Nature Brought Out the Nurture

I have a lifelong good friend who is double my age. Kelly’s dry wit, unconditional love, and fun spirit are always sure to be an encouragement. Her gaiety, however, belies a difficult life as a single mom with two kids whom she has raised all her life on a small income. She’s taken care of her kids well, but has never had an especially maternal attitude about it.

“Oh! You don’t mean that!” We urge when she gloats about the ever-shortening countdown until her kids go to college.

“Oh yes! Oh yes, I do!” She’ll insist. As far as she is concerned, her youngest son's high-school graduation marks the moment when her kids forever leave her house, and she can see them once or twice a year.

“What about grandkids?” We ask. “Don’t you want to see them?”

She scoffs at that. “Pshaw! Grandkids? Don’t have them!” She says to her kids. “Kids are nothin’ but trouble.”

If she’s kidding us, she’s also kidding herself, because she is in earnest.

One day, though, we saw another facet of her when our families were at the park together.

“Hey, Mama!” One of my siblings said. “Can we go exploring?” She asked, beckoning to Kelly’s two kids to include them. Both moms nodded their heads in agreement. The kids were in their teens, and old enough to wander alone by themselves in the safe area.

“Just take the walky-talkies with you and be safe,” Mama remonstrated.

Within a few minutes, though, the girls called in with an odd message. “There’s a weird guy on the bridge across from us,” they said.

“K…turn around and come back,” Mama radioed back.

After that, however, we lost contact with them. Garbled static came through, and that was all. Papa strode off in the direction the girls had gone, and Mama continued trying to get through on the radio. Kelly ranted about their foolishness and stupidity. But as the moments ticked by and turned into a few tense minutes, her attitude melted into a vulnerability I had never seen before.

“Answer me!” She pleaded into the radio, biting her lower lip in anxiety. Soon her bravado was completely transformed. No longer did I see the mother who didn’t want to be a mother. I saw a woman being a mother like mothers have been for so many centuries—worrying and pacing for the safety of her children. “Where are you?” she called into the walkie-talkie, with rare tears sliding out of her eyes and down her cheeks. Mama was just as worried for her child, but Kelly was getting hysterical as she frantically did everything but accomplished nothing.

Less than three minutes passed before radio contact resumed and Papa reached the girls—all was right in their world and ours, and we went on our way, disaster averted. But in the moment when those two lives that she had helped create were out of her reach, she became a mother again.

It’s all in the attitude, and that attitude should start now. Are you a guy? If men would encourage and inspire motherliness in their wives, daughters, girlfriends, mothers, and sisters, this job would be so much easier and more appealing. Are you a mother? You have the most amazing job in the world! Take advantage of it! Motherhood is a job that is as out-of-style as hoop skirts, that culture has dragged through the mud, despised, and minimized. Yet, strangely enough, it’s a job I want. I’m not a mother yet, but I hope to be someday. I’ve seen the uniqueness of motherhood, the joys of raising children to change the future, and the power one amazing woman can have. Whether I mother my own children, or nieces, nephews, and friends, I know that such a simple, retro, and beautiful role can transform the future.

I’ve seen single mothers courageously raise their children, so that—decades later—those kids honor and revere their mother as if she was the Queen of Sheba. I’ve seen women who’ve never married or never had children nurture and love countless other children. And I’ve seen my own mother raising me and my five siblings, and selflessly setting aside her own priorities for us. If you’re one of these women—kudos to you! You have squeezed tiny fingers, tickled tiny toes, and lived with tiny, trusting eyes. You’ve encouraged a tiny dream, oohed over a tiny picture, and seen tiny sacrifice. If you’re not—if you’ve always thought obliging the caprices of strangers, bringing home a six-figure paycheck, and living for your own whims was more important—won’t you consider a change of mind? Motherhood is one of the highest and most sacred goals in life--it is one of the best ways I know to brighten a corner. Motherhood is a calling worth training and striving for--it can change the world.

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