Although it isn’t the strangest gift I’ve ever assembled, the box I filled for my mother-in-law, Louise Lamar Fuller, was certainly odd. 

An assortment of old rusted nuts and flathead nails, time-worn metal washers and knobs. Mismatched buttons. Costume jewelry with rhinestones missing. Earrings without matches, most without backs. A stack of old magazines and catalogs, some with pages torn out. A peculiar collection of odds and ends that most everyone would view as trash. 

Except for Louise.

Louise sees the texture and shape of each piece, and sees in them the potential for art. For decades, Louise has been able to see potential in drab lumps of clay. A master potter, she turns those lumps into fantastic, hand-built vessels and finishes them with such deep, warm glazes they glow as if the fire remains.

Recently, though, Louise has been taken with the art of collage, combining everyday items into gift tags and bookmarks. Her work has a charming wistfulness about it, like she’s combined jewelry and paper and an antique shop and a hardware store and your favorite page from a scrapbook all into one little thing.

The last time we visited them in Morgantown, she took me to her basement workshop and I watched as she put one together. She made it look so simple that later, back at home, I decided to try one myself.

I’ve seen preschool craft projects that looked more artistic.  

Dog nose art on windows that seemed done with more skill. 

It made me appreciate Louise’s talent all the more. And made me grateful to have a mother-in-law I so genuinely like and unabashedly admire.

I’m guess I’m just lucky.

For as far back as I can remember, my own mother has been my best friend. Yeah, I know. Some folks frown on parents who attempt to be friends with their kids, but Mom wasn’t that way. Her job as parent came first. The friend part evolved.  

Every year, I schedule to be off work the first Friday in May so Mom and I can hit the neighborhood yard sales in Putnam County. It’s been our tradition for at least 15 years. Throughout out the year, we go to other sales and do other things together, but that day is my favorite. It’s always just the two of us. 

Well, it’s just the two of us–plus all the people she stops to talk to. Mom has this way about her makes that makes everyone immediately comfortable and chatty. It’s a skill-or a gift- that I’d love to acquire.

Kind of like how I’d like to acquire Louise’s skill in the kitchen, where she can take any three ordinary ingredients and effortlessly combine them into an extraordinary meal. 

And how I’d like to emulate my mother’s ability to find humor in most every situation and her curiosity about darn near everything. 

And have as extensive a vocabulary (and the ability to correctly use that vocabulary) the same way as Louise. 

I want to combine the best of these two women so that I can be the kind of mom my daughter will have to work her tail off to copy. 

I’m lucky to have them. I know that.

And I’m lucky they both know me well enough to understand that gift-wise this Mother’s Day, this is pretty much all they’ll be getting from me.

Every year for Christmas, Mom gets me a new calendar. For years, she chose Far Side calendars, then Gary Larson retired and she had to find a new theme. Knowing my love for sayings (she’s the one who started me collecting them in the first place), it seemed natural for her to choose a Quote of the Day.

Although I’ve run across several keepers so far, one recent quote hit me wrong, prompting me to tear off the page, wad it up, and toss it in the trash. A few minutes later, I pulled it back out, curious about the reaction it had triggered in me.The quote came from a writer named Marcelene Cox. “A child can never be better than what his parents think of him.”

Total rubbish, I thought. (Funny how my thoughts come in italics and often sound British.) What anyone thinks about you can only hold you back if you let it.

Putting all the responsibility on the parents relieves a child from having to try. It says, It’s not up to you. You can blame someone else for what you don’t do. Sure, children whose parents believe in their abilities have a tremendous head start, but those who don’t-don’t get a free pass.

And thinking that way sounds suspiciously like rationalization.

Rationalization is, for me, a long-practiced skill. It’s what enables me to qualify French fries as a vegetable, apple turnovers as fruit, and pudding as dairy. It makes it possible for me to call getting passionately involved watching weekly ball games as participating regularly in rigorous physical sports, to unblinkingly blame the dryer for my jeans being too tight, and to feel comfortable about my solid retirement plan even though a good deal of it involves lottery tickets.

I know rationalization. We have a history together. And something about Marcelene Cox’s quote made me suspicious, hinted of some unpleasant truth.

I Googled her name. Up came more quotes.

“A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it.”

It was a quote to which many moms could relate, but also one hinting that some bitterness lurked. I read on.

“A sparkling house is a fine thing if the children aren’t robbed of their luster in keeping it that way.”

Another good one! And it was one that could feed right into my rationalizing way of thinking. If a clean house means you could be robbing your child of their luster, what kind of mother would I be if I risked something like that?

I was beginning to wonder if perhaps this Marcelene wasn’t a long-lost rationalizing sister of mine, but I detected a hint of bitterness in her luster quote that set my antennae to twitching. I kept reading.

The next one: “If at first you don’t succeed, blame your parents.”

Bingo.  The words of a person looking to point the finger away from their self.

           

Perhaps Marcelene had her tongue firmly in cheek when she came up with that last one, but for me, it tainted them all.

           

Yes, the failings of a parent can badly damage a child, but at some point, the child has a responsibility to try anyway. Accepting that they can never be better that what their parents think of them or that they can blame their parents if they don’t succeed isn’t rationalization. It’s a cop out.

For the second time that day, I wadded the calendar page and tossed it in the trash. I already had a different page in my collection that better framed how I feel.

“A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says someone pushed him.” (Elmer Letterman)