My mother, the late Sadie Evelyn Henry Lusby, published the following piece in Seek magazine, May 11, 1975.
That was just a few years past the time when my sister and I were teenagers—and Mom no doubt spoke from our perspective in this parody of the nostalgic song “M-O-T-H-E-R.” But she was also seeing the blessing of her age, given that it had brought her first grandchild.
Mother
M—is for the million ways she bugs me.
O—is for the oddball way she thinks.
T—is for the tragic clothes she makes me.
H—her sense of humor, how it stinks.
E—is for her everlasting nagging.
R—means right, and right she’s never been…
Put them all together they spell Mother—the booby prize our dad did win.
“Vibes a Mom Gets from Her Teenagers” might be a good title, huh? Sounds like there’s a generation gap here? Well, Heaven help us if there isn’t!
Who needs 40-year-old teenagers or a world of 15-year-old parents and grandparents?
It would be a gray day indeed if the world were emptied of the laughter, enthusiasm, and dreams of youth. And how tragic if 40 or 50 years of being didn’t increase our maturity, our wisdom, our faith, and yes, our capacity to love. Surely the experience of living gives us something more than just wrinkles and gray hair!
Youth has energy, but age has endurance—to “survive” teenagers, to live down the title of mother-in-law, and then to keep that rocking chair going when a precious bundle fills the loving arms of a Happy Granny.
—Sadie Evelyn Lusby
