Mother’s Day Musings That I Don’t Hate

I hate Mother’s Day sermons.

This has actually become an established fact in the Heston-Davis household: Rachel hates Mother’s Day sermons.

There are many legitimate reasons to hate Mother’s Day sermons, such as if you are struggling to conceive or adopt, or have lost a child, or lost a mom. If that’s you, my heart aches for you; please accept an internet hug and a prayer from me. Hang in there, sweet friends!

My own reasons, however, are just plain grumpy and picky, but I remain unashamed of that. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day sermons have always irked me because they never accurately described my family. (And now, as a grown-up, I don’t see them as representative of the kind of parents Jaron and I would be). Little Kid Me would sit through half an hour of poetic wax about how moms were the sensitive snuggle blankets of life, while dads stood in the mud and rain at Little League games and told their kids they didn’t need a Band-Aid.

These pictures never captured the reality of my parents, who appeared to me to be playmates, patient board game participants, hard workers who liked their jobs, listening ears, advice-givers, and comforters. But sure, snuggle blankets and Little League mud-standers. Whatever.

If you want something done right, do it yourself. So here’s what I think about moms on Mother’s Day.

The one true thing I know about moms is this: the strength of the female backbone is inherited down the maternal line.

I’m speaking, of course, about the metaphorical backbone. I believe girls inherit their sense of confidence and security in the world from their moms. It makes sense when you think about it. Your same-sex parent is the first role model you have of what it means to be your gender in the world. If you have a mother who models a little backbone, that says that you, as a woman, are allowed and able to have a backbone, too.

This doesn’t mean moms must always feel great and confident. If a mom never faces adversity or gets scared, that won’t teach her own daughter much about how to handle adversity or fear, now will it? Having a backbone doesn’t mean you never feel bad, it means you can keep going even when you feel bad.

I realized this maternal backbone connection from looking at myself. Although I inherited many personality traits from my dad—I’m story-oriented, I tend toward dreaming and idealism, and I’m allergic to whatever “the crowd” is doing—a whole other side of me comes out when I face adversity. When something or someone threatens my sense of self, or tries to lay a guilt trip down, or tells me that I’m wrong about a dearly-held belief, I turn into my mother for a second. I cast a calm but steely eye on the problem, and dispense with it. Whether that means walking away and disregarding it, or acting in defiance of it, or having to stand up and argue for myself, I give myself permission not to be led around by people who want to tell me my own mind. They are welcome to file their suggestions with the Complaints Department, which is located in the trash can.

Most people would be surprised to know that I get this from my soft-spoken, placid mother, who plays the piano at church, gently doles out plant food to her flowers, and has been known to sit through entire television shows because she just can’t bear to wake the cat on her lap.

But I dare anyone to try and make her panic. Try and make her feel guilty about a decision. Try telling her that she’s doing something the wrong way. I dare you. She’ll probably say, “Oh.” She’ll let you finish, and then start a sentence beginning with, “Well…” and basically say a tactful version of “Thank you for sharing this advice that I will not be taking.” With a smile.

This has come in handy uncountable times in her life. Take, for instance, the day that a younger, inexperienced coworker walked up and started yelling at Mom for something that Mom actually knew much more about than said coworker. Mom sat at her desk, staring placidly at the radish-colored, shrieking coworker, quietly wondering how long it would take for the women to realize her mistake and be embarrassed. Several female coworkers later told my mom that they would have been in tears in that scenario, despite the fact that the yelling woman was actually in the wrong. I think this is a pretty good example of how women are socialized to be embarrassed even if someone else is the cause behind “a scene”…but not my mother!

My mom has, at times, weathered negative opinions about the course of her very life. When she finished her teaching degree and married my dad, a friend began needling her about needing a bigger plan. “I got married, started a new job, and started a Masters program all in the same month,” the friend said.

Well GOOD FOR YOU, my mom said internally, and went ahead with her plan to move to my dad’s college town and get a job at K-Mart. More than 30 years later, my mom ended a long and successful career as a teacher and then an administrator in early childhood education, having never suffered the disasters that supposedly befall women who don’t start a Masters program and land a dream job thirty minutes after their wedding.

In the middle of that career, friends and fellow admins once again pressured my mother to get her Masters. They all had their own (perfectly good) reasons for getting theirs. But Mom was happy with her job. She didn’t want to be a principal or move to a huge school district. Therefore, in her calculations, the benefits gained from all the work she’d have to do in the Masters program equaled negative five. She never entered the program, it never affected her job security, and she never had to spend her free time on work that wasn’t contributing to a specific, passionate goal.

My favorite Calm Mom story, of course, was the day I came home from college to find her slipping into her jacket and organizing her purse, despite the fact that she’d been sick for a couple of days. When asked what she was doing, she said in her I’m Going To The Grocery Store voice, “Oh, I just have to run out to the hospital and make sure it’s not my appendix trying to burst. I’ll be right back.” 72 hours later she came home without an appendix.

These anecdotes may not seem “brave” in the traditional sense. But in a world where women are socialized to second-guess themselves and worry about everything and listen to everyone else’s opinion, my mom’s attitude shows a great deal of self-assurance. And it really does seem to run down the maternal line of our family. Meet my grandmother for an hour. I invite you to try and win an argument with her. She once talked a police officer out of giving her a speeding ticket, and she is 100% convinced that those Tic-Tac-Toe-playing chickens at Amish country are robots, no matter what anyone else says!

I internalized this attitude growing up, without even realizing I was learning something. I spent countless hours with Mom at the kitchen counter over dinner prep, spilling my problems, while she carefully deconstructed bad advice I’d received and negative messages I’d heard about myself. She dispensed silly thinking as quickly as the vegetables she was chopping. When someone had said something to shake me, I usually came to her at about a DEFCON 4 level and left feeling that my naysayers didn’t have a leg to stand on.

In fact, Mom’s advice played a big role in my path to marriage. When I was pursuing a guy who had another interested lady friend, my mom encouraged me not to back down, insisting that “no one is really taken until they’re married.” (Turns out she used that advice to snag my dad, so that runs in the family, too).

Say what you will about the sensitive snuggle blankets of life. Moms are that, too, of course, but they’re so much more. They’re people. They’re the first defense we ladies have against a world that tries to make us feel bad about ourselves. And if we’re lucky, they pass that defense on through the genes and over the kitchen counter, past shrieking coworkers, naysaying friends, supernaturally talented chickens, ruptured appendix, and all!

I love you, Mom.