You can't hurry love

My mom was and still is a modern-day Wonder Woman

Mom’s well-earned wrinkles and gray hair belie the busy, vibrant life she once lived raising 13 children. Even in her day, she was an anomaly. Having such a large family today is virtually unheard of. “How did she do it?” I’m always asked.

First of all, she and Dad made up their minds early to have a big family. In fact, they planned to have 17 children (12 sons and 5 daughters). When they ended up with only 7 boys and 6 girls, they joked about falling short. 

Dad had just one older brother and a twin who died when they were about seven months old, so he felt he missed out on the fun that comes from being part of a big family. Consequently, he always wanted to have his own big family. Fortunately for him, Mom was a willing partner who was also extremely organized, smart, and capable.

She liked to say she “raced through the day,” which was no exaggeration. Rising early, she worked quickly and efficiently but also cheerfully, and, singing as she went, she came up with many shortcuts to get everything done. For example, she made dozens of peanut butter sandwiches (Was there any other kind?) to freeze so we could pop them into our lunch bags each morning. Also, instead of using one washer and dryer, she would go to the laundromat a couple of times a week in the wee hours of the morning and, with our help, monopolize all the machines with her twenty or more loads so the clothes would be clean, dry, and folded before school started.

No moment went to waste. Sitting on the kitchen counter sat a stack of 3x5 cards on which she’d write tasks and the approximate time required for completion. Then, whenever she had, say, 10 minutes, she’d grab a card and quickly knock out the task. No food went to waste either. To her great disappointment, in those days there was no Costco for buying food in bulk, so she put together her own homemade quick mixes for pancakes and hot chocolate, and she became an expert at finding deals, buying up day-old bakery goods and large canned goods to line our shelves.

Mom worked very hard from morning till night, but she also insisted we all work. In fact, job charts were her specialty. Posted on the kitchen walls were always three job charts: morning, evening, and Saturday jobs with one built-in “free” day for each of us. We children weren’t the only ones helping out either. Our friends (and just about anybody who walked through the door) were also enlisted to help in one way or another. Somehow, Mom thought they all enjoyed being included in our family work and commotion.

The last seven children came in less than ten years, and Mom worried we would feel like a number instead of a child. It would have been easy to feel that way since we were often asked, “Now, what number are you?” To counter such queries, she made a conscious effort to express love to each child individually. For this, she had no shortcut. She didn’t want a day to go by without us knowing we were both wanted and loved, and loving us took time—lots of time! It took being there for us when other things more pressing or interesting beckoned; it took being patient when she was tired; it took talking to us, laughing with us, teaching us, and comforting us. As you can imagine, Mom was stretched to her limits most of the time, so the love we didn’t get from her (and Dad) we found in each other. In our family, love was expected and given freely.

Even above her desire to share her maternal love stood Mom’s unwavering commitment to teaching us about God and Jesus Christ and the love They had for us. She knew that without Them she could have never accomplished what she did. Similarly, she knew one day each of us would carry our own loads and face our own challenges and trials that would require more than her love alone. Through her example and encouragement, we learned to pray and partner ourselves with God for strength and guidance.

As some of her speed and memory have waned, Mom feels compensated by seeing her children live joyfully and love each other. No longer is she strapped for time or for cash and no longer does she have to make big meals or long to-do lists, but she still sings her way through each day and she still looks for ways to be helpful. 

She is still teaching us, too. We are learning, in our busy lives, to slow down with her and for her so that we can both give and receive love, and there’s no shortcut for that. You just can’t hurry love.