My Mother My Mentor?

RantWoman is not sure whether it is a blessing or a curse to have several different reflection papers form in her head for the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference

Here is the latest effort which has coalesced sufficiently for public presentation; RantWoman feels a certain urgency because of external events about another one but it is not ready today.

Walk with Me Mentor, Elder, Friend
By (rantWoman)
From: 2 Timothy 1:5-7I’m reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois, then in your mother Eunice, and now, I’m certain, in you as well. That’s why I want to remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God didn’t give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, of self-discipline.

From: Martha Paxson Grundy, Tall Poppies: Supporting Gifts of Ministry and Eldering in the Monthly Meeting, p. 27, Pendle Hill Publications.“Many Friends today are crying out for spiritual mentors, for ministers and elders who are lovingly steeped in our tradition. Some Friends hunger for a deeper relationship with God, for a connection with a divine power that heals and empowers. We long for wise and loving role models and examples.”

From: Patricia Loring, Listening Spirituality Vol. II, 1999. “As meetings became settled, elders performed a variety of functions, according to their gifts and leadings. . . . [A]ll gifts and ministries were for building up the spiritual life of the meeting and the Society: directing and re-directing people to the Spirit of God, to the Inward Christ, the Light, the Inward Teacher, the Guide, the one true Priest and Shepherd. It was clearly understood that any member of the meeting might be called to some part of this service, but that some were specifically led by the Spirit at any given time.”

Ahem! “Lovingly steeped in our tradition” does not happen automatically. I come from a family with long history of religious practice, but I am definitely still learning, still learning about queries and clearness committees, still learning about the liberties Friends or at least NPYM Friends sometimes allow our youth and about community stress once or twice when other adults were quite blasé about things I consider frightening and irresponsible still learning the joy when our children and youth respond out of genuine enthusiasm. But for me, the passage from Timothy touches me close to home.

I never knew my paternal grandmother. She exists as a stocky figure standing next to my grandfather and her children in a couple family pictures including some Bible school group shots. She also exists in the profound ache on the faces of her family in a photo taken shortly after her death from cancer. My father spoke of her rarely, sometimes when talking about a favorite food, once in awhile when complaining that my childhood household full of my mother’s in-home daycare just bore different standards of order than his mother’s standards for a parsonage. As my vision has followed the same arc as my father and grandfather, I have come to wonder whether some of this demand for household order also reflected my grandfather’s vision problems. My father spoke sometimes of her music, of her teaching Bible school and once late in life of something of her I never understood that he saw of her in me, probably not great Biblical scholarship.

My maternal grandmother is only slightly more real; she also died of cancer, when I was six so a few memories stick out. I remember her birthday and Christmas gifts ran heavily toward the practical, her and my mother’s idea of what I needed rather than what I wanted. I remember she had a wonderful Christmas cactus. I remember that at my mom’s request Grandma always served home-canned tomato juice, definitely a tangy acquired taste, for breakfast when we visited. I also remember Grandma sometimes was not shy in her disapproving comments about her sons, my uncles. The biggest sin I remember: my uncles consumed BEER and Grandma did not approve.

The scene is an eye doctor’s office in Seattle. I have just come for a one-day followup after some procedure. My mother was new in town, still exhausted from her move, still recovering from cancer treatment, still definitely learning her “bus legs” after she quit driving. Mom really wanted to come to my eye appointment. My reward for letting her come, for not putting my foot down was this powerful tired trembling when a small child started to cry, a tired trembling that somehow was much worse with my mother present than when I am on my own and can just breathe and emit soothing thoughts.

Children cry sometimes at the eye doctor’s; sometimes I even kind of envy the license afforded three-year-olds to have really good tantrums. If I thought a tantrum would have helped, I would have seriously considered having one too. “We long for wise and loving role models and examples,” and sometimes we get ones who are scared and overwhelmed themselves! My mother doesn’t do well with tantrums and I still needed all my nerves to get us both home sanely on the bus.

“Mommy, you can do it. I’ve been doing it for decades—on the bus.” Think "divine power that heals and empowers.” My mother had to be dragged kicking and screaming to help while going through cancer treatment, but after her cataract surgery, she wanted EVERYTHING done for her. My mother and I were two doses into the eyedrops every two hours regimen after her first cataract surgery and already I was done.

I knew from many eye procedure experiences that her face probably felt sore and tired. I could barely see her eyes when she would pry the operated eye open. She would invariably blink two or three times just as I got the eyedrop bottle lined up and squeezed so that the drops would just run down her cheek or along her nose or basically anywhere but into her eye. I asked Mom whether she could see the bottle over her eye. I reassured her that I would still be there and help her retape the eye shield, and I turned cheerleader: “Mommy, it really, really is easier when you do it yourself.” Even really experienced nurses, who are few and far between these days anyway, flub eyedrops.”

My mother developed her cataracts at pretty much the normal age for such things. My brother and I, my father, and my paternal grandfather all got our cataracts and had surgery as wee tiny children, and the time of making my mother do her own eyedrops also brought the gift of talking about childhood: My mother said I was in the hospital a week and I cried every night when she left. She said she did not think I noticed anything different about vision right after the surgery but when my first pair of glasses came in the mail a few weeks later, I would hardly let my mother take them off. She also said surgery was even harder with my brother because my sister was an infant and Mom just could not be around as much.

Hitting the eyedrops wall was only part of the conversation walking with my mother. My mom is the oldest daughter and second child in a family of five. The family were farmers in Colorado and produced a large percentage of their own food as well as what was sold. Every time my mother talks about it it, sounds like a LOT of work, and not necessarily a terribly nuanced emotional environment buttressed by a steady Presbyterianism. The house was small, the family large. Everyone bathed in sequence in one tub on Saturday night. Cooking was with a woodstove, or if even, very controlled heat was needed, for example for cakes, with a mix of wood and coal. To this day, my mother finds the Presbyterian church a good anchor of certainty, though she at least respects my explanation that among Friends at my Meeting, we figure God can handle the questions.

The scene is NPYM Annual Session in Missoula. My father went to graduate school at the University of MT. He got his degree long enough ago that his name is no longer on the wall at the Music building, but my siblings and I used to chase each other up and down the now well-worn steps of the conference center. I have been to Missoula many times for instance for high school orchestra trips, two different times at Annual Session while recovering from eye surgeries as an adult, and another time over a summer while my father was in graduate school. That summer also involved an eye surgery but the story that matters most for this paper is the book my mother read to us in the hospital, the BoxCar Children about 4 orphan siblings living in a boxcar.
At the time, I was too busy being worried about the children in the story to think about being scared, lonely, uncomfortable in the hospital. Only much later as an adult, have I come to recognize the aptness of the quote from Timothy, the mixed blessing of that way of coping, the personal ambiguities of who mentors whom present sometimes from my family role models even when the life of my Meeting is quite rich and blessed. “Fan into flame the gift of God …for God didn’t give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, of self-discipline” Okay, I get the gift of God part, it’s the power and love and inward teacher part that comes a lot harder a lot of the time.