This past week would’ve been my mom’s 72nd birthday (3/4/54 is very easy to remember and she taught it to me early). She died in 2017. I’m getting to the age where I’m forgetting aspects of her. If our boys have memories of her at all, they are faint—which is what happens when your oldest was seven when she died.
I mainly have stories. That time at Thanksgiving she printed out and recited text messages. That time in high school she made me a cheeseburger after I came home from work. Her laugh had this unforgettable way it ramped up into an unstoppable force of staccatoed glee.
Most of you didn’t know her, so here we are, over 21 years ago:
My mom was great and I have plenty of stories about her. She also drove me crazy in ways that only moms can.
But one thing she was really good at—something Courtney and I still regularly talk about—was being a mom to an adult, married son. The story I remember the most, and retell the most, is how she set her expectations for my marriage.
Mom’s Marriage Comment
I am not a fan of how people talk about marriage sometimes.
“I’m not losing a son/daughter. I’m gaining a daughter/son.”
I don’t think that’s true. Marriage fundamentally changes the way that you relate to your family of origin. You lose your unmarried son and you gain a married son, but in doing that, you also lose a whole lot. Marriage establishes a new, more important, union.
My mom understood this and wanted me to know, very early on, how she was going to operate as Courtney and I began our life together. One day, she pulled me aside and shared with me something that was important for her to share. (This is my paraphrase.)
Hans, you can see your father and me as much as you want, but you never have to see us. You’re always welcome but never expected.
Mom nor Dad ever expected us to be with them for a holiday. They had no traditions that were so important that we had to show up. There was never even a time (that I can recall) where Mom said, “I’d like you to be there,” or, “I haven’t seen you in a while; it might be nice if . . . .” She fully trusted me to be a husband first and then, somewhere down the line, her son. And it was true—she was always glad to see me but she never expected me.
My mom made being her son very easy up until her last day.
Over two decades later, two main thoughts stay loud in my mind.
Embrace the New Stage
Why do I keep going back to that perspective? Why do Courtney and I replay it? Why does Courtney say when friends might be frustrated with their in-laws, “My in-laws have been great”? (I’ll add into this my siblings since at least one of them reads this—you’re great, too, Dale.)
Because Mom and Dad knew how to embrace the new stage they had—as articulated by Mom’s advice/charge/comments/grace.
The pivot from kids in the home to kids out of the home is fierce—we’re not far from that in our own home. The pivot from unmarried kids to married kids hits hard, too. Your child truly and wholly becomes a new unit.
So many of us fight against these relational changes because we are fighting for something that doesn’t exist anymore. We want a time capsule from another era when, really, we need to die to what used to be and embrace what is.
It is one thing to pay lip service to the idea. It is another to live it out. My mom lived it out.
Say It Out Loud
The other aspect of Mom’s advice that was so powerful was that she put herself on record with it. She said it directly to me and couldn’t back away from it.
Her words mattered, and they stuck. I never needed to call her back to those words.
Can you imagine first how freeing it is to hear such a statement? Second, how endearing it made me toward my mom? Would I, with all of that love and trust, want to go, “Thanks, lady, see ya!”
Never.
It is one thing to believe something, and another to articulate it. Something powerful happens when your perspective leaves your mind and heart and actually comes out of your mouth. Now you’re official—now others have heard it. You can’t go backwards. Mom kept herself from going backwards, which allowed us both to go forward.
I miss my mom, but I’m glad for what she taught me. I’m sad for my boys because they’re at the age where they could’ve really cherished her disquieting zaniness and mid-tier opportunities she took to be slightly embarrassing. We can’t drive home from seeing her and laugh together about how goofy or loving she was. They (we) don’t get that, and soon most memories will fade into what we can recall from photographs.
But one thing that the boys will be able to experience, should marriage be in their future, is the same advice: be who you need to be. And I’m always here for you.
I didn’t know your mom. I wish I had known your mom. I’m happy I get to know a bit of your mom through you.
Thanks!