I have a fearless mother. Any discussion about fear or
my lack of it starts, and nearly ends, there.
My mother and father taught me the meaning and
meaninglessness of money. His job at the shipyard never
brought much, but they tithed at the church, and there
was always something for anyone who needed it. Money
meant only what it should mean: a roof over our heads,
food on the table, and the means to help anyone with
less. There was never a thought of envy, status, or worry
associated with money. I know that the reason I was able
to make money in business is because I could risk it. I
didn't need it; I didn't love it. It was just a side effect of
doing work I loved.
My mother taught me about work, too. She got a job
at seventeen to support her mother and put her older
sister through college. She was young, but she was feisty.
When her boss scolded her one day for being a few
minutes late, she showed him the time sheet and pointed
out that she had worked overtime most nights that
month. Without pay. She was proud of her work, and she
would take no guff about shirking responsibilities. This
was around the Depression, when people were lined up
for any job, and employers knew it. Fearless.
When as a teenager I was fired from my first job, behind the counter
of a coffee shop, and was convinced that I would be a
hard-core unemployable for the rest of my life, my
mother wasted no time. She fired up the Dodge, told me
to get in, and drove me the twenty miles into Boston to a
temp agency. By that afternoon, I had a filing job. "Don't
evah worry, honey... There's always another job for a
smaht girl like you. Just climb back on the hoss." (This
was New England, after all.)
And somehow, without ever saying it outright, but by
living it, my mother taught me that anything's possible.
There are no limits to what a "smaht girl" can do. Pretty
never counted, position never counted, but the adventure
that was life did count. She taught me to jump in, with
joy and moxie, and take it on.
My mother is ninety-eight now and lives with me.
Her eyes still sparkle with good humor, and the moxie is
intact. But she's winding down, surely and gracefully, like
a beautiful old clock. And this brings me to what I do
fear. Nothing scares me more than the people I love being
lost to me or having to suffer. The only time I ever saw
anything close to fear in my mother's eyes was when my
brother was lost at sea. Or when our country doctor told
her I would go deaf if he couldn't keep a throat infection
under control. Or even when our cat came home in
horrific shape after a fight. (For the record, my brother
was found, I can hear a snarky remark from my daughter
three rooms away, and the cat lived to a ripe old age.) You
give over to those you love the key to your peace of mind
and you never get it back.
So even my mother was not without fear. And none of
us can ever claim to be so. But she taught me to put it in
its place. And there it has stayed.
--Excerpted from On Becoming Fearless ... In Love, Work and Life.
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