Monthly Archives: May 2009

Things My Mother Taught Me

In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to share some of the things my 85-year-old mother taught me.gottelibmom.jpg

She taught me how to share by giving me eight brothers and sisters. She also taught me that the meat platter will only make it once around the table so if I want some, I should grab it the first time.

Yet, she also believed the miracle of the loaves and fishes was a life lesson: there will always be enough to go around, so welcome your friends and your children’s friends to the table whenever possible and share what you have with them.

She taught me that life is not fair. I learned that one over and over again.

She taught me that lying is really, really wrong. When trapped in a childhood lie, each of us would be chastised with words of wisdom from her father: “I’d rather raise a thief than a liar,” she’d holler. I’ve been mulling that pearl for about half a century and I still haven’t figured it out.

She taught me to have fun. The child of a large extended Irish family, my mother regularly seized the opportunity to celebrate. We’d wrap a big box in red crepe paper for Valentine’s Day, decorate it with doilies and have a family party. We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day (as any self-respecting Irish Catholic family would), the last day of school, and the last day of summer vacation.

She taught me how to buy gifts for people. When you are buying presents for nine children, it would have been easier to buy us all the same things and be done with it, but Christmas meant the annual creation of a highly individualized top secret list maintained by my father but created by my mother. To this day, she is thoughtful about gifts. She recently tracked down a set of colored Pyrex nesting bowls that I nostalgically remembered from my childhood. When I turned 50, she gave me my father’s journalism fraternity key, something I had admired for years. She taught me that gift giving is more than passing on a gift certificate, but an art that tells people how much you really care.

She taught me the value of family. She used to say she never particularly liked kids. But HER kids, those ones she liked. She has now extended that philosophy to her 29 (soon to be 30) grandchildren and her four great grandchildren.

She taught me the importance of the individual. In a household of 11, this could have been a tough lesson to learn, but Mom made it easy. Each of our milestones like First Communion or graduation, each of our birthdays and each of our successes were celebrated individually. When I moved to Europe as a young married woman, my mother was bereft. Friends asked me if I was an only child. When I told them the truth, they burst into laughter. “How does she even know you are gone?” they marveled. But she knew, and she missed me.

She taught me accountability. I was responsible for chores, for my younger brothers and sisters and for my schoolwork. Shirking these responsibilities was not an option. She believed that you get up every day and you go to school or you go to work, a lesson that is lost on many today. She sent my sister to school with the measles because you don’t let a little rash stop you from your purpose.

She taught me my religion. She sent us to Catholic school even though the $10 tuition for each of us was a burden. She sent us to confession on Saturday afternoons and to daily mass during Lent. We gave up candy every Lent – not because we were self-sacrificing but because we were warned there’d be no candy in the basket if we didn’t sacrifice first. We had an Advent wreath every year and we each had a little crib for the baby Jesus. Each night before bed my mother would take stock of all the good deeds we had done and give us a piece of straw for each one. Then, on Christmas morning, the little crib by our beds would have a miniature baby Jesus nestled inside.

She taught me the importance of family traditions. When you have nine children in tow, you don’t get many dinner invitations. So she created family rituals around the holidays that made the days special even though it was always the same 11 of us around the table. We had a special Holy Thursday meal to commemorate the Last Supper. It was only as an adult married to my Jewish husband that I realized we were actually recreating a Passover Seder each year. When we got too old for childish Easter baskets, Mom made “nests” for us to hold our candy (I only learned as an adult that it was so much cheaper to put the candy on a plate than it was to buy individual baskets).

More recently, Mom taught me the value of pursuing your dreams no matter how old you are. When Dad died in 1990, Mom was 67. She had always said that some day she would go to college. So off she went. She graduated from Seton Hall University in 1998 at the age of 74, and modeled for all of us how to grow old excellently.

Most importantly, Mom taught me how to be a mother to my own three children and for that I am most grateful.

Mother’s Day at Seton Hall always coincides with the end of our school year. It’s our Mother’s Day gift to you – they’re back! Enjoy them these next four months until they return to us. And know that, even if it doesn’t seem like it in the moment, they are learning great life lessons from you. Happy Mother’s Day!

May 2009

By Tracy Gottlieb, Ph.D.

Dean of Freshman Studies and Special Academic Programs