Headline, June 17 2024/''' MOTHERS' ANGELICS MOSAICS '''

''' MOTHERS' ANGELICS

 MOSAICS '''

STUDENT ANGEL MOTHER : '' A GREAT MOTHER MAYBE no better than the rest of us. Only the children know the truth.  Sometimes, particularly in a public parenting setting, I will play the Better Mother.

This is the mother who stands attentively outside a music audition, serenely listening to the notes emanating from within. She realizes, the parent next to her said '' Haydn,'' not '' Biden.''

When her child emerges, the Better Mother  isn't sprawled on the floor playing Spelling Bee but instead greets him with an encouraging commentary on the second movement. Also, she has brought a snack.

The Better Mother understands the lacrosse match [game?], cheering at appropriate moments in ways that hearten rather than humiliate. She knows the coach and chats amiably with team parents about various maneuverings on the field, nimbly expanding the conversation to school committees and after-school events. She did not bring a book.

The  Better Mother ensures her kids have dress shoes that aren't two-sizes too small. She bakes. She reads official emails from school and camp from beginning to end. 

She knows which teachers your kids are supposed to get and whom to email if they aren't gotten. She always brings a water bottle.

She's not the mother who didn't know there was a school concert and has to sneak in as the lights go down. She knows which side of the field her child is playing on and possibly which position. She never texts at a stoplight with her child in the car.

She is empathetic but not overbearing, affectionate but not treacly, wise but not smug, concerned but not anxious. She is the mother who knows dangers but never checks in on a child for the wrong reason.

The Better Mother is, by definition, a better mother than I am.

She can be total stranger spotted at the moment or familiar face at a birthday party. Either way, she is a natural star in the play for which you haven't quiet memorized your lines.

Most mothers -and fathers- probably have a personal vision of their own competition, depending on one's skill set or lack thereof.  For me, it depends on the content, my mood, the child in question and the spectrum of parental figures in the vicinity, even sometimes on which TV show I last watched or what book I'm reading.

For a period, I decided that a better mother than I was Mary-Kay Wilmers, a former editor of The London Review of Books, a woman I've never met but read about in '' Love, Nina : Dispatched From Family Life,'' a memoir by Nina Stibbe, who served as a nanny to Wilmer's two precocious sons.

Wilmers surrounded her two children with clever British eminencies like the playwright and novelist and Alan Bennett, the biographer Claire Tomalin and the critic John Lahr : Raised among brilliance, her boys became sharp wits themselves, biting and slightly wicked in their humour.

As I didn't have any stories literary figures lighting up my dinner table, I simply let loose all my own most caustic comments, the kinds of uncharitable thoughts you usually reserve for like-minded adults.

Alas, without elegant British companions I was merely encouraging rude sarcasm. My error was highlighted in the presence of another Better Mother, my fried Robin, whose children looked stranger in the eye upon meeting, shook hands firmly and managed civilized niceties. 

The Honour and Serving of Great Opinions and Writings on Mothers continues. The World Students Society thanks author Pamela Paul.

With most loving and respectful dedication to all of Mankind, Mothers of the World, and then Students, Professors and Teachers. See Ya all prepare for Great Global Elections on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless