A daughter's lesson shines a light

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

My daughter, Lauren, is always teaching me something.

When she was an infant and colicky and inconsolable, she taught me that sunshine really does follow rain. Because once the colic passed, there she was, all sweetness and smiles, a happy baby, a happy toddler, a happy child.

When she was in first grade, she taught me to pay more attention to time, because there she was, suddenly, climbing onto the school bus, a little girl with two long ponytails, the baby she'd been so soon gone.

When she was in middle school and high school and even college, she taught me that as much as you want, you cannot teach your children everything. That there are things, many things, they really do have to learn themselves.

And when she got married and became a mother, she taught me that "The Best Is Yet to Come" is more than the title of an old song.

She teaches me things, still, almost every day, practical things like what not to wear (open-toed shoes with hose) and who all the celebrities are in People magazine (Jessica Alba and Cash Warren? Why are they famous?) and how to put on eyeliner so that I don't look like a cat, and what newmovie I might possibly sit through.

The other night she taught me something without even realizing it, something life-changing that I wish I had known 35 years ago.

"If you hadn't always been so sad about Nana, if you hadn't told me something was wrong with her, I wouldn't have known," she said. "I was just a kid and she was my Nana. She sat in her kitchen chair and told stories and drank coffee and smoked her cigarettes and wore those funny Doc Martens shoes. And sure, she didn't move very fast and it took her a long time to do things. But I saw her happy, Mom. Not all the time. But a lot of times."

My mother was happy? Was this possible? Could it be? 

"You should have known her before her accident," I used to say when my mother was alive, explaining, to doctors, to strangers, to the priest who came once a year to hear her confession, "She used to be 5 foot 8 and 128 pounds. She used to sing and dance. She used to manage a store and a house and bake cakes." As if these things were the sum of her parts.

She was head-injured and three months in a coma. She had to relearn to talk and walk and think and swallow and hold a fork and a conversation.

She'll never do it, the doctors said. "If she lives, she'll be a vegetable," her neurosurgeon declared.

But she did it all, walking, talking, thinking, swallowing; it took years. Yet when people dismissed her, or judged her, or expected little of her, I said, "You should have known her before."

I had a friend who had Lou Gehrig's disease. I met him after he had lost ability to move, to swallow, to talk. He lived in a hospital. A respirator and feeding tube kept him alive. He communicated with his eyes and a machine his eyes could make spell words.

People who knew him when he was well wept when they saw him. Because they saw all he couldn't do and all he had lost. But we who had never known Sal healthy saw all he could do and still had.

Why didn't I ever see my mother this way?

My daughter did.

I wish I had said to all the people who dismissed her, not "You should have known her before," but, "Look at what she's been through. Look at her courage. Look at how far she's come."

My daughter saw that. Her strengths. Her spirit. Her essence.

If I hadn't said, "Poor Nana," my kids would never have thought it. It's a lesson learned, better late than never.