She worked hard to put food on the table, to make up for the wages my father was pissing against the wall.
She sent me to physical culture so I have decent posture and deportment.
She wouldn’t let the teachers in elementary school make me write with my right hand.
She never, ever let me get away with half-assing something. If I was busting ass and just honestly wasn’t much good at something, that was fine. But if I could do a good job and was being lazy, there was hell to pay. It’s something I never really noticed, much less appreciated, until I started trying to train entry-level workers who had always been allowed to coast along doing the bare minimum to get by. It becomes readily obvious in the first couple of days which school of thought a new hire’s parents subscribed to.
And in all honesty, I think even the things she’d tell you she did “wrong” benefitted my character. My older brother was a very difficult, time- and attention-consuming kid and I got left to my own devices to an extent that seems to bother her in retrospect. There were times when I kind of felt like an afterthought in my own family, and that kind of sucked, yes. But ultimately it made me a much more independent, self-reliant teenager and young adult than he was at a similar age, and more willing to wade in and figure out how to make something work than a lot of people I’ve known. That willingness has helped me a lot in my personal, creative, and profession life. A LOT.
Also, when my second-grade teacher wanted me to be evaluated by a shrink because I sometimes wanted to play by myself, she pretty well told the woman not to be such a fucking nutbar.
My mom did something similar. A pre-school teacher was concerned that I spent a lot of time playing by myself. My mom came home from the conference and asked me why that was. I said, “I only like me.” Mom shrugged, said, “Well, that makes sense then,” and left well enough alone.
She taught me to read early. She got my brothers and I pet cats and made it clear that it was our responsibility to feed them, brush them, and clean their litter. She helped us figure out the grief process when those cats died. She gave up a good career to stay home and raise us, and made a homemade lunch and dinner everyday. She made sure we didn’t watch too much TV and that we played outside every day. She gave us freedoms that increased as we aged.
More than anything else, she was just there. Throughout my tumultuous teen years my Dad was a workaholic undergoing a long, hard midlife crisis. He was always away - at work or on business trips. I didn’t totally trust him.
But my Mom was always, always, always there for me. I haven’t lived at home in 12 years and I still feel that I could call her anytime I really needed her and she would do everything in her power to help. She somehow balanced creating independent kids with also letting us know that she had our back when the chips were down. There is nobody in the world I trust like I trust my mother.
Everything. It hasn’t even been a year without her and it feels like a lifetime.
Encouraged science. Most of the time I didn’t realize I was learning anything.
Read to me or with me, daily, for the first ten years or so of my life.
Sang me lullabies, without my asking, which was nice when I started to feel like I should feel that I was too old - but still liked that bedtime ritual.
The most important thing: She encouraged me to be passionate, even when she thought I was crazy. When I finally convinced her to let me take martial arts lessons, she assumed I, all of 10 years old, would grow out of it quickly. She spent the next six years - until a friend started driving me - driving me 15 minutes to class, sitting and watching for an hour, and driving me home. She knew I loved it, and until relatively recently I had no idea that she still never got over flinching every time we sparred.
Also, I suffered a severe case of being a stupid, obnoxious, horrible teenager when I was about fifteen-sixteen. In retrospect I was absolutely awful to both parents but particularly my mom. She, for the most part, waited it out, and when I got better, didn’t hold any of it against me.
Oh, also, I don’t know if it’s a separate thing or the result of everything else, but when I was being a stupid teenager, she told me she’d still be there for me (she was). When I left for college she said I could always come home or call her for advice, whenever, and I figured it was true. When I flunked out of college, she said I was free to come home, and could stay until I found my next step (I did); and when I flitted off to Europe she said I could always ask for whatever help I needed. Same when I returned to school. Same when she came out for my graduation.
She didn’t abort me. And she taught me a little about cooking. That’s all I can think of.
Hmm… I cannot point out a specific thing mom did… I remember being well-loved. I remember being taught all the basic household chores… Cooking, sweeping, mopping, ironing, laundering, etc. So I could live by myself, if needed (and it was).
She sang to me songs she made up. If I just wanted someone to cuddle with and go to sleep, or if I wanted to cry, she was there. Every night, unless she was out during a work meeting or something, she would go to my room and talk with me of the day and talk me to sleep. And heck, even now, as an adult, if I visit them, or if she is with me, this ritual still exists.
She encouraged me to read, and gave me books (but that area was more of my dad’s turf).
This is something I didn’t realize was “teaching” until after I went to college, but when I was young and I was bored at a meeting or while waiting for food, to calm me down she would take out some napkins, a pen, and tell me to put cities in alphabetical order, or to figure out geographic places, or played hangman and taught me words, or tic-tac-toe or some other stuff.
But above all, I think knowing I was and am loved is the biggest thing for me. And the older I get, the more (in retrospect) I love how my mom raised me and wonder how the hell she put up with me all those years until I turned out semi-OK now…
My mother and I had many difficulties when I was an adult, but when I was a child, she was wonderful.
She taught me to read, and made sure that I was allowed to read in elementary school. This was in the 1960s, when parents weren’t supposed to know much about education, and the “experts” knew what was best as regards reading. My mother knew that the best thing for me was to let me read what I wanted to, and she made sure I could do that; my teachers’ protestations notwithstanding.
She exposed me to a number of different cultural influences. Thanks to her, I can appreciate Chicago and New Orleans jazz and R&B, Renaissance painters, Impressionists, Shakespeare, Tchaivkovsky, and the Beatles and Stones, among many others. She encouraged my own efforts in these areas, making sure I had music lessons (I play recreationally to this day), and was able to draw and paint and write as I pleased. She encouraged me to solve crossword puzzles, which hobby continues to consume me.
