Pony Tricks

My Mother, My Father and Finding My Way

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When I was 12 my mother came in my bedroom where I was parked in front of the mirror closely inspecting my personal appearance, like self-absorbed adolescents do.

“My neck is too long,” I pouted.

My mother’s multitudinous options for response borderlined on the billions. She could have told me to stop with my vanity and clean my room. She could have tried to assure me that no one else would ever notice the length of my neck but me. She could have coddled me with empty compliments and told me she would always love me anyway. She could have ignored my petulant whining and walked out.
Instead, my mother said, “Long necks are elegant.” Just that, nothing more.

I had probably caught her fresh from reading the recent National Geographic featuring tribal women who elongate their necks by gradually adding one ring after another. I’m sure her tone intimated at my good fortune of being born naturally giraffe-like.

Still, that one statement, regardless of its inspiration, changed my entire perspective. I learned I could metaphorically walk around the circumference of anything, everything, until I found the best angle. If “too long” could so effortlessly and believably be transformed into “elegant,” then the world was mine to define from that point forward.

More Lessons From My Mother

Sometime in my 20s I forgot this lesson. Shortly after the birth of my first child, I called my mother for the quadrillionth time to ask for advice but then recited to her what some guru in some book had recommended. Even as she persevered in aiding me, I argued back with what professionals said on the subject.

Perturbed by my inability to free myself from the constraints of expert opinion, she flatly instructed me, “The best thing you can do is quit reading all of those books.”

My intellectual approach to parenting confounded her. I feared the instinctual method that she and her cohorts relied upon in raising my generation. How did she know to tell me that a long neck is elegant and that it would be the most satisfactory answer she could give? I bought all those books because, my gosh, I wasn’t a teenager ruminating about my profile in the mirror anymore. Another human life depended on me. I desired a how-to, can’t-fail manual; my mother puts her faith in parenting from the gut.