My Mother's Day Talk

As a young grad student years ago, I was assigned as the concluding speaker on Mother’s Day. We lived at the time in the ward where I was baptized as a child, and on many Sundays in that ward I felt like I was 16 instead of 26. My life experience wasn’t all that significant: I’d served a mission, married, graduated from BYU with a couple of kids and was in grad school and (I think, if I remember the year right) we were expecting our third son at the time. I was just young enough to have no idea how little I knew about things.

But there were several things I knew:

1. I had loved my own mother. I was her youngest child and she and I were great friends and had been as long as I could remember. Because of my father’s work, he was gone a lot and in those times, Mom was both mother and father, yet when he came home, she somehow allowed him to fill his role. (Looking back, I realize that she was probably so exhausted, she was thrilled to have him come home and fill his role.) My mom was faithful and active in church; she had served in many Relief Society callings, including twice as president. 

2. I loved my wife, including in her chosen role as a mother. From the time we married, my wife wanted to be a mom. She was the oldest in a large family and felt strongly that she also wanted to be a mother more than anything else. She completed her degree at BYU (after changing her major to a high-hour major in her senior year), but had no real desire to work outside the home. That said, during grad school, she did work to help support our family beyond what my work at the university provided. As our third son was on the way, we decided it would be more economical to borrow money rather than have her work just to pay for child care, and she was happy to be home.

3. I recognized that I, and my children, benefited from contributions of far more women than just our mothers. In my case, I thought of Primary teachers and Sunday School teachers – a few in particular that had been remarkable influences on me. In my children’s case I thought of my sister, then in her early 30’s and unmarried. She lived near us and was frankly instrumental in keeping our starving student family from starving during those years. But more importantly she also provided my little boys with love and attention.

As I thought about Mother’s Day, it made sense to me to honor all of those influences. As I prepared my talk, I read about Ardeth Kapp, who was then serving as the General Young Women’s President. Sister Kapp had no children of her own. I read where she had reported that she and her husband had prayed for children and even considered adoption but felt that they should not pursue that. Her biography in the Ensign records:

Although the Kapps never had the family of their own they longed for, they can say they have had children. Youth of all ages have flocked to their home. A drawer in the kitchen contains a constant supply of cookies. “And now,” Sister Kapp smiles, “after a quarter of a million prayers for children, I have responsibility for a quarter of a million young women. I never expected such results.”

Sister Kapp’s experience was meaningful to me as I considered my own sister, also unmarried at the time. I determined that my Mother’s Day address should also honor sisters who were not mothers themselves.

As I said above, I was young enough to have no idea the choppy seas I was entering. So I wrote a talk and I spoke from my heart. I praised my own mother, my lovely wife, and other women who helped to mother me and my children. I quoted Sister Kapp as I talked about the influence that women can have in the lives of children.

As it happens, the talk was well received. One sister thanked me for the first Mother’s Day talk in years that didn’t make her feel guilty. (It was hard for me to imagine how she could have felt guilty; she was the mom of a good friend of mine and by all observations was terrific. Since then, however, I’ve learned that it doesn’t take much for even good moms to feel guilty.)

I am grateful to honor moms. I miss my own mother who has been gone more than a decade now. I honor my lovely wife who is an awesome mom, even on days she doesn’t feel like she is. And I honor others who have mothered me and my children through the years.

A short reposting today

In place of my normal Thursday post, I refer you to this one at Common Consent. Please go and read it. And then think of your own mother -- by name.

Like most of the commenters at BCC, I doubt the article in the Friend (go to page 24 of the .pdf version) had any malicious intent, but rather is symptomatic of a bigger problem: that no one saw a problem with an article about the mother of so many prophets that failed to name any one of those mothers.

I love the Friend and hope this oversight will not be repeated.

[Red-faced, I noticed the link to BCC was broken since I posted this last Thursday; my apologies.]

The work of moms

Yep, I read the comments of Hilary Rosen, and the counter-comments from Ann Romney, Michelle Obama and many others. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it.) And even before all the excitement, it was clear that Rosen’s comment might have been more about Romney’s wealth and less about her stay-at-home-ness (as the serious back-pedaling suggests), but for someone who’s paid to communicate, it is hard to imagine how Rosen could have done worse than she did.

