Today is Mother’s Day – in the United States, at
least. In Panamá, they celebrate
Mother’s Day on December 8 every year, as a national holiday. But even if those around me aren’t
celebrating their mothers today, I want to celebrate mine. After all, she’s the biggest reason I’m even
here in Panamá right now – which unfortunately means I can’t be home today to
help with the yardwork.
Mom told my brother and me once, after we asked why there
is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day but no Children’s Day (as in, Why do you get
presents an extra day each year and we don’t?), that it’s not about getting
presents, it’s about being able to honor someone else. Everyone has a mother and a father to honor,
but not everyone has children. This way,
no one gets left out.
That stuck with me – probably because it made my brain
hurt when I was a kid – as a wise and different approach to what holidays
mean. There’s a lot of wisdom that Mom
has passed along through her words and her actions throughout my life – and much
of that stuck with me and came here to Panamá, helping me through work and life
here.
Mom has always encouraged – insisted – that I try to see
things from others’ perspectives, starting with the fights my brother and I
had, but soon applying to everyone with whom I interacted. And I always saw her practicing empathy
herself, as a role model, seeking to understand why others do things, seeking
to take into account and accommodate their point of view when dealing with
them, and seeking to forgive them through that understanding. One could easily argue that she is the reason
I was even interested in Peace Corps as an approach to sustainable development
in the first place – after all, the entire approach is based on immersing
Volunteers in the context of their communities, truly understanding where
people are coming from, living like them and with them, and thereby gaining –
even adopting – their perspective, before even trying to figure out how we can
use our training to help solve the problems they want. None of this can happen without development
that empathy – and that’s what I came here craving, knowing, thanks first to
Mom, that solving any problems involving people first requires understanding
those people.
I also wouldn’t be here if Mom hadn’t raised me believing
that I could be anything I wanted that I should do something I enjoy, and that
it should involve helping other people.
She herself has always lived to help other people – as a sister, as a
daughter, as a nurse, as a wife, as a mother, as a volunteer in many
organizations. That impulse and example
by her encouraged me to gravitate toward service that is fulfilling and
necessary work; so I studied environmental engineering, and wanted to try out
using it as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
I wouldn’t be here without the courage and confidence Mom
instilled in me. Without a lifetime of
reminders that women are equal to men, and that I can be assertive and stand up
for myself, I don’t know that I could have withstood the excessive machismo
encountered in the cities, or challenged the gender norms in the community.
And indeed without her doctrine of tolerance for people
who are different, and her open-mindedness to new things and ideas, I could not
have been nearly as well-equipped to immerse myself in a foreign culture – or
perhaps had the desire in the first place.
She encouraged my sense of adventure to go new places and try new things
– like when she drove alone from Iowa to California after graduating college,
leaving everything that was familiar to try somewhere completely
different. Sometimes it is difficult to
accept things that are different, especially when they are hard or seem
negative. But she always encouraged me
to find the good in people, even if we disagree, a skill I exercise a lot here.
Mom has never stopped working to become a better person
throughout her life, and this example too, inspires my journey. A big part of being a Volunteer is to
reexamine one’s life – especially with the new context that prompts so such
learning and questioning, plus the slower pace of life that affords extra time
for pondering. I hope that an outcome of
all this is to be a more thoughtful and improved human being, as she always
strives to be.
I do see her characteristic work style in the work that I
do here, too. So much of what she does
it to make others better, to make other people look good. She says of her doubles tennis playing style
that she’ll keep the ball in play (chasing down tough shots, making saves,
playing defense, setting up the point), so that her partner can put away the
finishing shot. I have my own sports
analogy for this – as a center-midfielder, my expertise is in organizing the
field and setting up the offense to score the goals – but either way, the point
is the same: like her, I’m best at organizing things to give others the
opportunity to shine.
Here, as a Volunteer, that is a great quality to have
learned from her – because that’s our job – set up our community leaders to
have even greater capacity for leadership, show people they have the power to
improve their own health, help water committee members become the proud owners
of an aqueduct that they built themselves.
Here, I’m doing my job best if I can leave behind my ego and all the
credit for development belongs to the community.
So as I reflect on what I’ve been able to do here and how
I even go here in the first place, I just want to say – Thanks, Mom. I owe it all to you.
With love – Happy Mother’s Day!
