p. 14 | A Mother's Confession

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 15, 1916

A Mother's Confession

My little boy stood before me with lines of perplexity plowing deep furrows into his brow as he said, “Mother, please don’t always tell me what not to do. Tell me what to do, and I will do it.”

In that way I discovered that I was not the only one who had a problem. He had one, too, and I was his problem. It became evident to me that I was not the right kind of mother.

On another occasion I had a lesson which I recall bitterly even now, and again my boy was the teacher. It was his little household task to prepare the kindling. It wasn’t much to ask a sturdy, active boy to do,—to prepare the kindling,—but sometimes the kindling box was empty, and there was considerable censure from me; for it was very annoying to need kindling, and find none ready.

One day he was taken very ill, and I hung over him for weeks. In his delirium he was haunted by the kindling. In the silent night when I was keeping vigil, he would start up from his pillow, saying, “Let me go now, mother, and chop the kindlings for you. I’m so sorry I forgot it. Please don’t scold me, mother. I’ll make it for you right away. The kindling—the kindling! I forgot the kindling—forgot—forgot—I forgot!” He was only six. He forgot at six!

Well, God was good to me, for he let him get well. But there came another lesson. There are closed rooms in my heart, and in every room is the proof that I was not worthy to be a mother. I have had time, years, in which to reflect.

In one of the rooms I see the chairs standing about in orderly fashion, the chairs he loved to disarrange to make his train of cars, his noisy cars that made me nervous. He left a trail of disorder wherever he went; toys, the mud on his shoes, the scratches on my furniture, all annoyed me. In the closed room the chairs now stand silently about in orderly fashion to rebuke me. There are no toys, no rusty little muddy shoes, no scratches on the furniture; all is as orderly as a showroom in a shop window. It is not a comforting room. He said one day that his lesson was about toys, noise, joys, and boys, and that his teacher had said they all belonged together. I wish I had laughed more with him at the little joke.

The Way of the Transgressor

Once he invited a boy who had come to play with him to stay for dinner, and when they came in, he was so full of hospitality and proud that he had the liberty to invite a guest, I sent the guest home. A look I had never seen before came into his face that day. I sent his guest home! Well, it was my opportunity, and I lost it. That lost opportunity occupies one room by itself in my heart. Iron went into his soul that day. How simple it would have been for me to invite his guest and make them both happy! I have for many years been convinced that my approving smiles were the fount of his happiness. This is what I find when I look into that room: regrets for a great opportunity which I lost.

He has been gone a good many years now. Whenever I see a postman, I glance at his packet of letters: there might be one there for me—from him. Whenever I am in the crowd, I am watching; or on the street, or anywhere, I scan the faces of all the men I meet, for it has been so many years that it may be I shouldn’t know him, and maybe he wouldn’t know me. Sometimes he seems so near to me that I go out into the yard around the corner of the house and call his name aloud. But there is no answer, no answer. I dream of him at night; he is falling, and I am reaching out, and we both fall. I awaken in alarm, a nightmare upon me. When the doorbell rings, I am expectant, and always when I have leisure I sit by the window and watch. At night I leave the curtains up; and if the night is very dark, or if it storms, or if I have been thinking about him a great deal, I place a lamp in the window for him. It may be that he will come sometime. If I could just see him long enough to apologize for the mistakes I made! It might seem strange for a mother to apologize! But he is a man now, and what I have to say to him, were he to come in tonight, would be, first, about the kindling; and then I should tell him how sorry I am that I ever scolded; and how sorry I am that I sent his little friend home that day when dinner was all ready. I remember how he couldn’t eat. He said a lump was in his throat, and he couldn’t swallow. That I should have so hurt his pride! I wonder he didn’t hate me. Maybe he did.

