Shaping Words

While flipping through some an old family scrapbook, I ran across a keepsake I made for Mother when I was six years old. My first grade teacher mimeographed pictures for us students to color and give to our moms on Mother’s Day, 1958. I selected a rose picture and colored the roses red because Mother’s favorite flower was a red rose. On the flip side, I wrote Mother a special message expressing my love for her.

As I pored through the scrapbook pages, my mind was flooded with wonderful childhood memories of Mother. I remember the summer she and I picked plums off the trees in our backyard and made plum jelly. I remember walking with her to the nearby corner store; buying a package of chocolate covered candies; washing them down with a diet soda; then skipping all the way home. I remember her making me peanut butter sandwiches, toasting the bread just so before neatly wrapping them in wax paper and placing them in my school lunchbox. I recall her combing the tangles out of my wispy, fine hair after sitting all day at her sewing machine making matching outfits for my dolls and me to wear. I remember the itchy, frilly dresses and petticoats she insisted I wear to birthday parties and family gatherings. On my birthday she made me chocolate cake and always took me to my favorite place, the Nicholson Memorial Library. The five-year-old me remembers sitting on her lap while she read me books. The older me remembers her reading the dictionary to me every night.

“Words are powerful,” she said. “Learn their meanings, how to spell them, and how to use them.” The teenage me half-heartedly listened as she impressed upon me, “Choose your words carefully and kindly when conversing with others.”

From kindergarten on, she dropped me off at school. As she drove away, she rolled down the window and said, “Remember, you’re smart. You’ll do well in school.” Whenever I wrote a paper for any class, she always read it before I turned it in. Rather than offering criticism, she asked, “Is this your best effort?” Even now, her words echo in my mind, and I recognize she gave me confidence by teaching me to measure my own abilities and efforts from an internal compass.

There have been times in my life when I was stretched beyond my ability, but I always heard her gentle voice telling the younger me, “You’re smart; you can do whatever you need or choose to do.” Her words pushed me beyond where I might have otherwise been tempted to stop.

Were Mother still alive, I’d thank her for the love she gave me; the sweet childhood memories she created; the non-stop encouragement she administered; and for her shaping words—words that sustained me and made a difference.

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