We all have our own heroes – people we admire for their single-minded devotion to a cause, who, despite the heartache and the hardship, accomplish the impossible. Their causes are usually directed to the betterment of humankind, and require strength, tenacity and courage of a superhuman sort. We remember, for example, what Mahatma Gandhi endured for the people of India; Nelson Mandela for the blacks of South Africa; Joan of Arc for the French; Canadian soldiers for The Allies at the Battle of Vimy Ridge; Mother Teresa for the poor of Kolkata; Florence Nightingale for the injured in the Crimean War; T.E. Lawrence for Arab independence; Frida Kahlo for, despite the daily physical pain in doing so, her championship of Mexican art and culture; and songwriter Leonard Cohen for, after transcending enormous personal difficulties, continuing to see the hope and blessedness in this life.
These are but a few of the people that have shown us what belief and perseverance can do. No fanfare accompanied their deeds, indeed what seems to characterize the heroic is humility; that what is achieved is all in a day’s work, with one foot after another, one unannounced “breakthrough” after another, and one kind gesture after another. Like the humility that distinguished your mother’s care.
My own mother wore humility so naturally that, as an adolescent, she had me believing that nothing less than Buddhahood was a necessary precondition of motherhood. The oath she clearly took to eschew selfish desire and practice acceptance meant that my siblings and I had a solid ground beneath our feet and a warm wind at our backs growing up.
Unfailingly subjugating her needs for ours in order to manage and nurture a brood of six, it would take years to discover this was not the norm. Other mothers had the good sense to put their families to work, and to slip away now and again to the spa, a movie, or coffee with a neighbour. Mum’s extra-curricular activities were also predictably altruistic, among them serving as secretary for our elementary school’s PTA, attending every school concert, and scoring for our baseball games.
Leaving behind her training as a bacteriologist and principal role in a government laboratory when she married my father made her sacrifice and adoption of a Buddha consciousness all the more spectacular.
Along with my mother’s remarkably selfless, desireless nature, she effortlessly assumed other virtues that, unbeknownst to her, were hallmarks of a highly evolved human being. Wisdom, prudence, patience, tolerance, kindness and forgiveness – my mother exuded them all. Her stoic ability to rise above difficult situations and meet challenges without drama or hesitation was legendary and taught us that complaining and blame shifting had little to teach us. With her mantra, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” casting the first stone was never an option.
Being the wise and reasoned person she was, my mother’s love was larger than a hug or a Hallmark greeting and manifested itself in her generosity of spirit. She had the grace to accept us as we were, forgave us our trespasses, and wisdom to lead by example. Her compassion played out in her annual door-to-door campaigning for the BC Cancer Foundation and her love was woven into all the handiwork done for others – the quilts, hooked rugs, Norwegian sweaters, embroidered wall hangings, macraméd plant hangers – without assistance, without a word of self-congratulation.
A humble person’s greatness is revealed slowly, and it is only now that I see how extraordinary my mother’s contribution was to the landscape of our growing up lives. Like the humble heroes before her, it wasn’t because she expected her work to turn heads, it was because that was what someone who takes their calling seriously does. I wager she had no idea the company she kept! And I’m sure I will not be alone in raising a glass to these special heroes in our lives, our mothers, this month and for many to come.
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