Mom and me
This one is a favorite of mine, for obvious reasons.
Prejudice has been a touchy subject with me for as long as I can remember. The worst part is, mom tried to teach us bigotry with her words and by example. Sis and I never understood it and have fought it all our lives. Mom finally did get the message though, and she learned from the only one who could have taught her.
As a parent, it’s been my heart’s deepest prayer that our children would follow only the best examples of my life and never, ever emulate my shortcomings. I tried doing that with my mom but I’m not yet sure if the effort has been successful.
I don’t swear like mom did, nor do I smoke. I laugh – a lot, something she rarely did. Mom could cook like no one’s business and I’m not too far behind her there, yet there is more to learn.
Mom could juggle the bills with little money and I can do that, too. I think that sis and I handle stress better because we learned what works and what doesn’t. We consider that a major accomplishment.
There is one lesson, though, that mom unwittingly tried to teach early on that I never accepted. It’s a touchy subject with me, always has been.
At the young age of about seven or eight years old, mom tried to teach me to be prejudiced against anyone who wasn’t white. Sis and I were raised in a tiny town that had only one Hispanic family; the rest of the place was white. Mom told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to hang around with the daughter. The only reason she could give was that the girl had brown skin. She was different and that somehow made her inferior to us.
What a complete bunch of hooey. I knew it in my child’s heart then and I know it now. Mere words cannot express how thankful I am that I never bought into that mind-set.
I believed mom for a lot of things, important things, but this is one trait that completely confused and infuriated me. No one told me that mom was wrong; I just felt it. Instead of shunning this girl, I sought her out. She taught me how to ride a bicycle – her bicycle. We laughed together, played together, told each other little-girl secrets. She was my friend.
When we moved to Kewanee, sis saw for the first time in her life that there were people other than white. It freaked her out and it took quite a little while to get her to accept the obvious. She should have never had to experience her introduction to normal life like this, but it happened because our mom thought it best to raise us that way.
My guess is, and it’s probably right on the money, that mom’s parents passed on their racial ignorance to their children who in turn tried to pass it on to their children. Sadly, in many cases, the prejudice legacy is a success.
Sis and I learned first-hand how it feels to be looked down upon and humiliated, not because of skin color but because of social status. Wearing hand-me-downs, being raised by a single mother, using food stamps, living on welfare – all of these were reasons why we were shunned. We could identify and it was heart-breaking.
Mom got a lesson she never forgot when she became ill. On a two-week stay in Chicago’s Research Hospital, our mother shared a room with a lady who was not white. We found out later that mom did not have enough money to buy the extras, like snacks and such, and she got terribly hungry. Her roommate offered her some fruit that her family had left for her. Out of sheer hunger, mom accepted the apple.
At 2 a.m., mom’s roommate found her in the bathroom scrubbing the fruit until the skin almost came off. She waited until the water was turned off. Her soft voice reached inside mom’s heart like nothing else had. “You won’t get any black germs from the apple, Tony,” she said. Then she smiled and turned away.
Mom changed in a big way that day and she never looked back. What sis and I find precious is that she shared that experience with us repeatedly. We think she told us about it often to try and undo the years of wrong-headed thinking that never took hold in her daughters’ hearts.
It was only an apple, but mom learned what sis and I already knew. We were so happy she found out that love comes in all colors, a lesson every parent should hope to pass on to their children and grandchildren.
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