I am a huge fan of stay-at-home moms. My mom stayed home, and pinched pennies in order to do so. Of course in those days MANY women were doing what she was doing, and so they pinched pennies together. Two stories I remember from my Mom’s telling:

First, there was the time she took a shoebox (or was it a bag?) of change to the A&P to pay for groceries, and after the cashier informed her she’d have to roll the coins before she could spend them there, the box broke, sending the coins scattering to the floor. (Double embarrassment, being turned away by the cashier and then having to pick up the coins).

Second was the repeated experience of Mom and her best friend’s going to the ice cream counter at Kresge’s to split an ice cream sundae. Kresge’s would have a number of balloons with prices in them, and you could pop a balloon to pick your price. She said on days toward the end of the month, getting the full price would send her and her friend digging for pennies in their pocketbooks to pay the tab.

We did not grow up poor. My dad was well-employed as a mechanical engineer; my parents owned their modest home (or shared ownership with the bank) and sometimes we had two cars. We got a set or two of clothes at the beginning of the school year that was meant to last til the end, and we often got underwear for Christmas. But we had plenty to eat, and despite my mother’s near constant protestations that we could afford that (whatever we children were begging for at the moment), I never once believed we were a step away from the poor house.

But Mom was home (when she wasn’t being a Cub Scout or Girl Scout leader or serving on some PTA committee or other or at a Relief Society meeting) – she was home every day when I walked home from school for lunch, and when I arrived at home after school. She taught piano lessons after school to pay for our orthodontics (three of the four of us kids had braces) and our own piano lessons. It never occurred to me growing up that it might be another way. (I had only two friends I can remember who had moms who worked – one had divorced parents, and the other had lost his dad to cancer; I’m sure there were more, since there were plenty of women working in various places.)

I remember when I (the youngest) was finally a senior in high school, and my mother talked about getting a job in real estate. My father was not pleased, and was concerned about what it would say about him if his wife needed to work. She finally prevailed, however, and did work for a number of years before they retired.

Of course Mom worked long before the real estate job. Not only did she teach and train and nurture the four of us, but she managed the home. She deposited Dad’s monthly check and divided the money she withdrew into her envelopes with which she controlled the family finances (Dad wrote the checks for bills paid that way). The “big” grocery shopping was a monthly affair, and sometimes the last week of the month had lots of pasta or potatoes. (It goes without saying that the sugared cereals were all consumed early in the month and the Cherrios and Corn Flakes were the end-of-month fare).

Mom was the family chauffer; she was the interface with the schools, the doctors, the neighbors. She taught us to clean our rooms, to wash the dishes, to paint the walls; she taught my sisters to sew; she baked bread and made real home-cooked meals. She was the head of the house when Dad was not there – not only during working hours, but also during long business trips that took him out of town. She was the chief disciplinarian, and we quickly knew if we had run afoul of her wishes.

As I observe my lovely wife, also a stay-at-home mom, I am amazed at all the things my mother must have done that I did not know at the time, the weight she carried on her shoulders constantly. I now understand because I have some sense of the things my wife does and the weight she carries on her shoulders – weight that does not sleep. It is way more than housework. It is even more than homemaking. It is mothering.

I stand in awe of women I know who work full time and have children at home. I frankly do not know how they do it, and I can only imagine that they must make tradeoffs about what they do and don’t do for their homes and for their families and for themselves. I don’t believe for a minute that those choices are simple for any of them.

Of course, I write this as an outsider. I am not a mom. I am a loving dad. Yes, I provide financial support to my family (and I count myself fortunate that I can). I pay for the house and the clothes that protect them (and the phone with which I would call 911 for further protection). But I also love and support my kids and my wife – their ambitions, their hopes and dreams. But I live in a compartmentalized world. I can leave my family at home and concentrate on work for major portions of my time. I can leave work and concentrate on my church callings or my own entertainment. My wife is not wired that way. She can leave the house, but she does not leave the family behind. It is always with her. We are always on her mind.

So I’m grateful to my working stay-at-home mom. And to my lovely wife who chose to stay home and work there. As my youngest daughter gets older, I’m sure that my wife will do different things than she has done for the last 30 years of parenting. For now, I’m grateful that she works where she does.

Lessons from Mom

My mother seemed to enjoy telling us how spoiled she was as a child, perhaps trying to preempt our own spoiling during our young years. One story in particular that I remember was when her mother grandmother had a dress made for Mom, who was then about three. Mom did not like the color, as it turned out, and cried and fussed (and probably held her breath) until her mother agreed to have another one made in the color Mom preferred.

