After watching the “To Sir, With Love” scene on the season finale of Glee, I posted a FaceBook status to all my former students.  I let them know that, of all the things I have done in my life, I will never be prouder of anything as much as I was of the years I spent teaching.  One student, who answered me privately, thanked me for advice and encouragement I had offered all those years ago.  She had come to me because she was hurt that people made fun of her because she looked “different.”  I told her that it would not always be that way, and that she would blossom, with confidence, into a beautiful woman.  She assured me that my prediction had come true-she had indeed blossomed into the beautiful butterfly I was certain she would become. What she couldn’t know is that my belief was born of hard experience.

I will never forget the person who let me know I was “different.”

Liam McMahon.

After my mother died, I was cleaning out the closets in my father’s house.   I came across a picture of my mother that I don’t remember having seen before.  I was in her arms, and my sister was at her side.   

I was struck by her beauty and style.  It was 1963, and my mother more than met the fashion standard that was being set by Jacqueline Kennedy.  She wore an expensive brown wool suit, with a fur collar.  She had matching brown leather shoes and handbag.  But the piece de resistance was the hat.  When we were small, my mother always wore hats, but this was her favorite.  It was close-fitting, like a pillbox, but twice as high.  It was festooned with pink roses.  Her makeup was impeccable, punctuated by her bright red lips.  Even with two children in tow, she seems unharried, even elegant.  She held us as effortlessly as the handbag at her side.

In the years before my mom died, she had become a woman who played solitaire for hours in her pajamas and felt comfortable going outside in sweat suits without makeup.  She seemed so unhappy in the years before her death, unhappiness my brother, sister and I often pondered without ever settling on the reason.  My father adored her and she loved him back, she had good friends, and a job that she loved.  We could not understand why she was obviously unhappy.  And you didn’t ask.  My mom was not a woman to discuss her feelings. 

When she died suddenly of a stroke while on vacation in Rome, we were left with a mystery.  She had never had a sick day in her life.  True, my mom was a smoker, and never really exercised, but the same could be said of her own mother who lived into her nineties.  The only clue that I was left with was the unhappiness that seemed to cling to her in the months, years before her death.  I felt powerless to explain it.  Then I found that picture.  It had been so long since my mother had been that person that I had forgotten she ever existed.

I had the pleasure of creating a What Better Looks Like workshop with students from Clemson and Winthrop Universities on Wednesday, May 12 at The Church Center at the United Nations.  It was part of a seminar on Poverty and Urban Communities with the United Methodist Seminar Program on National and International Affairs. 

The students were interesting and interested. We talked about how to create Beloved Community by using our gifts as Healers, Artists and Teachers.  I was honored to work with such a vibrant, caring group of people.  (Boy, did they catch me looking very teacher-y in that picture by the easel!)

I just spent a wonderful afternoon with an old friend from the years my husband, Rob, spent doing stand-up comedy.  We recently reconnected after about fifteen years.  He came over with his girlfriend, and we spent time telling tales about the “old days.”  Our conversation turned to “how we met” stories and I remembered a story that I had not thought of in years.

I met my husband twenty-two years ago when I went to see a mutual friend perform at a comedy club.   I found him smart, funny and charming.  Although these are among his qualities that have kept us together all these years, none of them were why I initially chose to go out with him.  After all this time, I smile to think of the circumstance that started us on our journey.

First, I ask you to indulge a brief digression to set the context:

Growing up, I had two role models: Gandhi and Cher. 

I wanted to change the world like Gandhi, but I wanted to do it dressed like Cher.  That juxtaposition has always amused others, but to me it is the most natural thing in the world.