5 Lessons I Value from my Mom

Today is my mom’s birthday. Growing up, I had a “young mom.” She was just a hair over 21 when I was born. Watching The Gilmore girls in the 2000s hit a little too close to home for me. My mom was so much like the young and vibrant Lorelai. It’s not lost on me that when my mother was my age, she was facing down a moody high schooler; I am chasing down a moody one-year-old.

Our relationship is the predictable mother/daughter model, and we are at times the best of friends or eachothers’ mortal enemies. Somewhere around my mid-20s, it moved into the classic “my mom really did know what she was talking about” and now has morphed into me being so much like her it almost hurts. As I have become a mother myself in the last few years, I have been reflecting on the lessons I have learned from my mom that still stay with me today, both good and bad.

People who are mean are people who are hurting.

I have been the fat kid for as long as I can remember. For some reason, it hit hard around 3rd grade. It was a challenging year in general; we had moved to Florida, there were new schools, new friends, and I became the target of one kid. Every day my mom was the one to help me pick up the pieces of my shattered confidence, and she shared a bit of wisdom that has stayed with me since: Mean people are hurting people.

She told me that when people are happy, they don’t look for reasons to be mean. But the saying “misery loves company” was true. When people are hurt, they look for others to hurt so they can bring them down to where they are. As I have grown, that has only become more true. I see it in myself all the time, particularly while driving. When I am happy I go with the traffic flow, I will sit behind slow drivers, and I will even drive slower myself. But when I am unhappy, road rage reigns.

The lesson stayed with me through school, and in my freshman year of high school, I found myself once again in a new school, making new friends. Another fat girl in one of my classes loved to call me “Free Willy.” Not wholly original given that my last name is WHALEn, but mean has no reason. As a hurting fat girl, I’m quick to identity another hurting fat girl. I ignored her. I pulled back others who came to my defense. While their kindness was a wonderful gesture to me, I wasn’t going to be the cause of any more of that girl’s hurt. Don’t worry, the girl grew up and apologized later in life. We didn’t become friends, but we ended well.

Complete What You Start?

Two years ago, before the onslaught of pandemic life, I would have told you are completing what you start is something to admire. I don’t know if I belive that anymore, and I don’t think she does either. In these last two years, we both have changed alongside each other for very different reasons. We both have been holding on to relationships because we were committed, and we were determined to complete what we began. But our respective relationships were hurting us. They were painful to let go of, and we both have gone round after round over our guilt. We are both learning the differents between quitting and knowing when it’s time to leave.

Being Strong in the Face of Adversity

My mom is incredibly strong. She doesn’t believe this, but she is. My dad was in the military for 21 years, and my mom joined him for 17 of them. I hated this transitory life, but she worked to make every move fun and exciting for both my brother and me.

When my father had a stroke in 2005, she completely turned our family around to support our change in needs, including taking over finances, moving us out of a home that was way too much without my father’s income, dealing with my brother and my respective schools, FAFSA changes, and fighting my dad’s short term disability claim. She did it all while working and caring for my dad. She’s amazing!

Clean as you Go

When I was about ten years old, I started baking and cooking. Neither of my parents was really into cooking or baking beyond the basics, but I wanted to dive into every aspect of cooking. I was a tornado in the kitchen, leaving my mess behind whatever concoction I had made. Would you be surprised to know I was fussy when I had to clean it all up after? For years my mother would tell me, “clean as you go, and it won’t be overwhelming when you are done.” It never really clicked with me as a kid, probably because I always had her help. When I moved out and had to face the mess on my own the pieces of her wisdom began to fall in place.

I always clean as I cook, and it had made all the difference. Particularly on big projects and hard days. Now I am often telling my husband to clean as he goes on his cooking days. And, yes, I do sound like my mother as I say it, but it does make cleaning much more manageable and far less overwhelming.

The Value of Self Care

Even though my mom wasn’t much of a cook, she occasionally used cooking as self-care. One of my favorite stories is when she decided to make a big, fancy bowl of fettuccini alfredo for dinner. She went to the store and bought the fancy, expensive, packaged pasta and bottled alfredo sauce; no one had ever taught her to cook from scratch, and this was before you could google a recipe.

She proudly brought the ingredients home and lovingly started to cook them. Once the water had boiled, she dumped the pasta in the pot and was confused to find tiny black specks rolling around. She turned down the heat to stop the boil and investigated the specks closer. They were bugs.

She drove back to the store and investigated every other pack, all filled with bugs. She told an employee, got a refund, and bought the usual cheap pasta to go with the sauce. It was delicious, and she still took a lot of love and care to make it. It’s one of the most fun and most memorable nights. And a bonus lesson was that she could laugh off the irony of finding bugs in the excellent pasta.

I learned that self-care is essential and that sometimes it’s fun to splurge on it. But I also learned that it doesn’t have to be expensive and doesn’t even have to go as planned. It just has to be a gift to you.

Happy Birthday, Mom!