Mindset
My mom was born in 1930.
It was right in the thick of the world’s worst economic disaster, known to us all now as the great depression.
Her father and mother, like so many at the time, struggled to make ends meet. The family was everything, and her family lived all around her, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and everyone supported everyone else.
She nearly lost her leg and arm from infectious diseases no one had the medicine or solutions for, resorting to putting maggots in the cast on her leg to eat the dying and diseased flesh.
Her sister had to have her leg amputated to save her from disease.
Her mother lost two boys in pregnancy, and the girls grew up without the brothers they might have known.
Untold hardships, things my mom has never told me most definitely live behind her eyes.
She grew up through the time of the most devastating war in the history of the world. Every other war pales in comparison.
Her father served in the Canadian Air Force as a mechanic, away on the airfields of Britain throughout much of the war. Spared the trauma of serving on the front lines.
My mom was 15 years old when the war ended, the same age as my only daughter is today. Different lives they have lived.
We sometimes think what we are living with and through today is quite destabilizing, but perhaps much of what we feel is our own self-doing. Focused too often outward to find our compass, stuck in comparison and judgment.
There was no time for that when my mother grew up. All she had was the immediate requirements laid before her, where to sleep, what to eat, what was the next task to complete.
No time for self-pity, or worse, looking around at others to see who you are. Simply faced with getting each day done.
She married an Air Force pilot in the 50s.
My Dad was searching for his own medium of expression. Himself a victim of a father jailed, a mother overwhelmed, and life growing up in a church-run boarding school (knowing what we know now about those places, who knows what challenges he faced).
He soon found identity in higher education, studying political science, and then joining the foreign service. Not the life my mother expected. Strange foreign lands, travel, cocktail parties, and no community. She was a small-town girl with small-town thoughts and these were people not of her tablecloth.
My mom had lost a battle with cancer that left her unable to bear children. She instead chose to adopt, and I was the benefactor of that decision. Who knows who or what I would be today if she had not chosen me?
She was immediately whisked off to figure out motherhood in Singapore, a new life, and new love, and no family or friends to support her…..but she was strong.
She figured it all out, not without her share of mistakes and missteps, just like all of us. We are imperfect you know…….we sometimes forget to respect that about ourselves.
She came back from overseas and they soon added my brother, he was not like me, and she struggled with that. She struggled for the rest of her life because of that, and so did he.
Not many years later, the strain of a life misunderstood, and the misalignment of two people’s growth, my parents began a very challenging time. There was an ever-growing crack in the foundation.
A lot of pain, a lot of yelling, and a lot of misunderstanding and harm.
And one day it was all over. I was sixteen years old, and I was relieved.
There she was now, alone, a mom of two boys, trying to find a way to make a living, be a mom, and find a way to be a dad too…..
Her work ethic was never something you could challenge. I never saw my mom complain, or give up, it just wasn’t in her DNA. Her dad was a fierce workhorse, and she had his genes.
She did what she had to do, and I grew up like there was nothing missing. My brother struggled, and she struggled with him.
He spent some time with my father, which didn’t work out, then boarding school, and then he found his birth parents, and life began anew.
I know that hurt my mom…..she couldn’t figure him out. She has always carried that with her, another emotional scar to add to the many over the course of an uneasy life.
Years after both my brother and I had become adults, my mother found a man who loved her just as simply and as honestly as he could. He cherished her. I was happy for her, she deserved such love.
But true to the nature of my mom’s life, it would not last, he would pass away, 15 years older than her, he was struck by disease and lost the battle. She would be denied her fairy tale.
For the last 30 years of her life, she worked, then retired, built a life of friendship with many, and remained steadfastly, and fiercely independent.
The scars of life with nothing made her a champion of saving, something that serves her life today in a way that is difficult to comprehend.
She is financially independent, and that is something really important for a son. I would be heartbroken if I could not care for her after all she has done for me.
In the last few years, she is now 93, her health and independence have deteriorated. She is slowly but surely slipping away.
The Louis Armstrong song, “We Have All the Time in the World” made me lament my life with her, what remains is short, and not the same.
Time is running out.
We have all the time in the world
Time enough for life
To unfold all the precious things
Love has in store
We have all the love in the world
If that’s all we have you will find
We need nothing more
Every step of the way
Will find us
With the cares of the world
Far behind us
We have all the time in the world
Just for love
Nothing more, nothing less
Only love
Every step of the way
Will find us
With the cares of the world
Far behind us, yes
We have all the time in the world
Just for love
Nothing more, nothing less
Only love
I wish I had more time, but that’s not what life is all about. It’s about being present, and recognizing what we are experiencing because it will not always last.
Sorry Louis, but we don’t have all the time in the world.
Cherish the time you have.
