A Mother's Voice

It’s been five years since my mother died, just three weeks before the delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday made her early appearance in our family. My mom teased me about how “over the top” I was about our first granddaughter, the lovely Madelyn Simone, referencing my T-G columns about how smitten I was with Madelyn. I’m guessing she would have something to say about how Lizzie, Henry and Emma have also captured my smitten heart. 

My mother never did catch the internet bug, leaving that pursuit to my dad, so I mailed her copies of my newspaper column every couple of weeks. She saved every one, preserving them in albums. That’s what mothers do.

In my early years as a T-G columnist, I had a rule of thumb that asked, “What will my mother say if I write this, if I use a particular series of words and it’s printed in the newspaper?” Some people are able to leave behind any sense of mama-inspired conscience by age fifteen, but not me. I still have that niggling sense of what my mother’s response might be to something I say or do that crosses a certain line – and I know right where that line is. 

Sometimes I hear her voice and ignore it (at my own peril), but sometimes her cautionary nudge still causes me to rethink a decision or refrain from speaking. As an active pastor in the Ashland community for the first five years of my column-writing, I also had to recognize how my words might impact that ministry. And even now, eight years after retirement, I do consider my audience, knowing that many readers don’t share my social or political views. Yes, my mother’s voice, my ministry’s standing in the community, and my reticence to offend can sometimes temper the words I put on paper. Plus, I have no desire to be sued for libel or defamation of character. Words matter.

I still remember my high school English teacher, Mrs. Holcomb, and her admonition to never use the word “thing,” as there was always a more precise term to use. Yet I doubt Mrs. Holcomb or my mother had “skank” in mind to describe a former first lady, U.S. senator, and secretary of state. This derogatory term for a female, implying trashiness or tackiness, lower class status and/or poor hygiene, isn’t one that regularly crosses my lips. I picture Ralphie in A Christmas Story, contemplating his punishment for the use of a particular word.“What would it be? The guillotine? Hanging? The chair? The rack . . . Hmmph. Mere child’s play compared to what surely awaited me.” Thus the iconic image of Ralphie, a bar of red Lifebuoy soap filling his mouth. Words matter.

What might my mother possibly think about how easily alternative narratives can be created, such as one accusing a former congressman of murder with no basis, a family’s decades-old grief strewn about the internet with impunity? Twitter apologizes, but what about the tweeter? We couldn’t get away with that as kids.

If our moms and teachers had a problem with the words we used and the stories we concocted, they were even more concerned about actions that harmed others. How could a man be ambushed and executed while jogging or a man struggle to breathe as a uniformed man knelt on his neck? “That man could be my son,” said my friend, and I feel her words in my bones, the desperate, abject fear of a mother’s heart who can’t protect her son because of the color of his skin. Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, their deaths an anguish that can never heal. 

Irvin D. Yalom’s prophetic words frighten me: “If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.” Tragedy shrinks with distance, and evil flourishes in silence. Today, in my mother’s memory, my own mother-voice joins the ancient lament (Matthew 2:18): “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are killed.” Today, my own mother-eyes will not look away; my own mother-voice will not be silenced.