, he was mine.  And while he might not have been the best father in the world:  God knows that he would never have passed for Ward Cleever ("Leave It To Beaver"), or Cliff Huxtable ("The Bill Cosby Show").  My father was one heck of a Great Daddy. 

I wish that everbody could have a Great Daddy. 

I think on it now, and I know without a doubt that I am a reflection of what he was to and for me.  Because of my daddy, I understand teamwork.  He took me to ball games and explained the rules to me.  Because of my daddy, I understand physical strength.  He taught me to ride bikes and hit golf balls straight -- especially when I didn't want to.  Because of my daddy, I understand patience.  He helped me plant and nurture those little plants in my first gardens.  Because of my daddy, I understand the eloquence of color and balance.  He wa a gifted painter and sketch artist who never laughed at my efforts. 

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't always sunshine and lollipops.  We had our trials, some of them bordering on epic, but we always found our way back to each other.  Maybe because my daddy incidently and just as a function of being who he was taught me courage of conviction.  Or maybe it was because he taught me that fear was only a reaction to a moment, not a life plan.  There is a ton of other stuff I could remember, but I think that I will stop here because I want this to be a little celebration of Daddy/Daughter love.  And I just want to remember that my mother was right: you do only get one.  But when it's done right, one is all you need.

Love you, my One and Only Daddy.
 

Mama On: Falling In Like

"Every pot needs a lid."

Okay.  This, again, is not totally original but my mother had a specific Mamaknological point to make when she said it to me.  My mother loved the concept of love.  She was completely dediated to the ideas of care, passion and fidelity.  More than that, she really liked my father.  She thought he was funny, smart, creative, and pretty darned good-looking.  The fact that he was crazy about her was icing on the cake.  She loved that my father was as enamored of her a she was of him, and she wanted that for me.

Heck, I want that for me.  Don't you want it for you?

Anyway, I remember once asking her HOW to fall in love.  I was about 13 and saw other girls with boyfriends and they all seemed to be in love, but the boys they chose seemed less than desireable to me.  Not that the boys were failing to make advances ... they did, but they were just the same little boys I'd always known.  Not one of them felt like anyone destined to be the Love of My Life.  Where was THE ONE for me?  When would he show up?  Would he ever show up?  Did he even exist?

Yes, my personal Mamaknologist assured me.

Yes, what?

"Yes, the right boy is out there for you and some day he will be the right man for you.  You'll know him because what you have with him will be different from the fun times you've had with every other friend in your life.  He will show you that it is good and right to trust him, that you are safe with him, and that being with him will make your life better in every way.  It may take a while, but you will find each other because every pot has a lid, but you're going to like him a lot.  And you've got to like your lid before you can find love with him."

It really is funny how the older we get, the wiser our parents become.  Over time, we all slide into like with a lot of people for a lot of different reasons, but it is rare that like ripens into anything sweeter.  When it does, wow, pots can find lids. 

I think my pot may have finally found the right lid -- not what I thought it would be, but definitely a good fit.  Only time will tell.  The lesson in Mamaknology that I am taking from this is that any relationship is worth the investment of time and that if you can't / won't / don't LIKE the person, you will never find a way to love them.  I've learned that even if it feels like the right person is never going to show up, you have to like the people around you.  Falling in like is the first step to falling and staying in love.

Mama On: Happy

"Some days you just have to smile; and some days, you should."

Ever have one of those days when you just wake up with inexplicable joy in your heart and a silly smile on your face?  Pretty much everybody has had one, but we don't remember or cherish them as often as we ought to.  My mother, the original Mamaknologist, thought that we ought to count those days and moments as special opportunities and then spend them liberally on sad, dark days.

I can remember walking into a hospital room to find her sitting in a hospital bed smiling dreamily.  It was on a day when nothing had gone right -- including her routine doctor's visit.  Her blood pressure was climbing rapidly toward stroke level and the doctor had moved to have her immediately hospitalized -- yet there she sat, smiling like a woman gifted with the keys to the Kingdom.

Before I could even ask, she turned the smile on me and said, "Some days you just have to smile." 

For just that one sliver of time, it came clear for me, and I did smile.  In fact, I totally got it, and it made me happy.  The Mamaknowledge of the moment was simple:  even if this was our last moment together, at least we had it.  If this was our last moment together, we could smile about it and share it, and that was a good thing.  This moment was good and we could smile because it made us happy.

All these years later, I can still feel the soft brush of her fingers on my skin and the warmth of her hand in mine and it makes me happy.  I am so glad to have had that oddly happy moment with my mother and it makes me smile.  The Mamaknology of our moment was that you should take your happy where you find it, and you should cherish it just for the glow it gives you. 

