05/05/2010 12:00 am
Life
How to Have a Rewarding Mother's Day, by Katherine Rosman
The author of a poignant new memoir shares five ways to celebrate -- and understand -- your mom.
© Nina Subin
My mom advocated having sex with your husband 20 minutes before leaving for a party if he was in a bad mood. She gave the vast majority of her young Pilates students free lessons, telling them, "I like your energy." She confided in strangers she met on eBay about her fears. She shopped for clothes by herself, never needing friends to tell her if she looked good in a new dress. She quietly mentored young women, helping them start careers, gain confidence and get college scholarships. I’ve only learned these things about my mom in the years since she died in 2005 at the age of 60.
I was 33 when Mom died. She and I were close and had been for a long time. I knew her very well in one way: as a mother. I knew what her values were (honesty, truth to self), what her priorities were (my sister and me) and what her expectations were (marriage before children, call your mother every day). But because she died before I became a mother myself, I hadn’t considered much about who she was outside of her defining role as mother. I felt an emptiness, and answered it by taking a year off from my job as a Wall Street Journal reporter to learn more about this woman, my mom.
As more people hear of what I did, they tell me they wish they could learn more about their own parents. I’m encouraging them to – in their own way – do just this. With Mother’s Day approaching, I am urging people to show their love and appreciation for their mom (whether she’s alive or not) by spending an hour or two trying to get to know her better.
Here’s five ways to do it:
- Request an hour of your mom’s time on Mother’s Day, on the phone or in person. Ask her who her favorite high school teacher was, and why. Ask her to tell you a story about her that you’ve never heard before.
- Pull an old photo album out and ask her to tell you the backstory to four photos from different pages.
- Ask your mom to name four favorite books, songs, magazines and movies.
- Take your mom’s phone book (a coup, if you have it) and call someone just to find out who they are and why they’re in her phone book. You don’t have to connect to a long-lost close friend to find out something amusing, if not meaningful. One woman I spoke to after picking her out of my mother’s phone book was a one-time Pilates student. "We didn’t get along," she told me and it made me laugh, the thought of my little-but-bossy mom.
- Call someone who knew your mom in a way you really didn’t: as an employer or employee, a sportswoman, a card player, a knitter, a collector, a friend, a wife, a sister. Ask them how she was thought of by peers and contemporaries; why she was loved and not always loved by her friends. Ask how she gave charity.
It may end up being one of the best Mother Day presents you’ve ever received.
Editor’s Note: Katherine Rosman is a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal who writes about popular culture. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times and Elle magazine. Her new book is If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Reporter’s Notebook.
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Your suggestions are good, and I’ve passed them on to my children.
As for my mother she’s gone and nothing I ever did pleased her or made her proud of me, I stopped trying to please her years ago, I loved her, I just didn’t like her. She was mean and a drunk and never showed me in any way I mattered to her. But if you talk to her other 4 kids, their stories are just the opposite, she dotted on them, she’d lie, steal what ever for them, but I couldn’t get the time of day. When I had beast cancer she didn’t even call or come to the hospial to visit me.
But your suggestions would be good for my kids, were very close and we talk everyday and we share (almost) everthing, some thing should remain out of every Mom’s ear shot.