FOR THOSE WHO MOTHER

Do you remember your mom’s phrase? You can remember that phrase even now that you are

grown. You remember what she looked like, how you felt, where you both were, the sights

and smells around you when that one phrase was first uttered.

We were in the kitchen. Special guests were coming to dinner which meant it was an occasion

that called for her wedding china. The china collecting dust at the tippy top cupboard. She

would usually get a chair to reach up and carefully bring the china down to me, and I would

carefully carry the china to the table. She had painted our wooden table a bright pink with

matching chairs. The wallpaper was bright everything. It was the 1970’s after all. This time

though, she allowed me to climb up onto the counter and reach up to the china to hand to her.

I felt so trusted. I felt so capable. I felt so loved. And then, to my utter horror the event

unfolded in slow motion. I dropped a plate. It crashed and shattered all over the green

linoleum floor. Slow motion. I’m wincing as I share this decades later. I froze. My hands mid-

air, my eyes wide in shock dreading her reaction. She got up close to me. Helped me down

from the counter, looked at the shatters around our feet and said the phrase that sank in my

bones and has never left, “That’s okay Keri. It was an accident. People are more important

than things.” She swept up the shards off the floor and swept away the shards of my heart

break.

That phrase was with me with son #1 crashed the family suburban. When son #2 drug a conch

shell across a newly purchased coffee table. When daughter #1 came home with “lost” hair

bows day after day of school. When daughter #2 broke that same suburban window with a

softball. When daughter #4 backed into a parked car…twice! The list still grows. Her phrase

became my phrase, “People are more important than things.”

As I work with families who have experienced trauma, I hear the negative phrases from their

mothers. “You are nothing to me.” Or, they will state emphatically, “I do not want to sound like

my mother.” “My mother threw things at us.” “My mother didn’t care where I was or what I

did.” The shards are still there, waiting to be swept up and thrown away. We can help you

with that. Shards can be swept up. It takes effort and work, but they can be swept up and

thrown away. Hurtful phrases can even be replaced. “I believe in you.” “I am strong.” “I’m a

survivor.”

And so, this month as we celebrate mothers, we can celebrate ourselves too. What we have

changed from our past and what we have kept. Knowing that people are more important than

things. Knowing that we can still learn to become better.

I celebrate each of you who are doing the best you can.

Keri Smith, Executive Director