Happy is a Good Thing.

 

Mama On: Mothering

"What the daughter does, the mother did.  I hope you took notes."

Being a mother is hard work -- overtime work for some, and my mother took the job seriously.  As a direct response to her seriousness and focus on what she saw as her job, I too take the treatment of  children seriously.  So, I've got to tell you that it was kind of rough to hear the verbal abuse a mother saw fit to heap on the head of a little girl who couldn't have been any more than three or four years old.

Living in Atlanta I take MARTA, the public transportation system, a lot.  I got on the train and sat in the seat in front of a cute little girl and a young woman who was obviously her mother.  As I sat, the young woman scolded the child for pretty much everything she could think of, including breathing too loudly.  Her tirade grew angrier and louder as the train rumbled on and without turning, I could feel the little girl shrinking.  When the woman ran out of just about everything else she could have said, she blurted, "You funny looking thing." 

"Thing?"  Really?

This made me turn to look at her and the child.  Neither of them was, "funny looking."  They were both healthy and neatly dressed, care had been taken and given.  They were both clean and seemed well fed.  In fact, the little girl was quite cute, but like I said, she bore  very strong resemblance to her mother, which led me to blurt out a little bit of truth on my own... 

"She looks just like you."

Okay, admittedly the words had barely crossed my lips when I had a moment when all I could think of was, "uh-oh..."  But looking into that woman's eyes, there was nothing else for the Mamaknologist in me to do.  It was true, the child did look like her.  From the look on her face, I had no doubt she knew it, and now she knew that I did, too.  And I knew something else.  I knew that it was obviously true that the young woman was only doing what she had seen done and what had been done to her.  She was simply sharing the kind of treatment she had probably recieved and seen during her young life.  And she had clearly taken notes.

My mother would have said that all the daughter had actually done was to be a child.  She did what children do and as a result, she was taught that simply being a little girl would make her mother angry.  She was taught that her very existence was an inconvenience.  She was taught that the person she was probably most dependent upon resented her presence.  But, I'll bet that if I'd had the presence of mind to ask, they would have both told me that they loved each other.

That has to be confusing.

So the Mamaknologist take on this is that we need to be very careful what we teach our daughters because they will love us, and they will imitate us.  At some point in time, whether they know it or not, they will pass on our teachings to the next generation of daughters.  And if it is fact that we reap what we sow, it is our job to be our best so that our daughters will learn, love, support, and to do well from our lessons. 

Don't ever forget:  They're taking notes.

 

Mama On: What Goes Around

"Always plant good seeds."

I was twenty-one and right out of college when this story began. I had just taken on my first teaching job at an inner city school in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. At first glance, the job was everything that a Special Education teacher could ask for: challenging, goal-based with clear objectives, and working across a broad span of elementary education. In reality, I was faced with a shortage of supplies, limited parental support, and twenty socially promoted first through fourth graders who’d never met anyone quite like me – a brand new teacher who thought learning was “The Bomb”!

It took a minute, make that six weeks, for me to realize that a lot of my students had a less than firm grip on the basics. But that was okay, I was ready with a plan. I brought my Mother the Mamaknologist and my Grandmother to school with me – and of course, my grandmother brought home baked goodies. My Grandmother was a fabulous cook and an even better baker, so her presence bought me a little respect. But, when that wasn’t quite enough, I showed up for Show And Tell in my karate gi, complete with my newly earned brown belt and punched and kicked and yelled and broke boards, “just like in the movies.”

I got respect.

Thrilled that my class was paying attention and making huge strides, I turned my attention to one little girl who couldn’t seem to find her way. “Patty” was a ten year old fourth grader without a clue. She had no real idea of what to do with the alphabet, couldn’t spell anything beyond her own name, had yet to even complete a first grade reader, and had no understanding of math basics. The scary part was that because she was pretty and quiet, she was expected to move on to the fifth grade – because she was never disruptive.

I hated that!

As far as I could see, “Patty” was about to be victimized by social promotion within the school system. She was about to be set adrift on a sea of confusion, and destined to an adulthood of failure. That was not only unfair, it was just flat out wrong and nobody was showing up to fight this battle for her. So I came up with another plan.

I called her mother and convinced her to send “Patty” to school without breakfast. Of course, my own mother considered this to be cruel and unusual punishment, but you would be surprised to learn what a child will do and how focused they can become over a bowl of Trix in the morning. Throw in some fruit and milk, and you can come close to genius. “Patty” not only learned the alphabet, she learned addition and subtraction. She learned the required “sight words” and began to read independently. You can believe that I was doing The Dance Of Joy by the end of the semester when “Patty” actually passed the required proficiency exams. She was ready for the fifth grade!

