Hindsight
My mother did not teach me in the way one imagines teaching. She didn’t demonstrate in formal lessons how to cook or sew. I learned by observing and then trying it out for myself. The only thing I recall her actually explaining with a how-to lesson was when I was about eight she decided it was time I help with folding the laundry.
After we had gathered the garments from the clothesline, that had been flapping in the hot Houston breeze all day, and they were piled up on the bed, she began the instruction.
First she pulled out one of my dad’s black socks. Then she dug through the pile to find the mate. Then she spread the pair out, one on top of the other, carefully smoothing them flat. Then, starting at the toes end she slowly rolled the socks together neatly to the top and then pulled one down over the tidy cylinder.
Watching intently, I, even at such a tender age, thought to myself - “I can do that faster.” Which I attribute to my inborn practical, slightly OCD, personality type.
From that point forward I had a fewest-steps-shortcut system for pretty much everything I endeavored to do. Thus, in hindsight, it turns out that the lesson was actually about being able to assess a task and refine it to the most efficient, shortest distance, process, [except while doing algebra which the teacher insisted on showing all steps].
However, the other best life guides I learned by observing my mother were:
Leave things better than you found them
If you can’t say something nice, say nothing
Always wear clean underwear - you never know when you might end up in the hospital
I have (mostly) always adhered to those guidelines especially the third even though it took seven decades for it to be tested. On January 21, 2025 I tripped and fell in the garage and fractured my femur. Which ended up with me in my first ambulance ride. As I was prepped for being x-rayed I had a moment when I recalled the clean underwear rule and had it not been for the pain I was dealing with I might have laughed out loud - thus causing the medical staff to consider I should be admitted to the psyche ward.
Which is to say, I can attest there’s such a thing as good hindsight which is the result of living your life holding on to high principals and ethics.
Well, it turns out that the three rules for decent living that my mother instilled in me are way bigger in the construct of a stellar character and better outcomes than the simplicity of the words imply.
Leaving things better than you found them is so deep and wide I will have to let that one be dissected and pondered by the reader.
Rule 2 - say nothing if you can’t say something nice seems to have been a long lost principle here in bully-ugly-words digital world but it was embedded in me so even as I use self control and float above the base compulsion to be uncivil, I also refuse to be negatively impacted by incivility from others.
The clean underwear thing, to me, is really metaphoric for making sure that everything you are, both what can be seen and what cannot, meets God’s standards.
Life lessons are sealed in us like notes in a bottle that floats for a lifetime above the dark waters of human living. If we hold onto what is inside, the tides of time slowly land us on the solid shore of better choices thus limiting irreparable regrets and painful hindsight.
Life in Lyrics - my lyrics made into music by SunoAI
Meemanator’s Youtube.
My mother taught me similar messages. One that has stuck is “You’re not everyone else,” which she often told me when I was whining abut doing or having something that “everyone else” had or did. Thanks for the reminder of motherly wisdom!
That C. S. Lewis quote hit home for me, Meema. As do most of his words. Thanks for sharing this with us.