Raising Admirable Kids

To be an admirable Mom, one of my main goals in life, I need more than admiring kids. After all, it's no feat to get KIDS to admire you; if you simply show them gentle love, fierce support, and calm trust, you're a virtual superhero in their early years. But to get my grown-up children to admire me...now, that's the kind of admiration that really matters, for it is based not only on how I treat them, but on how I treat the world. And such admiration from them results, most importantly, in their becoming admirable themselves. My desire for their admiration is thus not about feeding my ego, but about contributing to the world.

When my son spontaneously hugs me after I've come home from visiting a sick relative, and whispers down (DOWN now, he's so tall!) into my hair, "You're such a good woman, Mom," I've begun to meet my goal. When my youngest teenage daughter says, "Mom, thank you so much for helping me follow my passion for acting and singing; I'm going to be the same way with my own kids," then I see HER as a future admirable Mom. When my oldest daughter, from college, tells me that her new friend is interested in reading my newest novel manuscript, I feel awed that my daughter admires me and my work enough to make it a topic of discussion with some young woman whom I've never met. "Oh my gosh, you told your friend about my novel?" I gush. And she replies matter-of-factly, "Well she loves poetry novels and yours is great, so I recommended it. I wish it would get published already!" My daughter, my fan. Sigh.

As I continue to raise my daughters and son into adulthood, I try to remember to ask myself, "Now how can I set the best example for the sake of my grandkids and great-grandkids (if I am so blessed)?" And though I might gripe about their lack of help with dishes or laundry, or try to instill responsibility with too many "No's" and not enough "Okay's" sometimes, I honestly, earnestly, try to be the kind of parent who catalyzes, rather than stifles, growth. Some of the most important words I can say as a Mom are "I trust you to make the right choice;" however, the importance of those words is contingent upon the value of my trust. Admirability must precede admiration.

Peace Lost

One pure moment of world peace, even if it immediately vanished, would do more to inspire us than all the moving words and often futile actions of peacemakers throughout the centuries, for having seen peace as a reality, we would certainly unite in desperation to REGAIN what we all lost.

In Response to My Student's Prompt To Write a Poem Related to the Holocaust

My student came to me with a school assignment: write a poem in response to a Holocaust victim's poem, "The Butterfly," by Pavel Friedman. We discussed the particular juxtaposition of a yellow butterfly's beauty with the haunting images of life in the Jewish ghetto, and the symbol of hope amid the ruins of life. I asked him to imagine himself in a concentration camp: "So, as an inmate, what would you see every day as you worked, something that you could see in another way, a brighter way, out of both desperation and hope?"
He mentioned a barbed wire fence in front of flowers on the other side. I replied, "How about the barbed wire fence itself--how might a hopeful, yet hopeless person view such an ugly fence in a new light; what simile could describe the wire and the barbs as looking like something happier?" I drew a line with asterisk-like barbs across his paper. "What does it look like to you?" I asked.
He replied, "Flowers on a metal vine." And so his poem, and mine simultaneously, was born. He turned in his free verse to his teacher with pride; I'm posting mine here, hoping to elicit your comments.


SONNET FROM ANOTHER LIFE
by Susan L. Lipson

Metallic flowers on a silver vine
Stretch taut to keep us in their garden walls,
Where worms like us must dig, but never whine,
Must bury seeds of hope before they fall;
No birds alight upon these petal spikes,
Lest they get pierced like friends I’ve loved and lost,
Friends who were but “vermin,” “dogs,” or “kikes,”
Rebelling, not considering the cost.
To sniff these blooms brings blood, not pleasant scents,
Yet still the petal barbs tempt me to climb—
Just up and over!—leave behind this fence,
Escape to fragrant fields and summertime…
Confinement alters views, both tempts and taunts;
Like a relentless ghost, our minds it haunts.