Terry: Thanks, Mom, for the lessons

It’s easy to think that mothers aren’t doing a very good job today. For the most part I don’t think that’s true, the real problem is that our world has become an extremely complex place to grow up and being a mother is sometimes a lot harder job than it was.

Not that being a mother has ever been a very easy job. Take my own dear mom for instance. She had it pretty rough as a young mother. Living on a dusty eastern New Mexico farm with three kids by her early 20s, the deck was stacked against her. She had a couple of good things working for her though. She had a strong work ethic, and she loved and cared deeply about how her children did in school and life.

I’ve often told my wife that I had to raise my own mother. She’s had a little trouble understanding this, so I’ll explain it here to everyone. I was the oldest child and my mother was still so young by the time I got up to 10 or 12 years of age myself that it sometimes seemed like we were helping each other grow up. Looking back on it now, it was a neat relationship and one I was really lucky to have experienced. It could have easily turned out not to be so good except we were always so busy and she loved all of her kids so much.

The first paying job I remember was as a hoe hand alongside my mother. We also dug sweet potatoes by hand and were paid by the bushel. We did a good job together as a team and by the time school started, we had enough money for school clothes.

When the other kids were older, we spent summer picking beans, peas, okra and squash to sell it at a store in town. Some of that money went toward school clothes. But we did get a small allowance and we always got a hamburger and milkshake in town every Saturday when we sold the produce. Doing that with us, mom taught us the value of a dollar.

After we moved to town we had a little more money, but mom still kept us working hard. We soon got paper routes. Having been closely associated with newspaper carriers in one capacity or another for over 30 years, I can tell you that any kids who are successful at it had a great mom supporting them. It would have been a lot easier for her to have us get rid of the routes than to help us deliver and collect. But it was important to her that we were taught to earn our own way in life so we stuck to it together.

The hard work and the rules we were given to live by sometimes seemed pretty bad, but it’s a shame more kids today can’t grow up in that same kind of loving environment that I knew. It truly shaped my life, my ethics and everything I am.

Thank you, mom.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]