"My Mother Continued to Surprise Us"
I am always startled by the number of friends who look at young children and predict their futures: “an engineer in the making;” “undoubtedly an artist;” “empathetic from the get-go.” Not so many years later, the college admissions staff takes their crack at predictions, hoping to identify the applicants most likely to become a credit to the institution. One of the nicest things about growing old is that we know the end of the story and can answer the questions implied in youth. We know who we became. Or do we?
I met “Lila” when she was in her late seventies, an elderly women who sat on the board of an education NGO where I, too, worked. Lila was born into a prosperous German Jewish midwestern family. She was sent East to a highly regarded women’s college and returned home to marry a charming guy, from the same city, who became a prosperous lawyer. They had three highly successful children, she remained close to her siblings, played a great game of tennis, and was truly a generous and wise contributor to the board where we worked together.
In her mid-eighties Lila died, and I attended her funeral. The first of her middle-aged, articulate children, a daughter, spoke about Lila as a mother and what it meant to grow up in their family. Apparently Lila’s husband, who had died about a decade earlier, frequently wrote Lila love poems and would recite them to the delight of all. She read one for us. Not bad, really. Lila had been loved and enjoyed.
The second daughter spoke about Lila’s extensive work in and for the community, mentioning my organization in particular. My colleagues and I were pleased. Personally, it was an opportunity to remember Lila’s work with some humor and much gratitude.
And then the third child, a son, stood up. “My mother continued to surprise us” he began. “Once my father died, she began attending elder hostels regularly. There she met a guy we barely knew, but who brought great joy to my mom.” The son then went on to tell us about the annual motorcycle excursions Lila and her friend took together, and about how unlike the father this guy is but how he, too, cared for their mother, “not in the nest of our town, but out in a different world.”
I can well-imagine Lila’s parents looking at their small daughter in about 1920. She had managed to follow the ideal path they hadlaid out for her. But I am so happy to think that her path did not stop where their imaginations ended. “It was hard to realize that our mom had a life beyond us and our family” the son concluded, “but this surprise was perhaps, her final gift, to us, her children and to you, her friends.”