Mother's Day Thoughts

This Mother’s Day, and Mother’s Days for some years now, I neither am a mother nor have a mother. If I were a certain kind of person, I’d let that anger me or make me bitter. And while it does make me a little sad, remembering Mom, I’m so surrounded with reminders of the people who love me and think of me on Mother’s Day that I can’t be sad for long.

On Mother’s Day, I’ve heard from most of my nieces and nephews, the “real” ones—my brother’s kids, who are related to me by blood—as well as my best friend’s girls, who have always called me “Aunt Judyy.” In fact, I often visit my friend and her family for Mother’s Day and get the whole treatment—breakfast in bed, cards and flowers, and so much sweetness from three girls who aren’t my own but who love me like family. It’s especially nice because my brother’s family is just too far away for more than annual visits. But these three nieces of my heart make it a wonderful holiday.

And if mothering is nurturing, I can’t forget all the students who have variously suffered and blossomed (most of them, a little of both) under my instruction. I’m not one of those teachers who thinks of herself as functioning in loco parentis; that is, a teacher, at least at the university level, isn’t a surrogate parent, at least in my view. While I care deeply about all my students, it’s a different sort of thing from what their parents feel for them. For one thing, I have no urge to spoil them or coddle them or accept less than their best efforts. Not that every parent does those things, but I think the impulse to do them is stronger in the parent. What’s most important to me is that students succeed in my class and learn what they need to learn from me so they’ll be prepared for the next step. And yes, parents do that too, but for me, it’s THE goal.

But that’s all just details. Bottom line: I love teaching, I love my students, and I really do feel that to teach is to parent the world.