I don’t think we were particularly spoiled, though we had a pretty good life. Mom was not afraid to say no to us, and not afraid to tell us she could not afford this or that wish of our hearts. Yet we always had what we needed, and most of what we wanted, as well.

Dad told the story of Mom’s going to the local A&P grocery store when the family was still very young (right after they were married). She carried with her a bag box of coins – loose change they kept in a box on the top of the refrigerator -- planning to use them to help pay for the groceries. The grocery clerk refused to take the coins and gave Mom some rolls and told her to roll them first. As Mom (with I don’t know how many kids in tow) moved to roll the coins, the bag burst and the coins scattered on the floor.

[Prodded by my sister, I'm retelling the story correctly below:]

Just after my folks were married, Mom wanted to do some shopping, but had no money (only checks from wedding presents), but had Dad's shoe box of saved coins. She went to the bank, thinking they would roll them for her (which they did not -- they gave her paper rolls to do it herself). She then stopped at the store on the way home (before rolling the coins, with the box still in hand) planning to use some of the bigger coins to pay for the groceries. As she approached the counter the box broke, spilling coins everywhere. She reports: "Someone gave me a bag and helped me pick up the loot, but I was embarrassed and very happy to return to Coulter Street! What a way to begin married life!"

I can only imagine my mother’s embarrassment – first that she was trying to pay with a bag of coins, second that she was told she could not use them (after waiting in line with her groceries), and finally having to scramble to pick up the coins from the floor.

And yet, that was who Mom was – she did what needed to be done, whatever it was.

Despite Mom’s being spoiled as a child her life was not always easy. She had a complicated health condition about which the doctors knew very little in her youth. She had an ill-fated surgery to “correct” the problem as a young woman, and the complications of that surgery made the problem much worse for the rest of her life. She was prone to infection which would last for days, and then watched as three of her four children inherited the same condition from her.

And yet, there was something about Mom that kept her moving forward. She did not allow her medical condition to stop her from serving her family and serving others. She supported PTAs and polling places, classrooms, Cub Scouts and Brownies, and later, after joining the church, taught children and adults and eventually served twice as a Relief Society president and more than once in the stake Relief Society.

Her life was a living lesson to her children that one does not stop; one does not wallow in self-pity. One does what one needs to do.

When she was diagnosed with cancer in her 70’s, her observation was characteristically upbeat: she said she had already lived longer than she ever expected to, and that she had enjoyed her wonderful husband and children and grandchildren. When the doctor who diagnosed her wondered why the pain of the tumor on her lung had not brought her to him sooner, she said, Do you expect me to come to you every time something hurts?

I miss my mom some days. I’m grateful for the lessons she taught me. Today is her birthday.

On motherhood, fatherhood and priesthood

I have generally given up trying to explain why God does things. There was a time in my life when it was important for me to have that answer (and to share it), but I guess I’ve settled into a different place in my development. Now I can observe what God does and not worry about why. It is what it is, I tell myself, and that’s ok.

Not everyone is where I am, and that’s ok, too. For some, a quest of the “why” is vitally important. Others want to know, but are willing to wait and see if the “why” reveals itself. And other just don’t worry about it anymore. I think I’m somewhere between the second and third.

Some folks worry about why women don’t hold the priesthood. And others, hoping perhaps to assuage the need to know why, have offered the idea that men can hold the priesthood but women can have children, as if those two are equal endowments meant to offset one another.

This much I know: men hold the priesthood and women can have babies. And in the LDS church, women don’t hold the priesthood, and men (regardless of religious affiliation) can’t have babies.

This much I don’t know: the opportunity to hold the priesthood offsets the opportunity to have babies (or vice versa).

The Family: A Proclamation to the World says:

“By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”

Even if one accepts that premise (and I do, by the way), it does not support the idea that motherhood and priesthood are corollaries.

The corollary to motherhood is fatherhood. Our former stake president taught this principle regularly as he reminded us that when we were at home with our children, especially if we were watching the kids so mom could be away, we were not babysitting: we were being fathers. Indeed, the proclamation says nothing about priesthood, only motherhood and fatherhood.

