Phyllis’ Blog

I learned to ask “What is that?” and “How do you do that?” from my mother-in-law.

She and I lived in two roaringly different worlds, although we ended up in each other’s lives a lot. I often thought about how little we’d have had to say to each other if it weren’t for her son, my husband.

If I had told her what I wanted in life, she would probably have used all her considerable personal strength to steer her son elsewhere when we were dating. Not that I was a rabid revolutionary. But I did plan to have kids - and a profession. I was more interested in leadership opportunities than in tending a garden. I preferred preparing a lecture than quilting at sewing circle.

I think she kind of knew all that even though I didn’t say it to her. I remember when I told her that Merle and I were going to have a second child, she said, “Really? I thought you probably wouldn’t have time.” No bitterness. No judgment. No veiled scold. Just clear wonder.

Which is the quality I found most disarming about her. How that ability survived in her still amazes me. Her seven sons brought arguing to a tournament level. Her husband was a pastor, which put her on a kind of public perch for which she never developed a taste. When she finished eighth grade, she took on responsibilities at home and with her entrepreneurial brother so that her days were packed tight. No time to read or inquire leisurely about the questions that passed through her curious mind.

When I learned to know her, she was running a throbbing household - gardening, cooking, hosting, sewing, even giving a home to a neighbor boy who needed some special attention and shelter.

She had taught her seven sons extraordinary domestic skills - from washing windows free of streaks to making featherweight potato rolls. She sent them off one-by-one to college and international service. Their idea; not hers. She couldn’t figure out why none of them was drawn to farming and the pace of the “plain” way of life.

Once when we were all together in the farmhouse for Christmas, and she stood working at the sink with her back to the kitchen, one of her sons approached her. He hadn’t talked; he simply walked toward her. Without a glance to see who it was, she called him by name. And she was right. She knew him by his footfall - this guy who had left her household a decade earlier. Clearly, despite the tempo and the noise level she had lived in for years, she knew these now-men to their cores.

As I learned to know her better, I became convinced that she - and her witty, bright husband - had given a yearning for learning to each and every one of their boys. Not by pushing them for good grades. But by creating an atmosphere of curiosity about most everything. Not skepticism so much as wonder.

She was not impressed as her sons racked up master’s degrees and a doctorate. And she was never intimidated by them. Which was good for all of us. That be-who-you-really-are approach flushed any temptation to high-mindedness right out of the system as we stepped across the farmhouse porch. Mother and Dad were an antidote to any posturing we may have been tempted to indulge in. There was no space for pretending you knew something you didn’t. No room for protecting territory you might have been tempted to monopolize.

I became a beginner cook when Merle and I got married. Fear and ignorance drove me to cookbooks. I slowly progressed, largely because Merle was an appreciative audience. I got braver and tried new recipes with enough success that I decided I could risk a few when Merle’s parents came to visit. I also had enough survival instinct not to try to make a dish that Merle’s mother excelled at. At the peak of her cooking career, I calculated that this woman had fed nine people for three meals a day for at least 15 years.

I knew better than to try to impress this pair. I just wanted them to have a good time.

My mother-in-law didn’t murmur about how tasty things were at the table that evening. But she showed up in the kitchen when we were done eating and asked, “How did you do that?” about a particular dish. That question, asked sincerely, became her practice for as long as she continued to visit our home.

Years later she told Merle, “I always like to come to your place for a meal. The food is always good - and I always learn something new.”

Her unabashed interest touched me deeply. Her unvarnished curiosity became a kind of guide for me. Free of pretense and unafraid of saying what she didn’t know, she showed me how to relax and be always open to learning more. Even from the most unexpected of places.