May 6, 2010
“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie." - Tenneva Jordan.
It is funny how a mother or grandmother's selfless actions become a part of us and how we pass those on to our children and grandchildren without even knowing that we do.
For instance, the other day at breakfast when I inadvertently burned a piece of toast, I commented to the offspring, "I'll take that burned one, that is my favorite. I really like burned toast. Really, I do. "
Then, I stopped in my tracks taking note of what I said and paying attention to my own voice.
Almost word for word, I said what my Grandmother said to me on many an occasion in my youth, "I like burned toast, give me that piece."
Did she? Probably not, and neither do I. Yet, from somewhere deep in the soul, deep in our DNA, a mother will announce, when there is not enough pie to go around, for example, "I don't really like pie anyway."
We cannot help ourselves.
Or, if we are chilly, we are certain that the child is, too, and soon enough he or she will be warm and snug in our sweater.
The odd thing to me is that when one becomes a mother, inexplicably, nature and animal instincts take over our senses, our thought processes, our responses and our temperament.
Osho Rajneesh, Indian professor of philosophy, once noted, "The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new."
Mothers have nothing to say about it at all really. Animal instinct happens, and when it does, mothers do not get hungry if there is not enough food to go around. Mothers are known to give it to their starving offspring instead, and strangely, they themselves do not suffer.
Mothers do not get cold if the child needs their coat.
Mothers do not mind eating burned food; they simply do not notice its taste.
Somewhere and somehow a benevolent, incomprehensible power, that many of us choose to call God, gives mothers an unexplainable innate quality, the ability to put oneself at the end of the line.
This quote from Marion C. Garretty in "A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul" says it better than I. "Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible."
At a picnic recently when there was not enough chocolate cake to go around, I blurted out from somewhere deep within my very being to one of the little kiddos at the table, "Here, take mine. I never liked chocolate much anyway. I just want the vanilla ice cream."
There, I did it again. I can't help myself. After all, it is what my Grandmother would have done.
