I’ve only seen my mother cry twice in my lifetime. The first was in 1983 when she dropped me off at the University of Maine for my freshman year of college. She had insisted on driving me there with my roommate and best friend John Quigley under my protest. I further protested when she insisted on moving her oldest son’s clothes, bedding and accoutrements into Room 203 at Hart Hall, which included making my bed, folding my clothes and placing them in my drawers.
Oh, the humanity! The affront to my budding manhood and faux independence was unbearable. She was in good company, of course, with legions of other moms preparing to leave their offspring at college and on their own for the first time in their lives. I was too immature and blind to see the excruciating sadness and loss she was suffering with every sheet fold and wash cloth tuck.
Then, the time came for her to walk to the car parked at the curb and say goodbye to her baby boy. I walked trying to reassure her that I would be okay and not get into too much trouble with my newfound freedom. As we arrived at the car, I opened the door for her to see the tears in her eyes, which I regarded as ridiculous and, again, entirely displaced on a son that was soon to master his destiny. In fact, lacking the sensitivity to truly understand what was happening, I callously laughed and hugged her.
Marion Mosher, the former 17-year-old Hinckley girl who had graduated high school, married my father and moved to Fort Stewart, Georgia all in the same week in 1962 started her car and drove away to join the river of other mothers making their way to Interstate 95 South and the great empty nest oblivion. That was the first time I had seen my mother cry in my whole life, and it was over her son’s leaving home to go to college.
I returned to my room and cracked a beer without a second thought of the drama that had just unfolded before me…that is, until ten years had passed and the gravity of the moment dawned on an older and wiser man.
Then came the second time. A small group of our family was standing amongst the headstones of a country cemetery in Skowhegan, Maine. My mother’s father, Ted, had died and we were at the internment service. I didn’t know him well, but knew he was a good man with a gentle countenance who loved his only daughter desperately. And she cried the same fierce tears she had suffered on the Hart Hall Commons with her son ten years earlier.
Having been humbled by this surely existence on Earth, it occurred to me at that moment that my mother losing her father left her with the emotional equivalence of saying goodbye to her son at college. I felt embarrassed and juvenile for the crass and insensitive reaction I demonstrated to her pain that fateful day. Alas, the foolishness of a boy’s youth.
The lesson was the responsibility we bear for the love others invest in us. This was a lesson that was further instilled when I became a father and endured the repetitive experiences of watching my own sons learn to roll over, sit up, walk, run, ride bikes, go to daycare, school, dances, make friends, graduate and, finally, leave for college with me weeping like a child at each iteration of their incremental departures.
How many times have I pulled away from the curb at their institutions with tears in my eyes and remembering the lack of empathy I shared with my mother when she suffered the same emotional tidal wave?
Be kind to your mother. You’ll never get another.
Blessing to all,
Love,
Your brother,
Jack
Comments