Ode to a great woman

Today, of all days, my thoughts go back many years. It was on a beautiful, fall, Sunday morning, with church bells ringing throughout the land, that I saw, for the first time, the light of day and took my first breath of air. All this as a result of a couragious woman who decided, in a very difficult and embarrasing situation, with no family or financial support, and in a little attic bed room, to give birth to a child, instead of to abort. Because of her couragious and faithful act, I am he who I am, and you, my five children, sixteen grand-children and (by latest count) seven and a half great-grand-children, are who and where you are today, because of her. All of us came forth, and are today, of this queenly woman we know as Wilhelmina. Even at her birth, all of us were already present in her procreative parts of her body and destined to come forth out of her at some future time.

She was very futuristic in her thinking and must have seen much of the problems ahead of her days. Let me just paraphrase some of her ideas. In her own life and marriage, she saw the beginning of a consumer culture of marriage were commitments would last as long as the other person would be meeting their needs. All her life she believed in commitments, because she knew that committed relationships are good for us, but that powerful voices coming from the inside and outside would tell her that she would be sucker if she settled for less than she thought she needed and deserve in her marriage. She believed in marriage and gave it all she could give to stay in it.

She said that if we would be serious about renewing fatherhood and motherhood, we must be serious about renewing marriage. She lived the way she talked when she said, from her own experience, that healthy marriages would not always be possible, but that we must remember, they are incredibly important for children. Many of her choices in her marriage had to do with that philosophy. A father to her was a husband to whom she was married to and not a visiting friend. Having had a father in our home made our home a place where I learned the value of having a father and a mother.

Today I am thinking of her and I know that she is thinking of me, too, today, this crispy but sunny and mild fall weather day.