Why don’t women hold the priesthood? I don’t know. Certainly they may receive all the blessings of the priesthood the same way any man can: by receiving the ordinances of the priesthood. Thankfully years of teaching by the church is giving women a greater voice in the councils of the church. (The recent training on CHI II has emphasized this point, but Elder Ballard has been speaking about it for years.) And we know that in certain settings, women play an active role in ordinance work. They certainly minister among the members of the church and in their families. Women teach and pray and have access to the same personal revelation and inspiration as anyone.

I am grateful to my eternal companion for her contribution to my life. Our family is pretty traditional. My wife is a SAHM and I work longer hours than I wish I did (so does she by the way!). But, bless her heart, my wife reminds me regularly of the contributions I make as a dad. Am I’m grateful (and tell her so) for her contributions as a mom. In those roles, I think we are as complementary as we are complimentary.

To Life!

There is something about babies that just melts me. I'm the dad of seven. And in our extended family we have within the last few weeks had three more little ones join us, with another two on the way very shortly. Seeing photos of these little ones (all on FB; thanks very much techo-geeks who make all this possible) brings tears to my eyes. It's silly, really. These aren't my kids, or even my grandkids, but they are my niece and children of my nieces and nephews. And they are just amazing.

Over the years when my own children were born, we went from steel delivery tables to remarkable birthing suites. We watched with awe as the technology of disposable diapers moved from plastic-bag-with-padding-in-it to something that holds more liquid than a small camel. Our car seats evolved from the Bobby-Mac "barrel" design (I felt like I was strapping my child into a space craft) to five-point restraints in seats that doubled as strollers.

But in the end, it's the babies! All the fingers and toes and eyelashes and little pudgy knuckles and poofy hair that would rub off in the first few months. It was apgar scores and calling the help from "our friends in the neo-natal unit" when #2 wasn't breathing right (he did just fine after all) and bilirubin counts (and "the lights" for some). It was giving my wife space to nurse and then sitting with her when she nursed so she wouldn't feel alone. It was my son who didn't want anyone to touch him or my daughter who only wanted her mother to touch her, or others who didn't care who held them. It was anticipation fueled by the picture book A Child Is Born that couldn't even imagine the real thing, and it was the amazement every time that these babies are so small, so new, so fresh, so helpless.

When my first child was born, my mother said to me as she left after spending a week with us (my wife's mom had been there the first week), "Don't worry. You'll do fine. Just follow your instincts." I told her my instinct was to call her!

We stumbled as parents every step of the way. Our children taught us over time as much as we've taught them. And they continue to do so. They are still amazing in so many, many ways, continuing to surprise and delight us, even as many have entered adulthood, and some have chosen paths we would not have imagined for them.

But they all started – we all started – as these little tiny helpless bundles of new life. I consider myself fortunate to get to see it happen over and over again, and to remember what a blessing this life is, and what a blessing these little lives are in our world.

Adam and Eve as Co-Parents

I remember a friend of mine telling me of an exchange I found unbelievable, but I knew it was not only true, it probably had happened many times.

It seems they were having a discussion in their priesthood quorum about D&C 121 (where we're told how to exercise proper persuasion as priesthood holders – kindness, gentleness, meekness, love unfeigned, etc. -- see verses 41-42). When it came to the "reproving betimes with sharpness" (v. 43) verse, a brother said out loud that this verse gave him license to yell at his wife when she was out of line.

As my friend told me this story, I reflected on some solid teaching I received on my mission from Theodore M. Burton, then a member of First Quorum of the Seventy who instructed our zone conference. He said as a chemist he likened the "sharpness" in that verse to the sharpness of a clear photograph, not the sharpness of an acid. That image has always stuck with me, as has his rush to the second part of that verse ("showing forth an increase of love").

I remembered this story the other day as I read in Moses 4:22 the Lord's instructions to Eve that her husband was to "rule" over her. Someone in our class recalled President Kimball's discussion on that point suggesting that the word "preside" could well replace the word rule.

But the real nugget for me came in the next chapter, where we read in verse 4, "And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord, and they heard the voice of the Lord from the way toward the Garden of Eden, speaking unto them…" I was struck that Adam and Eve were praying together, and that they received divine guidance together.

The Family, A Proclamation to the World teaches, "In these sacred responsibilities [of presiding and nurturing], fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners."

The cool thing for me in the Moses verses is that Adam and Eve approached their condition together: they prayed together and they received inspiration together. A great model to emulate, if you ask me.

- Paul