Understandably, not everyone shares the same sources of joy, but I thought surely this child’s mother would share my enthusiastic happiness over “Patty’s” achievement. Unfortunately, when I sent a note home offering to tutor “Patty” over the summer, her mother didn’t think it was a good thing.

“Not so long as you are black,” she told me over the phone, “do you ever send another note home to me about that little dummy. It’s not my fault she’s stupid.”
I will never forget those words, or how hard I cried after that woman dumped them in my ear. I’m going to be black for the rest of my life, and at that age, it seemed like far too long to punish a child for anything. A much loved only child, I had never heard an adult, especially a parent, speak so harshly – not about their own child. My mother tried to comfort me, but those words will forever haunt me.
“You did your best,” my mother told me. “You gave her something and filled a place where there was nothing, and that was the right thing to do.”

Believing my mother, I let it go, and of course life went on. I transitioned from teaching to social service and wound up living in Atlanta, Georgia, but I never forgot “Patty”. A little more than fifteen years later, I worked for the Department of Family and Children Services and was concerned about my mother’s health. She had developed Coronary Artery Disease and was hospitalized in Cleveland.

I was at work when my desk phone rang. My stomach dropped and I stopped everything to answer. The caller was my mother, and she sounded happier and more excited than any woman sitting in a hospital bed was supposed to be. “I have someone who wants to talk to you,” she said.

“Me?” Hand shaking, I went into silent prayer mode.

“It’s my nurse.” I heard rustling and low conversation as my mother handed over the phone.

“Hello?” The voice was soft and sweet, calming in timbre. “I’m sure you don’t remember me, but you were my fourth grade teacher.”

All of the breath went out of me.

It was “Patty”.

I could hear the smile in her voice as she explained seeing the patient name and remembering it. I loved the warmth in her voice as she described coming into the room and seeing the patient for the first time. She said that she saw the same features that she recalled, but wasn’t sure about the patient’s age: “I can read, add, and subtract now,” she giggled, bringing tears to my eyes.

When she finally talked to the patient, she was excited to learn that the woman in the bed was my mother. And my Mamaknology-wielding mother, with her brilliant memory, fully remembered her. “Patty” said that when my mother offered to call me, she felt like she’d won the lottery. “How does that happen? That you find people who care, and then you get to say ‘thank you’?” she wondered out loud.

Then she stole my breath again. “Thank you,” she whispered into the phone. “Thank you.”

And I thanked her, because my mother said that “Patty” was an amazing nurse, caring and conscientious. “… born to do something like this,” she said.

I am so grateful to have been able to witness and participate in just a tiny part of what made that little girl into a woman, and I am more than glad to have planted a good seed in her, because what goes around really does come back around – this time for the good.

 

Mama On: Gossip

"Don't believe everything you hear."

Okay, we all know that my mother (the original Mamaknologist) was good for coming up with sayings, but Ben Franklin got her on this one. Ben said, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."

Unless you've been under a rock, we have all heard what was said about Shirley Sherrod over the past week or so... And this was a bit of ugly, crude, mean gossip that the world could have done without.

You remember: Rightwing blogger, Andrew Brietbart and Fox news released a tiny clip (less than 20-seconds) of a speech made by Sherrod at an NAACP meeting. Brietbart intentionally choose words geared to bigotry, tagged it racism, and released it to the world. The clip showed Sherrod saying that she had not used the full force of her power to help a white rural farmer.

Of course we later learned that her father had been killed in a racially motivated incident and that she surmounted her personal pain and provided the best possible service to the farmer and his family. We also learned that she uses the incident as a teaching tool for her staff and her community.

And we only learned this after the farmer and his wife (who still own the farm that she helped them save) made their thoughts known. "Something in the woodpile ain't clean," the now elderly man insisted. His wife went on to tell every listening source that Sherrod was being unfairly persecuted and vilified.

It was not until AFTER Sherrod was badgered into resigning that the truth surfaced, OMG are there ever red faces aplenty!

Sherrod hasn't decided what she plans to do, whether she will return to her job or not, but I'm betting that there will be lawsuits to match the ever-growing stack of apologes. And there should be... And, yes, the government and the country as a whole should consider this teachable moment as an opportunity to reflect upon knee-jerk judgements and mudslinging in media and politics.

But what do you want to bet that Brietbart and a few others are wishing that they had taken Ben Franklin's advice?