On a Full, Long Life in a Small New England Town

The virtues of becoming the world’s leading expert on a very small part of the planet.

My wonderful mom.

Here at the Big Picture I like to examine, well, the Big Picture. But I also appreciate the Small Picture, meaning all the smaller joys in life that come with deeply appreciating individual people, friendships, and personal events. My mentor in appreciating the Small Picture was my wonderful mom, who passed away recently. She’s pictured above (with my son photo-bombing his happiness over her left shoulder).

My mom was eighty years old, and a joy to everyone, having been blessed with the trait of being made happy by making other people happy.  She lived for over 50 years with my dad in a small New England town, and the breadth and depth of the condolences my father and I received got me thinking about how rich human connections can be when made by happy and social people who live in the same place for a long time.

My mom was a teacher by inclination and profession, and I remember so many of her students running up to hug her when they happened to bump into us at the supermarket. She was an avid listener, whether the person talking was a second grader or an octogenarian, and her ever-expressive eyes and whimsical laugh let her companion know she was following every word. Watching my mom learn the ebbs and flows of the ups and downs of everyone around her was a beautiful thing to watch.  The more my mom listened to people, the more she knew what made people happy, and the more she could help provide it.  She made everyone smile, and those smiles opened doors into people’s lives. Her friendships stretched several generations deep, over decades.  She knew hundreds of people not only by name, but by family history.

She was a second mom to many of my friends, so much so that I never felt I was an only child, with all the neighborhood kids eating lunch and dinner at our house. She came to know everyone as their personalities changed through childhood, middle age, and later in life, such that she really came to know several people within each person — like opening a series of Russian dolls — exponentially growing her understanding of others as their changing experiences shaped their personalities through time. That made her, if not a scholar of human history, at least an expert on being humane among individual people she knew well.  My mom’s friendships became more heartfelt with every shared experience, and all the while her well of collective memories grew deeper, yet warmer, like a hot spring.

My mom was a keen observer of everything around her -- like Jane Goodall, but with an eye toward actually making sure there was good for all, both old and young.  If someone was turning 100 and they would otherwise be alone, my mom would be feeding them their birthday cake and laughing with them if there were any dribs or drabs -- because everything was an opportunity for fun.  And when I cleaned out the back of her car, I found yet another basket of toys and playthings that had been intended for delivery to someone in the next generation of happy campers in the wilderness of life.

She was famous for writing cards and letters to friends and family. Her correspondence knit everyone together under a giant quilt, with each tile gilded with a stamp and a photo of the latest fun times she had with the recipient. She was the hardest working red blood cell in the lifeblood of the community.  But she made it seem effortless, riding that blood cell like an inner tube on a lazy river, while sipping one of her favorite blue or green tropical drinks.

People like my mom inevitably grow wrinkles, but when they do those wrinkles are like the folds in our brain. The folds in our brain pack neurons ever tighter, allowing them to make quick connections.  In the same way, each of the lines in my mother’s face tracked the paths she walked and the connections she made with hundreds of others.

Hers was a world where people don't pass the time, they cherish the moment.  She lived modestly, so she could give generously, and she made clear by her example that it's easy to live simply when you appreciate deeply. Who needs fancy shoes when there’s pep in your step, or flashy designer clothes when your daisy pin roars like a lion?

People like my mom who appreciate the subtle joys of life tend to be more resourceful and complain less. In a typical example of my mom’s playful inventiveness, my kids wanted to go fishing one day and we didn’t have a proper fishing rod. But my mom used painter’s tape to piece together a makeshift rod with an old ham radio antenna, a grape stem, and a golf ball for a fishing bob. And it just worked.

My mom even knew the local animals, especially birds and butterflies, and their migration patterns -- from sunrise to sunset and from summer to winter.  She looked forward to seeing them each year and greeting them with a welcome wagon filled with bird seed. And she knew what time of year a certain tree or bush would bloom, making pilgrimages with my dad to whatever homes hosted particularly good examples.

My mom passed away in the fall, when the leaves on the trees were turning color, falling to earth, and fertilizing the ground for another season.  And so my mom had done, season after season, turning dry into joy, spreading it around, and setting the stage for an even more hopeful tomorrow.