Mom's Legacy is Secure

This blog is supposed to be about my kids. I’m going to break protocol.

It is Mother’s Day, and I want to talk about my mom.

In a way, this is still about my kids. Everything that I am can, in some way, be traced back to my mom. Every lesson I’ve learned either came from her, or was absorbed from someone else because she taught me to keep an open mind and value education. The way I conduct myself, the way I treat people, the expectations I have of others – mom, mom and mom.

I’ll pass all that down to Sydney and Tyson. They are her legacy as much as they are mine.

Diagnosed with colon and liver cancer a few months ago, my mom has been thinking about her legacy. I know this because she has asked me if I want to take ownership of some of her prized possessions. She wants things to carry on.

I will. If they mean a lot to her, they mean a lot to me. Because she means a lot to me.
 

But the most important things she will ever give me have come from the example she has been and the lessons she has taught.

Pregnant at 16, she was a divorced at 17, stuck raising me on her own. In the next six years, she’d marry again and have two more children. At the age of 27, she was twice divorced and, essentially, a single mother of three.

To that point a waitress, she came upon her single-mother status with a new job, working at a state mental institution, making a whopping $2.42 an hour. That is less than $100 a week. She’d often come home with bruises and bite marks from the patients, so she earned that pittance the hard way.

Over the next eight years, we’d live in four different places. We stayed with my grandmother, then shared apartments with a live-in babysitter or a family friend to help make the rent. The threat of eviction or the electricity being turned off constantly hung in the air. I went my whole high school career calling my girlfriend from the corner pay phone because we couldn’t afford a phone in the house.

We ate government cheese and sometimes paid for food with colorful play money called food stamps. Mom would make a big pot of potato soup or ham and beans soup and we’d eat it for a week. I remember a sixth grade class project where we chronicled what we ate for breakfast every day and I had five straight days of cake and Kool-Aid. It was my brother’s birthday week and mom had bought a big sheet cake -- every kid deserves a nice birthday -- and, well, Kool-Aid at 15 cents a pack was a lot cheaper than milk.

We went without, but mom always came through when we needed her. In sixth grade, I wanted to go to Washington D.C. with the school's safety patrol. The cost was $100. That was more than a week’s pay. I have no idea how she came up with the money, but somehow I went on that trip.

My bet is she swallowed her pride and borrowed it from a friend or a relative. In those days, my mom had three children to raise and she couldn’t afford the expense of pride. I’m known around the office and in my life for often saying the phrase “Don’t trust anyone but your mother.” I guess I say that because I’ve had one who has never let me down.

I look at how Brooke and I struggle sometimes making far more money than mom ever did. I'm amazed at how she ever pulled it off. I know we didn't have what most parents would like to give their kids, and I am sure that broke mom's heart. But when I look back at those times, I realize that we had what is really the only thing that matters: endless love.

After she got pregnant with me, my mom got her high school diploma by taking classes through the mail. She could have dropped out and been done with it, but education was important to her, even then. If you ever play Scrabble with her, or watch her do a crossword puzzle, you know not to underestimate her. She can outshine many a college graduate when it comes to vocabulary.

When I told her during my senior year of high school that I was thinking about not going to college, she went Alec Baldwin on me for being a rude, thoughtless child. We might not have had the money, she might not have known how to fill out the paperwork, I might not have made a single college visit in my whole life, but, she’d be damned if a kid with my potential was going to skip out on college.

So, I borrowed money, took advantage of grants, won scholarships and – with mom as an example -- worked up to three jobs at a time to make it through. 

 

And that decision made all the difference in the world for me. It set in motion a tremendous journalism career and follow-up public relations career. I’ve sat and talked with presidents at the White House, spent time with numerous politicians, actors and rock-and roll legends, and traveled in 38 states, as well as Mexico, Canada, France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands.

None of that is achieved without my mother. If it weren't for her, I'd still be living in Massillon, Ohio wondering if my next pay check would cover my rent payment.

If it is the wish of every parent that their child do better than they did, my mom’s wish has come true.

And that, my friends, is mom’s legacy. I know the statistics on single mothers and teen mothers, especially those who live in poverty. Their offspring have a much greater chance at failure. If my mom did nothing else during her time on earth, she was the world’s greatest mother. She’s three for three when it came to raising children who graduated high school, stayed out of the criminal justice system, avoided abusing drugs and alcohol and somehow managed to become productive members of society.

Just as important, they’re all now raising children of their own and imparting mom’s wisdom at every turn. My brother, a single father who runs his own business, does such a wonderful job I am waiting for some parenting magazine to name him Father of the Year. My sister, who has struggled with single motherhood in the same way as my mother, has handled it with the same never-say-die attitude.

And now I have Sydney and Tyson, her youngest grandchildren. I, too, will raise them with the same lessons mom passed on, either verbally or by example: “Show up for work every day, so they know they can depend on you.” “The only way you get something in life is if you earn it.” “Don’t do anything that will embarrass your family.” “Once you start something, finish it.” “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.” “Education is the way to a better life.” “Help those who are less fortunate, because someday you could be in their shoes.”

She may not have uttered them all, but she’s sure lived each one. She taught us right from wrong and held us accountable for our actions. I know people who grew up with far more than I did but learned far less.
 

I don’t know if we will have my mom for another two months, two years or twenty years. I do know, however, that her legacy is secure.

I need look no further than the two children scurrying at my feet.