Friends know I like to tell that story of my mom's forgetting to pick me up after choir practice at the church when I was a kid. It wasn't a random forgetful moment, but a regular occurrence that eventually turned into a ritual of my getting rides home with the choir director, arriving just as dinner was being placed on the table and my mom's "Oh, Beth, when did you get home?" To which I disdainfully replied, "It's Thursday...you forgot me at choir...again..."
I recalled this experience to a dear friend and colleague, Dottie, who knew my mom professionally, to which she replied, "I'm sure that never happened, your mom is so organized!"
Which is true...at the time we were speaking, she was teaching a time management course to the undergraduate students at Bryn Mawr College. I smiled at my friend as we waited for mom to pick me up after work (we both worked at Bryn Mawr and car-pooled.)
After about 15 minutes, I turned to Dottie and said, "I bet she forgot me."
She replied, "She'd never forget you. She just got held up." Several minutes later Mom arrived and Dottie related my comment.
Mom's reply? "I got almost to Rosemont before I remembered her!"
It's a story of being a third child. By the time my parents had me they were parenting alumni, what I brought in challenges, they seemed to overcome with experience and a typically 1970s laissez faire parenting style that would dismay my own children. For example, by the time I was in high school the rule was you miss the bus, you get yourself to school—walk, ride a bike, take the train—they'd write a note, but wouldn't provide transportation. I learned my senior year how quickly damp hair freezes in cold weather when you run for the bus. My girls would be appalled. And yet, in these cases, I never felt neglected, unloved, or dismissed.
Nor did I truly ever appreciate my mother, having only recently come to a point in my life where I am in utter amazement at all that she did. At a time when many of my friends' moms were homemakers, Mom worked "part-time" as a physical educator at Immaculata College, co-owned and directed several field hockey and lacrosse camps, served as chair of the township Park and Rec Board, sang in the church choir, had an active social life playing tennis and skiing with friends, AND had a home cooked meal on the table every night...E-V-E-R-Y night. Then she cleaned up after dinner, typed my last minute papers for school, and relaxed in front of the TV, setting her hair to Johnny Carson.
The dinner on the table every night has me in awe as the Carey family routinely has dinner "on your own" or "make do" meals, sometimes out of necessity of timing, many times out of sheer fatigue.
And that big mahogany dinner table literally expanded as needed. Besides the five Shillingfords, we were joined daily by my grandmother and Uncle Willie, who both lived with us. And myriad others dropped in—neighborhood kids and friends who happened to be there at serving time, an occasional colleague or student of Mom's...
But there in the center of it all was Mom—svelte and poised, always ready to make an eloquent speech or to offer advice, be a friend or a mother, whatever was needed in the moment. She's still there, now chief champion and defender of the clan, with my dad, attending every concert, award ceremony, performance, meet, or game for her grandchildren and still mothering the three of us through our various struggles and cheering on our triumphs.
Parenting doesn't shape children in the way any parent expects it to—children are shaped incrementally by breaths and moments crystallized in time and tattooed on their psyche. I don't know if my mother forgot me at choir because I was an independent child, whom she could confidently assume would find her way home or if I became an independent woman because my mother allowed me to find my own way. It doesn't matter. I am ever grateful for the lesson. And my knowledge of her belief in me.
