Hello.
Yes, it is a Sunday today. A day of rest, a day for spending time with friends and family, and of going to church.
And yet I found myself in Delta Gama Sorrority where I served brunch for a total of 120 sorority girls and their mothers. We made cucumber, egg salad and chicken salad tea sandwiches along with chocolate dipped Strawberries and lemon bars. Everything looked beautiful.
Yes, everything looked beautiful including all of the Sorority girls and their mothers as they flooded the dining room with every kind of aroma of every kind of perfume known to man, fancy frilly dresses, mounds of makeup and their noses turned up at the sign above the dish bin that states: "please rinse your own dishes." (This is a sign that was put up to help alleviate the amount of crusty dishes that appear in mountain sized stacks in the morning that take an hour a piece to wash because of whatever was left their the night before that they did not rinse off their plate.)
As usual at work, I silently observe the madness around me as I frantically attempt to get all of the food in it's proper place at the proper time. This morning I came to a different understanding of the sorority girl life.
I want to talk about their mothers. The mothers who probably all drive BMW's and wear suits to work and call themselves career women. The kind of mothers who are driven to make money so that they might give their children the luxury of paying for their college expenses along with their sorority membership so that they can get fed every meal without lifting a finger, and their house will be spotless all the time due to the relentless work of Mindy, the house cleaner.
These are the kind of mothers who want the best for their daughters- the best kind of food the best kind of luxury, the best that all this material world can give them.
Well, I'll be darned, I love my mother the best. I think about her: the mother who never held a job, who worked hard all her life for things that money cannot buy. The mother that barley wears makeup except for special occasions, who has a beauty that is more deep and rich and meaningful than makeup and fine things can bring. She is the woman who'se hands have been withered by years of creating beautiful pieces of art; the same hands I remember often being covered with flour and kneading dough.
She is the mother who quietly waters her lawn, bakes cookies, and rides her bike to the seaside to sit quietly by herself to think and just be, who drives a 1997 Ford explorer and shops at thrift shops, who loves sitting and talking for hours with her family.
Every pain I have felt because of my mother has been a profound experience that has caused my life to be richer and deeper and more meaningful. (I feel this way about alot of different types of pain I have gone through, but for now I am just speaking of my mother).
I think about these sorority girls and whatever pain they might feel inside toward their mothers. They have one great thing that is different than I have had in my life: They can cover up their troubles with money.
During my stormy adolescent years, I had friends, I had other family, I had God and church. I did not have money.
I am not sure how to end this, except to say that my mother is by no means a perfect person, but I came to realize today how grateful that I am that I have the one that I do. And that I hope that people with money can find meaningful ways to spend it.
