When I returned from School every day my Mom was always waiting for me with some freshly made cups of vanilla or chocolate pudding. She started out making prepackaged Italian puddings but then one day made me a fresh vanilla pudding using some lemon peel to solidify the desert. After that I could not go back to the premade box puddings – Mom’s home style pudding made from scratch was just too good.
We would sit down in the kitchen, since only the three main meals would have been eaten in the dining room, and there in the kitchen Mom would ask me how my day went. I would share any problems I had with her and she greatly enjoyed looking forward to that time every day.
Mom was my counselor and would answer any questions I would have.
As I grew older and developed an interest in girls one of the things she went out of the way to make sure I did was to not let any young girl know that I had an interest in them. At the time I did not quite get the gist of what she was telling me and only decades late did I realize that what she had counseled me to do in the 1960’s was very similar to what I would later tell out son Andrew: “Don’t let a girls know you are interested in them until you are ready to marry them and her father and mother have already given you their blessing”.
Considering that Mom was not yet a Christian at the time is was incredible that she should actually say what she did with no direction from the Scriptures.
Today I know from reading the Scriptures that the Bible teaches that single men should treat single girls as sisters with all purity and older women as mothers.
Mom was also my father’s great consigliere. She advised my Dad many times on both business as well as questions about life. Mom was the one who shared her Christian faith with Dad and started him off by suggesting he read the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. And my Dad did. He even began quoting verses from the things he began to learn. I think he was greatly intrigued by what God had to say in Proverbs and felt that several of the instructions found in Proverbs related to him directly.
Mom always counseled Dad to aim high. She felt that he was not aiming high enough, even while he had already done so well in business. She was right. He could have gone much higher – if he had aimed higher.
In an age where most women spend a good part of their life thinking about how to promote themselves, Mom contrasted with all others by encouraging and placing herself behind Dad – pushing him ahead. She understood how important it was for a wife to back her husband.
And my Dad highly respected Mom’s opinion.
I wish she was still here now so I could listen to her advice as I did years before.