Love covers a multitude of sins...

And Adam knew Eve his wife,

and she conceived, and bare Cain,

and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

Genesis 4:1 – Bible

I lied to her once...


There were sins of omission, but the lie...that lie was so traumatic...thinking about it 46 years later makes me feel some discomfort!


The background
Fannie Margaret Maude Arnott was her name. By the time I understood that she had any name at all she had acquired one more - ‘ Dreisinger’. Yes, Fanny Margaret Maude Arnott was my mother, but I didn’t even know that. It took months before I could even say “...mama...,” the oft repeated word she used when appearing in my field of vision. She was a real “coo-er”, and a quiet singer of lullabies. A gentle soul and like so many mothers, was sure her baby boy was something special!


In some ways, she was ill equipped to mother a boy. Married in her 30th year, she had not been around many other than her three brothers...being a ‘tom-boy’ didn’t really qualify. She had gone to a school where there were no boys; became a school teacher and - before marrying Edward James - taught during the school year, traveled with her girlfriends and worked summers as a counselor at a girls camp in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec.


She was an active athlete as a girl and young woman. She could ride horses, snow ski, play basketball with the best of them, ice skate and win league championships on the tennis courts. While a good sport, she was a formidable and tenacious opponent, who taught her children to play hard...and play fair. Winning was not necessary for character growth - best effort was. She believed winning was NOT always the best teacher, and anyway it was the end of the war that counted - the smaller battles along the way only created the foundation for each new day. She would admonish her kids to...finish the whole race...be the tortoise if necessary...the little engine that could...the person left standing “at the end of the day.”  Consistency and hard work were the key. There was just something about that woman - she was special!


By the time I arrived on the planet, she had a decade and thousands of hours of preparation for my entrance into the fray. It would be different for her to teach a boy, but a born teacher she was. She would bravely say it was really only a difference in plumbing, wasn’t it?


She taught me almost everything physical in my childhood and early youth from her wealth of experience...play, swim, canoe, water ski, basketball and how to run. She taught me almost everything spiritual...story after story about brave men and women of the scriptures. She taught me almost everything about the coming challenges of life with morality story after morality story from the Aesop to Hans Christian Anderson, to the Little Engine that Could.


She loved music and taught all of us to sing, "...just find a harmony..." she would say and then sing some more. She taught me about gentleness and respect for women, an unrelenting theme from my earliest remembrances through my high school years. “Think of other girls,” she would say, “as though they are your sisters or me.”  As a youngster, I have to admit, the sisters’ part didn’t always inspire thoughts of gentleness!!


The event terrible
The date was October 13, 1967. It is easy to remember because it was her birthday, and the day I learned a life lesson that both informed the rest of my life, and still haunts me.


I was in school in Morgantown, West Virginia - home of ‘The Mountaineers.’ For some reason she had come by on her way back to Ohio from a churchwomen’s conference at Alderson-Broaddus College in Phippi - a small town tucked away in the West Central Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. By now she and my father lived in Canton, Ohio, but Mum continued her ties with the churchwomen of the Mountain State. She had left the conference early in the day and surprised me. She loved surprises. We had breakfast together before her 140-mile drive home.


I had forgotten it was her birthday until about half way through breakfast. Not wanting her to realize it had gotten away from me, I told her I had a gift, but given it to my sister who was also in school at the University. I said it wasn’t a problem, because I would be coming to home on the weekend and would bring it with me. We hugged and kissed good-bye; she headed home, and I to classes for the day.


It was around 4:30 that afternoon when I received a phone call from my sister...an agitated sister! What was this about a birthday present she was supposed to have for mother??? My brain went numb!


The 'worst' laid plans...
Fannie Margaret Maude Arnott Dreisinger “...aka mama...” had NOT driven home after breakfast, but spent the entire day tracking my sister down to pick up the ‘phantom’ birthday present, not because she couldn’t wait for the surprise, but because she thought it would make it easier for me coming home on the weekend. She wouldn’t have opened it anyway, it wasn’t in her character to not share the moment with giver of the gift...the giver of the gift...the liar with NO gift.


There were parallel surprises that day. My mother’s disappointment causing some damage to her trust levels with me, AND to me for having been caught in so blatant and foolishly constructed betrayal of that woman’s trust. She would have been satisfied with a “Happy Birthday Mum,” and “I’ll see you on the weekend.” BUT I had created a castle of sand and it didn’t take much of a wind to blow it away.


Facing the music
Mothers have some unknown and mysterious gift of forgiveness. I would have preferred a slow death of 10,000 cuts then to have faced my mother that weekend...but face her I did. She didn’t chastise me for my deceit; she didn’t question how I could have so callously disrespected her; she didn’t complain she had spent an entire day chasing the wind...she did worse! She told me how she loved me and how open her heart was to me; she said quietly and gently she hoped it would never happen again and be a learning experience...


AND THEN, Fannie Margaret Maude Arnott Dreisinger did what was the ‘hallmark of her character,’ she never spoke of it again...what effect this event had on that tender-hearted soul, I never really knew, but I know what effect it had on me...I was ‘cut to the quick’ and never lied nor misled her again as long as that woman lived.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again."

- Mother Gooses' Melodies

The lesson
While fall with Mum was not fatal, it was a loss in the long-distance run of life. But as my mother was fond of saying, it is not the wins we learn the most from...it's the defeats.


In the waning years of her life, she didn’t know who I was. She seemed to know I was familiar and loved to have her hair and face stroked. Times I was with her in those last years always made me think of how much of her I carry with me and that life lessons come with a price.

- ted