This Mother’s Day, I’m paying tribute to… my step-father, and the tribute he recently paid to the two mothers of his children.
Norman met and married my mother after I’d already moved 3,000 miles away for college. He had largely raised his two sons as a single parent, as had my mother with her two girls. My sister shared a few months in the combined households before she too left for college; our new step-brothers, who were a few years younger, experienced the most change, their high school years now influenced by the addition of a step-mother.
Norman has often displayed a sensitivity generally ascribed to females, born from his experience single-parenting his sons. I remember him recounting his discomfort at PTA meetings, bake sales, and the like when the women would exclaim over how wonderful he was to be there, participating, the lone male. He’d say, “Why? It’s no more than you’re all doing.”
Last weekend, Norman received a Mother’s Day appeal from UNICEF. It depicted a mother in Mali and her infant child. Having just driven through the old neighborhood where he and his first wife had first raised their young boys, it put him in a contemplative mood. He made a gift to UNICEF in her honor and wrote her a letter containing his thoughts on their “living legacy” – their grown children, and their shared “commitments to respect, freedom, justice, and community”. He copied their sons.
He then forwarded a copy of the letter to his current wife (my mother), copying me and my sister. In this appended version, he wished my mom “a Memorable Mother's Day.”
Norman met and married my mother after I’d already moved 3,000 miles away for college. He had largely raised his two sons as a single parent, as had my mother with her two girls. My sister shared a few months in the combined households before she too left for college; our new step-brothers, who were a few years younger, experienced the most change, their high school years now influenced by the addition of a step-mother.
Norman has often displayed a sensitivity generally ascribed to females, born from his experience single-parenting his sons. I remember him recounting his discomfort at PTA meetings, bake sales, and the like when the women would exclaim over how wonderful he was to be there, participating, the lone male. He’d say, “Why? It’s no more than you’re all doing.”
Last weekend, Norman received a Mother’s Day appeal from UNICEF. It depicted a mother in Mali and her infant child. Having just driven through the old neighborhood where he and his first wife had first raised their young boys, it put him in a contemplative mood. He made a gift to UNICEF in her honor and wrote her a letter containing his thoughts on their “living legacy” – their grown children, and their shared “commitments to respect, freedom, justice, and community”. He copied their sons.
He then forwarded a copy of the letter to his current wife (my mother), copying me and my sister. In this appended version, he wished my mom “a Memorable Mother's Day.”
It's memorable because I honor you for nurturing Holly and Cindy through their whole childhoods and adolescences, mostly on your own. It's also memorable because I honor you for helping me to nurture Philip and Joseph through critical parts of their adolescent lives. These are things that need to be remembered.
He closed with a full-circle insight – what he described as “an epiphany of sorts” – about his relationships with the two mothers of this combined set of four children. With all the differences and divisions of the past, what formed the common thread were those “commitments to respect, freedom, justice, and community”.
This Mother’s Day I honor everyone who takes the time to put into words the deep respect they have for the mothers in their lives. Thank you, Norman, for remembering well.
This Mother’s Day I honor everyone who takes the time to put into words the deep respect they have for the mothers in their lives. Thank you, Norman, for remembering well.
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