There’s a good reason why some sayings become cliches. It’s because they are true. I know this because of things my mother said that live in me today.
It’s funny, but most of us did not want to be like our parents while we were growing. Also when we had our own kids, most of our goals were how we would do things differently. We were going to be better.
How wrong I was. I will always be grateful for all the things my mother taught me.
I never wanted to be like my mother. But as I was raising my children, I learned the true errors in my way of thinking. What a wise woman she truly was.
She passed away several years ago but she is still with me every day. I know she is because I hear her words fall out of my mouth continually. Believe me, it stops me in my tracks. And the best part is I hear my children often repeating the wise advice she offered.
That is the tops for me. I never thought my children listened to me. Amazingly, they do. They didn’t hear,”clean up your room” “or take out the garbage.” That is selective hearing I suppose.
But the good stuff, the wise stuff, the stuff I got from my mom, they got that down pat. My mother liked metaphors and apparently I do, too. I am passing that on to my children and co-workers as well.
Of course, the only way I know this is by eavesdropping. Eavesdropping was another motherly trait she shared with me. I was listening to my son as he gave advice to a friend. Shocking as this is, a teenage topic these days is what to do with friends that get on drugs because of peer pressure.
Here is where I heard my words that came straight from my mother come out of my teenager’s mouth:
“Birds of a feather flock together and if you roll around in the pig pen, don’t be surprised to find out you will come out smelling like a pig.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. Wait! That was another saying of hers.
Also, “When In Rome…” and, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Almost as good as learning your kids actually listen to what you say is when I hear her in my workplace.
Apparently, around here “there is more than one way to skin a cat.” I’m really sure we are not in that line of work, and never will be. But it does my heart good to know I am like my mom, I know because I hear her phrases every day.
Overhearing my co-workers are skinning cats and building Rome I giggle to myself. Yes I’m very sad she is gone, but here she is, living on.
Publisher’s Corner
"Jenni Fasselin"