A Mother’s Wisdom
I have been reading the biography of a father and the wisdom he passed on to his son
[1]. It got me thinking, a son learns most from his father, but a daughter learns from her mother. This prompts me to write of the things my mother taught me.
When I was a toddler I helped make the beds. We played lumps. Mother would throw the sheet over me and feel me through it, rubbing her hands over the sheet. “What’s this lump?” her hands explored my shape as I collapsed in a giggling heap on the bed. Later I helped smooth the sheets and blankets and turn down the top.
Mother taught all seven of her children cooking. We began by making “sunbeams”. We mixed together the sugar butter and eggs, then we rolled out the dough, spread it with jam and rolled it up into a big sausage shape. Then we cut the whole thing into slices, put the slices onto the greased oven tray and watched while it disappeared into the oven of the wood stove.
[2] Yum! How we loved them! We loved to help in the kitchen and progressed to making custard, gravy, milk puddings, boiled fruit cake and pumpkin scones.
We learned not to be afraid of storms. This was a great achievement on my mother’s part, as she herself was terrified of them. Not until we had children of our own did she admit to this. Then she told us how, when she was small, she had been looking from the window when a bolt of lightning had struck the fence where a group of horses was standing. There was a huge clap of thunder and at the same instant all the horses fell down dead.
As a child, knowing nothing of this, I loved storms. “Go and watch the storm from the window,” my mother would say. I realise now that there were no animals in view from that window, and that she wanted to divert our attention from herself. She went on with the chores in seeming calm. I caught the note of excitement in her voice but I never guessed at the effort it took for her to still the trembling in her hands as she peeled those potatoes for tea.
By example Mother taught us love. As the younger children arrived one by one we helped in many small ways with their care and counted it a great privilege to be able to “nurse the baby” as we sat on the floor carefully surrounded with pillows.
At bed-time Mother tucked us in and taught us to pray before we slept. I did the same with my own children and now I see my daughter praying with each of her little ones as she settles them for the night.
Church attendance was another thing our mother taught us. In the early days on the farm, there was no church near enough so she gathered us around her for “Sunday School” – simple lessons with drawing and scripture verses to learn by heart. Later in town we went to church and Sunday School, and still Mother encouraged us to memorise Scripture, Psalms and poetry. The twenty-third psalm has helped me in many tough places in my life.
One of the best lessons she passed on was one she learned from her own father, a godly man I never met. As a teenager my mother had rebelled against going to church, since the preacher at that time had been discovered in immoral conduct.
“I’m not going to church while he is preaching!” she declared.
“Well,” replied her father, “I don’t go to church to worship the minister!”
Mum went. It is another lesson that has stood me in good stead!
Last of all Mother taught us not to fear old age. She herself, at ninety-three years of age was still visiting and helping the “old folk” in her neighbourhood. Her favourite quote was from Browning:-
“Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be
The last of life for which the first was made.
Youth shows but half, trust God, nor be afraid.”
[1] Big Russ by Timothy Russert
[2] I suspect that this recipe was chosen because there was plenty that small hands could do without help and it kept us happily occupied for some time.
