RTBTCKI ( The Happy Birthday Mom edition)
Mar. 5th, 2010 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puppetmakerToday is my mom’s birthday. A large part of who I am today is due to her. She taught by example and she was one heck of an example. She raised four children to adulthood and all four turned into decent law abiding adults.
When I have a question in my head about parenting, I stop and think what would my Mother do? And that usual gives me my answer.
I use the same No means No speech that I must have heard a millions times while growing up on Caroline. It goes something like this.
Caroline asks for something or do to something that is not going to happen
ME: No
CAROLINE: But (insert reason #157 why this policy should change)
ME: What did I say?
CAROLINE: (usually very quietly) no
ME: And when I say No?
CAROLINE: It means no not maybe.
End of discussion
I didn’t get many sick days from school because Mom was a nurse and it is hard to pull something by her. But when we were sick, she was our angel of mercy. She took really good care of us and nursed us back to health.
This morning Caroline woke up with a fever over 100, a very stuffy nose, and no voice. She can now squeak. I am keeping her home from school today. They don’t want kids with fevers in the school.
My mother got me interested in the mystery genre. She introduced me to Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Martha Grimes and PD James to name a few. Funniest story about that when I was at University College Oxford, I picked up a very battered copy of Gaudy Night and took it and a plowman’s lunch to read on the banks of the Thames while watching the punters go back. I got to the point where Peter and Harriet were having a picnic lunch under an old tree and realized that I was sitting right where the author was writing about.
My mother spend many years teaching students how to be nurses. Then she starting teaching others how to teach people to become nurses. I can remember clinic day. She would be in her nurse’s uniform and (when I was young) she would have her nurse’s hat very carefully pinned on top of her head. I would watch her starch, iron, and very carefully form the hat for the next time that she needed it. A lot of her co-workers want to know if I was going to follow in her footsteps. I said no, not because I didn’t highly respect what she did, but because honestly I couldn’t deal with bedpans and the smell of vomit without upchucking. (Sorry Mom)
Nursing for her was a way out of a rather small town that was coal and farm based. It was a hardscrabble life and nursing would allow her to leave and make a life for herself. It did. And because she left that town, she met my father and I came into being. She continued to educate herself. She went on to earn a PhD and other accolades in her profession. She believed in her children so we believed in ourselves and became better people for it.
So Happy Birthday Mom! I hope it is a good one for you.
Caroline wishes you a Happy Birthday in a rather squeaky voice.
I am grateful every day that My Mother is My Mother.
When I have a question in my head about parenting, I stop and think what would my Mother do? And that usual gives me my answer.
I use the same No means No speech that I must have heard a millions times while growing up on Caroline. It goes something like this.
Caroline asks for something or do to something that is not going to happen
ME: No
CAROLINE: But (insert reason #157 why this policy should change)
ME: What did I say?
CAROLINE: (usually very quietly) no
ME: And when I say No?
CAROLINE: It means no not maybe.
End of discussion
I didn’t get many sick days from school because Mom was a nurse and it is hard to pull something by her. But when we were sick, she was our angel of mercy. She took really good care of us and nursed us back to health.
This morning Caroline woke up with a fever over 100, a very stuffy nose, and no voice. She can now squeak. I am keeping her home from school today. They don’t want kids with fevers in the school.
My mother got me interested in the mystery genre. She introduced me to Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Martha Grimes and PD James to name a few. Funniest story about that when I was at University College Oxford, I picked up a very battered copy of Gaudy Night and took it and a plowman’s lunch to read on the banks of the Thames while watching the punters go back. I got to the point where Peter and Harriet were having a picnic lunch under an old tree and realized that I was sitting right where the author was writing about.
My mother spend many years teaching students how to be nurses. Then she starting teaching others how to teach people to become nurses. I can remember clinic day. She would be in her nurse’s uniform and (when I was young) she would have her nurse’s hat very carefully pinned on top of her head. I would watch her starch, iron, and very carefully form the hat for the next time that she needed it. A lot of her co-workers want to know if I was going to follow in her footsteps. I said no, not because I didn’t highly respect what she did, but because honestly I couldn’t deal with bedpans and the smell of vomit without upchucking. (Sorry Mom)
Nursing for her was a way out of a rather small town that was coal and farm based. It was a hardscrabble life and nursing would allow her to leave and make a life for herself. It did. And because she left that town, she met my father and I came into being. She continued to educate herself. She went on to earn a PhD and other accolades in her profession. She believed in her children so we believed in ourselves and became better people for it.
So Happy Birthday Mom! I hope it is a good one for you.
Caroline wishes you a Happy Birthday in a rather squeaky voice.
I am grateful every day that My Mother is My Mother.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 05:57 pm (UTC)I am grateful every day that My Mother is My Mother.
I so get this. And my Mom's birthday is this coming Wednesday.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 08:35 pm (UTC)And Shizu, who was and is generally a willful person, would immediately accept this answer. If my mother had ever said that to me, I would have taken that for, "I have qualms, but I can be convinced."
Years later I learned that it is very impolite to directly say "No" in Japanese. So when Shizu's mom was being mild, it was the Japanese version of "Oh hell no," which Shizu understood.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 10:33 pm (UTC)That is the funniest and most adorable phrase ever.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-05 10:34 pm (UTC)