Both of those incidents were important, for they were my God-given opportunities to get into his heart. I seemed to have an idea that, because he was in my heart, that was all that was necessary. Really, that was not important, for my love for him was a foregone conclusion, merely a selfish mother-love. It was his love for me that counted. I disappointed him as well as myself. I know now that unless you get into a boy’s heart early, the door of his heart closes, and you are left, waiting, on the outside. I could have gotten in so easily! Then he grew to be a big—a big, middle-aged boy. He was neither child nor man, but just between. As I was not inside his heart, I could not understand him; neither could he understand himself. No middle-aged boy can understand himself. His sole chance for interpretation is through his mother, and even that is best accomplished through her silence; for the loving thought of a mother is the most outspoken voice there is in the silences of the soul.

We must be very considerate of the adolescent boy. He is passing from childhood to manhood. He doesn’t like to be questioned. He doesn’t like to be asked where he is going when he goes out, nor how long he will be gone. His confidences cease. He becomes reserved and silent. This is the time for the mother to trust her son. The boy in him dies, and the man is born. The man’s thoughts are almost as new to him as the child’s thoughts were when the mental process began to form. The new man is overwhelmed by the consciousness

of himself. He is an individual.

I have read in biographies of great men what power the sympathetic mother had in their rearing, and in this way the great fault of my lack of sympathy has been revealed to me. Oh, my son, my son!

There is a letter from the mother of Phillips Brooks, written to a young mother who wrote to her for advice, and in it she speaks of her sons at this middle-aged time of their youth:—

“I have always believed that it was during this period that the Creator was speaking to my sons, and that it was good for their souls to be alone with him, while I, their mother, stood trembling, praying, and waiting, knowing that when the man was developed from the boy, I should have my sons again, and there would be a deeper sympathy than ever between us.”

To go a little deeper into the testimony of a mother of good men, let me say that after her death Bishop Brooks wrote of her, “The happiest part of my happy life has been my mother.” And then on the stone at her resting place he had carved the wondrous words, “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt!”

I shall now speak of my last-closed room.

As I am now white-haired and have learned my lesson, I am persuaded to tell what is in the darkest chamber of my heart. If there were no remedy, no sure specific, I should not now reveal what I am about to tell. What good would it do?

But there is a specific, and I here cry hope to others, to some other mother who may be reading this; to some other mother whose heart aches with the same anxiety that once possessed mine.

The wrong influences of the world early claimed my boy. They wove their meshes about him, and he was unable to extricate himself alone. I was powerless to help him; I didn’t know how. All I knew how to do was to disapprove. I attended dutifully to his material wants; kept his clothes in order, made his bed, cooked his food, and waited for him to come home. Oh, the hours I have lain awake listening for the sound of his footsteps, for the uncertain hand to click the key in the lock! I have known times when I gave way to frenzies of despair. The disgrace of it! That the neighbors should see him! That my son should be a drunkard! That I should be thus cursed of God! But it was no use. There was no hope.

The End

One day a stranger came to my door, and told me that a young man was lying in the gutter in front of my house.

“What is that to me?” I replied, and closed the door.

Thoreau says, “Why say that a man’s heart is as hard as a stone when stones are infinitely soft compared to some men’s hearts?”

Finding no help at home, no sympathy, no understanding, no protection, no love, he went away. That is all there is to tell. He went, and he has not returned. That was a quarter of a century ago. Twenty-five years is a long time to spend in reflection, in study upon one lesson.

And so I am waiting.

My gateposts are marked, and every morning a man raps at my kitchen door. I am expecting him, and so I have a breakfast ready and waiting. They are curious-looking fellows, these derelicts that apply for the plate of steaming food I hand out to them, and sometimes I talk with them, for they are God’s children, as I am his child.

Had I understood the spirit of sympathy, had I understood childhood and unfolding youth, my boy need not have gone away. This, then, is the message of my story.

Many a mother mistakes her selfishness for love. No real love exists which does not feel the joy of self-sacrifice. This is the test. I failed in love.

Now I will light the lamp and put it in the window.—Farm and Fireside.