She tolerated, with good humour, my efforts at sports. She had been a figure skater, and so I was too; but she didn’t mind me playing football. Similarly, she hated guns, but when I was selected for my university’s varsity shooting team, she was supportive, and made sure I had enough ammo for practice (don’t ask).
As I said, she and I had many difficulties when I got older, but for the most part, she wasn’t too bad when I was younger. My only regret is that relations between us went so sour in the latter part of her life. She died when I was a young adult, so I have no idea how things might be nowadays.
My mom did the usual perfect mom stuff, like home-cooked meals and baking cookies with me and twice-a-week library trips.
When I was a typical, surly teenager, however, she and I had our Saturday brunch every week. We made those Pillsbury breadsticks and melted some Cheez Whiz, and Mom and I ate that and watched a movie, and talked for a few hours. And she listened. And even being a surly teen, I looked forward to that every week, and I loved knowing that she was there for me.
belladonna, I too have three sons and try to get through each day with with a minimum of tears and blood and I too cherish fond hopes of them growing into mature, loving, non-serial killing men.
As for what my mom did right, I never doubted for a minute that I was loved. You know the end of “Where the Wild Things Are” when Max longs to be “where someone loved him best of all”? That is how my mother made me feel, and still does.
This is especially impressive now that I know more of her personal story. The years of my childhood were a time of frequent depression for my mom and, in fact, she became an alcoholic and then a recovering alcoholic without me or my brothers ever noticing.
The first time my high school had a party, I had to be home at midnight. Things were dead until thereabouts of half past eleven…
Second time, I had to be home at midnight. At nine, things were dead. There was a good movie on the telly that night, so I went home and caught the family having dinner. “:eek: What happened?” “Oh, nothing, it’s just that since things aren’t going to start moving until almost midnight, and by then I have to come here, I figured I might as well come and watch Fred and Ginger rather than an empty floor.”
A few days before the third party, I ask my parents what time do I have to be home. And Mom answers “oh, we trust you, just come whenever.” Iwasn’tabouttosayno!
We were fairly poor when I was young and my mam shielded me from a lot of that. She sold what little jewellery she owned to feed us, went without herself so we could eat. She made the times when we had the electricity cut off seem like fun. When I look back on sitting in candlelight playing board games and telling ghost stories, getting a little heat from a standalone gas heater, they are amongst my happiest early memories. I’d wager she does not feel the same about those times.
She always encouraged me academically, even though she had left school at 14 and was never been encouraged by her own mother. On the flip side, when I dropped out of uni she was fully behind my decision and wasn’t disappointed in me.
When I got older I was picked on a bit for having cheap/second hand clothes. My mam got herself into a considerable amount of debt buying me clothes and shoes from slightly more upmarket places (I’m talking £20 for tops, £40 for jeans kind of expensive). This debt was a factor in why she stayed with my dad as long as she did and looking back I regret having made such a fuss about it. I have never had a credit card, store card or taken out loans having seen the stress it put on her so I guess I have her to thank for that too!
From the age of about 14 she allowed me a lot of freedoms most of my friends didn’t have. I won’t go into detail as I don’t doubt some people would think it spectacularly bad parenting but I’m grateful for the way she treated me in my mid-late teens.
Thanks, mammy!
My mom took me to the public library pretty often. For that I am very grateful.
I suppose the best thing my real mother did for me was to give me up.
My adopted mother, while not really being a very good mother, instilled a few things in me without ever meaning to - the traits of independence, confidence, and the ability to grow and mature and not stay the same. She didn’t realize she was giving me these but kids learn from example more than words.
My mom is a librarian and a great lover of books. She passed her love of reading onto me.
She was supportive of my talents and made it clear that she wanted me to be happy in whatever I did.
When I was a teenager she didn’t pry into my personal life much. This had good effects and bad effects, but I never felt suffocated.
She married a wonderful guy (my dad) and thus taught me about the kind of qualities valuable in a good marriage.
Hmmm…it’s quite tricky to distill the things that my parents did right (a house full of books, increasing responsibilities and privileges that came with age) with things that just my mum did right.
I’m the opposite. My mom and I had issues when I was a kid (specifically, a pre-adolescent and adolescent) and I’ve only really come to appreciate her as an adult. As a kid, she never seemed to have any time for just me (I was the middle of three kids born in three years), and I was convinced that, while she loved me because I was her child, she didn’t particularly like me. I’m still not convinced I was wrong in that, either; I wasn’t a very attractive child (in any sense of the word) and I was very needy.
But . . . She instilled in me a love of reading. She brought me up to love God. She was an example of what it meant to look like and to act like a lady.
Now that I’m an adult, I think the thing she does “most right” for me, is be a good example. She’s had cancer twice and has a lung condition that is slowly killing her over time. Yet she is unfailingly brave, she never despairs or asks “why me?”, or at least she does so only in private. She takes each day as a gift and lives with an attitude of gratitude. She’s more relaxed. She is intellectually curious: she’s in two book clubs, takes Italian and French classes, makes stained glass windows, loves to travel. She’s the center of our family and the kind of woman I now have sense enough to want to be.
My mother taught me how to be efficient - she absolutely cannot STAND to waste time, or have unfinished tasks at the end of the day.
I only picked up the “how-to” part, not the attitude behind it. So it means I know how to work quickly through my tasks and have more time to waste on the Dope! 
Sorry, I can’t think of anything else. I’m still astonished that a human with absolutely no morals or ethics, let alone warmth or compassion, was put in charge of raising a baby (me). But I don’t want to drag down the spirit of this thread. So everyone who posted here about how awesome and badass yo’ mommas are should a) go to hell, cuz I be jealous, and b) go give her a big ol’ hug.