The Mom Tree

When it's a good day, the universe gives you a story.  A story that you need to live better. "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros was that gift about fifteen years ago during some teacher training. The story was used in a procedure for teaching story elements and it was a helpful exercise that I've used many times.  I still remembering hoping to avoid becoming Mrs. Price, the cranky-pants teacher in the story whose thoughtless comments ruined a child"s day. That wasn't, however, the theme that came to me as I approach this Mothers’ Day.

In the story the character is having a birthday and she says, "What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight..." She compares the years of one's life to the rings of a tree. It's a helpful image as I relate to my mother. It's easy to think of the aging people in our lives and just view them as they are now, forgetting that inside they are all of the ages they have ever been. We celebrate those years sometimes after our loved ones die, but probably not often enough while they are still with us. 

My mother, 89, is a woman of wisdom and strength. She has to stop to catch her breath more often these days when we walk. She often tells me the same thing two or three times in one conversation  and I frequently have to finish her sentences or give her a name she is trying to retrieve. She can still walk a 5K,  read about 70 books a year, make a mean casserole, and keep an active social schedule. In spite of her vitality, I often think of her as an almost 90 year old instead of the woman who is still 10, 18, 28, 45, and 60. It helps though that she has shared life stories and that I have my own memory bank of her earlier days. Just recently she shared with me about her first teaching position. "I made $1800 for the year. Can you believe that?" 

The Tree of Mom. Inside the strong, slight exterior of this lovely woman are the rings of experiences watered by grace. The 18 year old who was first in her family to go to college, the teacher in a one room schoolhouse, the young bride, the tired mother of three, middle school teacher, spiritual director, ordained minister, and voracious reader. The woman who could shake one mighty finger at my sassy 14-year-old self and bring me back to my senses. The woman who has the most beautiful singing voice I have ever heard. The woman with magical dreams and strong bones. I often rest in the shade of this mighty woman and when God is with me, I pay attention. I listen more, slow down to walk beside her, and see the rings of life which sustain my own.

Happy Mothers' Day!

No Equal Measure

Two seemingly unrelated occurrences this week came together in an interesting confluence: Holy Week and math lessons on units of measurement . There has been a steady stream of students coming in to the Resource Room this week for help on comparing standard and metric units. How many cups in a quart, how many milliliters in a liter, if Sam drinks 3 quarts of water is that more than 2 liters and what should I use to measure the size of my headache after thinking about all this?

Anyway, as usual the students I saw showed fortitude and perseverance that inspired me to work through the hard questions with them. But all this thinking about measurement got me to thinking about how often I attempt to measure things that I shouldn't be measuring. Teacher life is full of opportunities to measure. Teachers measure pounds of papers, sizes of classrooms, cups of coffee needed on Monday, pencil lengths, and voice levels among their students on any given day in April. That is the nature of the job, but the thought that occurred to me this Holy Week is that I am prone to measuring and comparing the very things that should freely flow from my heart.

We aren't meant to keep track of the number of times we had to smile at a student before we got a smile back. We aren't meant to measure how many times we have done that small act of kindness or how much recognition we got for it. It's not productive to count how many affirmations we give out and how many we receive.  We sometimes wonder if pound for pound, we have put more effort into a project than someone else. We hold onto some love if we feel the other hasn't made a big enough deposit into our happiness account because we imagine we might feel better somehow if we wait until it's equal.  It might cross our minds that we have extended more grace than we have been shown at times and soon we are placing limits on the capacity of our hearts that can actually be overflowing, poured out, and readily refillable.

So, here is where Holy Week comes in. Working at a Catholic School I am reminded, every hour on the hour, that the biggest measure of love and grace, is the cross.  I looked at the image of Jesus today hanging on the cross and had to let it get real.  I just can't find any unit greater, heavier, or containing more capacity than the mass of that wooden cross. When my father was still alive, he gave the homily at my daughter's wedding. He was talking about love and the kind of love that it takes a marriage to work. He reached into his pocket and handed a small crucifix to the young man marrying his granddaughter. "Here," he said, "this is love."  A startled young man accepted the 8 oz. cross and the charge to love without measure.

So, there it is- my strange juxtaposition on math and the occasion of Holy Week. I hope to love more, to give more, to live larger, and to stop measuring the unmeasurable.

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for his friends."
John 15:13