This is my 27th Mother’s Day. They have a wistful tinge to them now as my kids are all adults. The holiday just isn’t the same without little ones proudly bringing you their school crafts and hugging you all day. Nothing is, really – still adjusting to my empty nest.
My mom is still with us (57 Mother’s Days for her). I was lucky enough to have five Mother’s Days while my grandmother, Nanny, was still alive. Three generations of mothers sharing the day, each representing the vastly different expectations of what made a mother of their time.
Velma Mae Greene’s parenting goals were to raise her son to support a family and her daughter to care for a family. She married my grandfather, Norman, in 1933 when she was 19, had my Uncle Larry right away and then my mom 10 years later. Grampa was a welder in a local grain elevator. Nanny was an expert seamstress, as most women of her generation were, in her later years working at a garment factory making wedding gowns. She called this her “pin money.” Grampa paid the bills; she managed the house, sewed her family’s clothes and cooked everything from scratch. She did not drive. Grampa tried to teach Nan to drive once but she couldn’t keep the car in her own lane. “You’re taking your half of the road out of the middle,” my Grampa said and that was the end of her lessons.
My grandparents were by all accounts a lively young couple, busy with church activities and curling (Grampa voted to make the curling club co-ed so the wives could join). Pictures of them on a beach show Norman throwing a cool guy pose with his new car and my Nan doing a pinup pose on the hood. A friend’s grandmother who grew up with them told me a story from my grandparents’ courting days, when they would sneak out of great-grandad’s farmhouse to run behind the barn to steal a few kisses, while one of her five sisters burned toast in the kitchen so their parents, already in bed, would smell it and think they were still being chaperoned.
I don’t remember Nan doing much of anything just for herself; she was always volunteering or babysitting me and my cousins. She was a regular churchgoer and ran all the socials. She did take a trip to California to visit her brother after Grampa died, and she started swimming at the YMCA in her late 60’s. She died on Mother’s Day, 2002.
My mother came of age in the early 60s, when women threw off the domestic chains to follow their dreams of careers and looked with scorn on the idea of “serving their man.” Instead of getting married, she went to nursing school. She gave little credence to anything Nanny considered necessary life skills. She didn’t like to sew. She could manage to sew on a button; all other mending jobs went to the tailor. She was a basic cook with a revolving short list of recipes for meals who only spent an entire day cooking on Thanksgiving and Christmas. She had a cleaning lady come in to do the housework twice a month. We never attended church unless someone was getting married. Mom had her own paycheque, controlled her own money and successfully managed the family finances. She paid for her clothes (and mine), her cars and her indulgences – one of which was a full length beaver fur coat when I was in high school. My dad took great delight that week in all his co-workers asking him “you let her buy that?” so he could respond, “I didn’t let her do anything - it’s her money” and then watch them just stare at him.
My mom had the marriage she wanted: a successful career as a psychiatric nurse, independence, one child and a husband who, unlike her father, didn’t expect her to jump up and run for the teapot when he tapped his cup with his spoon. The household chores were still divided by the expectations of their sex but it was an amiable arrangement.
My mother’s parenting focus was on preparing me to take care of myself, not finding a man who would take care of me. She wanted me to have life experiences and become my own person. When we discussed my future, it was about what I would be attending university for. She never mentioned marriage.
I am Gen X, the 80s generation, and the idea of marriage and motherhood right after high school for us was laughable. It was still assumed we’d marry and have kids someday, but not before earning a degree and starting glowing careers where we would have a corner office, tons of cash, and then effortlessly fit a husband and kids into this dynamic. Of course, by the time my generation hit 35 we were all broke from covering the cost of daycare and the huge increase in the cost of living with our inflation-stagnated salaries. I think the goal of my generation became to teach our kids how to manage the incredible amount of choice they had and how to reconcile dreams and expectations with reality.
My parenting was a blend of the attributes of all three of us. I have always worked full time, paid my own bills and looked after myself. In marriage I handle our finances and my husband does a fair(ish) share of the chores. I do like washing dishes; I don’t like dusting or vacuuming but unlike my mother can’t afford to hire anyone. I had a brief interest in learning to sew but didn’t have the patience for it. I did take a cooking course and now prepare meals from scratch, no processed foods.
My parenting goals were to raise independent and financially savvy kids to enable them to maneuver in the debt-burdened society they became adults in. We did not discuss marriage. I frankly didn’t care if any of them got married – what I wanted was for them to discover who they are, find their passions and make a life for themselves in a career they would find fulfilling. To live for the moment, not for a possible future that may not even happen. So far, so good, although not always in the manner expected. My oldest dropped out of university, works in warehousing and lives in a shared apartment in Toronto. Child #2 got married a year ago, is going to college part time for her ECE and is blissfully happy in a 420 sq ft apartment with her husband. Child #3 graduated from Police Foundations this year and I expect will move on to police training in the next couple of years.
Mother’s Day is almost over. One kid visited and brought me a gift of maple syrup from Quebec; one kid phoned because they couldn’t afford the gas to drive up here today, and the one still at home cleaned the house for me. Very nice day all round.
Missing my Nan today. Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate.