Thoughts on Mother's Day

It's Mothers Day, and so I've been sending love and gratitude to my own dear mother, and thinking about all she did for me. Perhaps the greatest and most valuable gift was that she empowered me to become the person I'm meant to be. (Okay, okay, I'm still working on it!) My question to myself this morning was: How did she do that?

First of all, there was never a hint of an attitude that seems to have been around in North America. I mean, the 'who do you think you are?' kind of thing.

My mother gave me options and opportunities. This doesn't mean she enrolled me in as many activities as could be crammed into my week. No. Rather, she paid attention to my inclinations on an intuitive level. So, even tho she had to go to work in order to pay for them, she gave me dance lessons - ballet and Spanish. Piano lessons, even though I was a bit of a dunce there. A private education in a religious environment (i.e., a girls' school run by Anglican sisters, but with a staff also of lay teachers) because of my love of learning. And of course, plenty of books to read.

But truly, she didn't force anything that didn't 'fit'. Working from a place of trust (a great empowerment of its own) she allowed my brother and me to find and follow our paths in life, and respected our choices.

She provided an aesthetic environment in our home and a garden filled with trees and flowers where I could play, dream and dance to my heart's content.

Recently, at a visit to a book club where I was invited to talk about and discuss my novel 'Cape Town', one of the women asked me an interesting question. This was: did you have a sheltered childhood? The first answer that sprang to mind was 'no', simply because I was allowed quite a large measure of independence. But the world was a very different place in those days, and my answer could well have been 'yes'. For example, news of wars and/or natural disasters, the latest horror story, wasn't disseminated quickly and widely as it is today. So in that way I was sheltered. And I'm grateful for it.

Lastly, once I expressed a definite direction I wanted to go in, I benefitted from a large amount of level-headed encouragement.

Thanks, Ma.