Since it was recently Mother's Day, I was thinking about what the most important things that my Mom taught me were. I was putting it all together with some other thoughts from a book I recently read called What Your Childhood Memories Say About You (by Kevin Leman). In my memories, I have very few of my Mom. Like hardly any at all. In yet I know she was there for me every day growing up, and that much of who I am was shaped by the things she instilled into me.
I tried to find a picture from when my Mom was about my age. Here she is probably at about 37, since I look to be about 12.
The one memory that stands out above all all the rest was when I was in 5th grade. Our class was going camping for our field trip, and we had to choose groups of who we wanted in our tents. This was quite exciting to get to go camping with our friends and get to stay together in a tent by ourselves. The freedom! The thrill of being without parents! (although my parents did come along as chaperones) Anyhow, when I came home from school to tell my Mom about it, she asked, "Do all the girls have a tent to stay in? Is anyone left out?" I sheepishly replied that Samantha (the geeky new girl) didn't. Mom told me that the next day I would go back to school and ask Samantha to stay with me and my friends in our tent. I was mortified. I know that I cried and begged her not to make me do this. Oh, the humiliation! But, she was firm and said that if I didn't do it, she would come to school and ask her herself. Now, that would have been even worse, so I did as she told me and asked Samantha to join me and my friends in our tent.
We then (at school) had heard that Samantha's grandma was coming along as a chaperone also. I remember making jokes (I maybe didn't make them up myself, but participated in joking about it) about her grandma in her wheelchair and laughing hysterically. When the camping trip finally came, Samantha's grandma was there with her truck and camper and was maybe like 50 years old. When it poured down rain, everyone else in the class was stuck in their soaking wet tents and our tent of girls was warm and dry, drinking hot cocoa and eating popcorn by the furnace in Samantha's grandma's camper.
That was a really profound lifelong lesson for me, because I learned that doing the right thing will reap blessings (not always in the way you even anticipate), and actually spending time with people will help you get to know them for who they really are. I remember Samantha's grandma calling us her friends and feeling guilty about what we'd said behind her back.
Samantha left our school shortly after, so we weren't able to get to be close friends. I recently learned as an adult that she (and her sister) were living with their grandparents at that time because her parents' were getting divorced and so I think about how hard that must have been for her. To have to move to a new home and new school and then have kids make fun of her for really no reason except that she was new. How horrible kids can be. I wish I had stood up for her more and had done so sooner.
Anyhow, further on through my growing years, my Mom always made sure we welcomed the newcomers or outcasts or underdogs. Whether at church or school or on vacation, she always made sure we "made others feel welcome". Even those cute 20 year old Finn boys that were working for my Dad. Ugh. She made shy little me (15) go out and visit with them when I would have rather clipped my toenails. Or the exchange students at school that no one wanted to be friends with (what a horrible torture to send your kids overseas when they can't even speak English). She'd always say, "How would you like it if you were the newcomer?"
I have now been the newcomer many times. And for an introvert like myself, it's not very fun, unless someone steps out and makes you feel welcome. I'm still not very good at reaching out myself, but I still try.
Because those words of Mom still echo in my head, "How would you like it if you were the newcomer? Go and make them feel welcome!" And now I tell my own kids the very same thing (and they roll their eyes and pretend they didn't hear me).
Me rock rappelling on that same camping trip at age 10. I was the first kid in the class to try it. Everyone else was too scared, but once I went, then others did.
