Little Old Lady … in Waiting

Tag: mom

  • In Conversation with Margo Beckwith-Byrne

    At the grand dame age of 65, Margo Beckwith-Byrne self-identifies as a ‘little old lady’ proper, although her trim, athletic figure and sporty lifestyle are characteristic of a much younger woman. An avid tennis and pickleball player, Margo is a spitfire that punches well above her fighting weight in any given scenario. She is confidant and decisive, and a natural born manager of men. On the personality tests that assign an animal archetype I’d guess Margo is more at home in the shark tank than the petting zoo. She is spirited, and salty, and strong…she’s had to be strong. Widowed at 42 when her husband went out for a swim on a family vacation and never came back in, she became a single working mom overnight, her kids were then 2,5 and 7.

    Equipped with a B.Ed. in Home Economics, Margo taught for two years in Labrador City before transferring her skills to work more in keeping with her natural aptitudes and temperament. She became a boss.  With the mind of an engineer, and an innate understanding of process and efficiency, Margo started her career in business, first at the Saint John General Hospital, where she very quickly assumed a supervisor role, and later in HR, first at Fundy Cable and later at Labatt Breweries, as an HR Manager.  Her last job was as Senior Vice President at Wyndham.  She was downsized at 54, which today she describes as a gift, one she did not recognize at the time.  An astute businesswoman and investor, Margo never worked another day, and is a poster girl for how to retire well.

    About a year ago, Margo visited the ER with what she describes as stomach discomfort and was eventually diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer. Since then, she has undergone surgery, and chemotherapy which she says is “the most miserable thing you could ever do.’ Margo tells me she is lucky because the cancer she has, MSI-H, is rare and responsive to her current immunotherapy. Her cancer-versary is July 31st.  She shares that the hashtag for colorectal cancer is ‘KFG…Keep fucking going.’  

    Margo speaks with the clear-cut, resolute voice of a woman who has found her truth, and in the process of documenting her wisdom, I caught myself re-evaluating a little of my own inner engineering. I am grateful for what she shared with me on a sunny afternoon, at her beautiful home that overlooks the sea.

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

    I was born a Saint Johner and I grew up wanting to leave.  I had children, and then I wanted to come back.  I went to school first at St. FX and then finished at UNB Fredericton … I really liked sewing, I liked making clothes, I didn’t like cooking so much, but I ended up with a B.Ed. in Home Economics and after that I knew very quickly that I didn’t want to teach.  What was important to me at a young age was financial stability and so I spent the rest of my life trying to achieve that. There were lots of twists and turns but ultimately, I spent my whole life believing that happiness and contentment lay in things outside of me, and now I realize I was wrong.  Not everybody is afforded the knowledge that it’s not the external circumstances but rather the internal…because maybe they don’t achieve as many of their material goals, and I was very lucky to acquire mine, only to find out it doesn’t work. Some people still think it’s that car they’re saving for that will bring you happiness… I know it’s not that. 

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    I know it’s cliché, but it’s not giving a fuck about the good opinion of others. Hands down… the best.  Fuck you all!

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Your body breaking down. Not being able to physically do the things that you used to be able to do.

    If you could retain or retrieve one quality from your youth, what would it be?

    Let me flesh it out this way. I wish when I was young, I had had a better sense for how good I really looked.  I spent a lot of time in my youth wrecking vacations, get-togethers, events, thinking about my weight. I resent that time now. The focus growing up in my house and with friends was often about, ‘Are you fat or are you skinny.’  And the thing is, when I look back at my life, I was never fat, but it’s all relative.  Your appearance was more important than any kind of achievement.  I still have high school friends who’ll ask, ‘is she fat or skinny’. I was like 125 poinds and I would be obsessed with my weight.   Recently when I had to weigh in for chemo, the nurse said, ‘that’s great you haven’t lost any weight,’ and my natural thought is well fuck, and I’ve been exercising my ass off.  I guess I’m answering the question in reverse, but I’d like to go back and tell my younger self that no matter what you weigh or how you look, you’re still beautiful. They say youth is wasted on the young.

    But what do I wish I could retain, to answer your original question, my memory… I wish I didn’t have to write everything down to remember it.  But I guess the flip side of that is I can be humbled now because fuck…I can’t remember anything. Some days even with the ball in my hand, I can’t remember who’s serving.

    What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?

    Oh my god… again it’s going to sound so cliché but, happiness is an inside job. It has nothing to do with your external circumstances. I’ll give you an example, someone came to my house and looked out at my view and said, ‘oh my god you must be the happiest person in the world to be able to look at this every day,’ and I looked at them and went, ‘are you out of your fucking mind?’ because ‘wherever you go, there you are.’  I don’t strive for happiness…happiness is relative and the word is overused.  I strive for peace and contentment, and I recognize that it’s a moment-to-moment thing, and the minute I move past where I’m at, to the future or to the past, I lose the present, and that does me no service, nor is it of service to the people around me.

    The other interesting thing that I’ve learned, and I’m going to try and not come off all Christian when I say this, but so many things in my life I have orchestrated, worked hard towards, and wanted so badly, that achieving the result was all I cared about, with the belief that if I achieved that result I would be happy. Things would be good…I’ll finally have what I wanted.  But the things that have brought me the most joy in my life, were unexpected things that I did not orchestrate.  So, I’m gonna say it two different ways… now, I don’t try to determine how the day will unfold… I let the Holy Spirit do it, or to be more universal, I let the universe decide because to quote the Desiderata, “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    “The great way (life) is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” (Seng-ts’an, the 3rd Chinese patriarch of Zen)

    Or Michael Singer, who I love, his take on it is “Life is not difficult for those who prefer everything.”

    Let things come and let them pass through. It’s resistance, our free will to resist, to hold onto all that stuff, that’s what affects us and causes pain.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    Oh, you know I have a favourite word, ‘Fuck.’  It’s so versatile, it is the most versatile word on the planet, and I like it even more that it’s harsh and it’s disapproved of. 

    Describe your perfect day.

    You know I thought about this, I thought about this long and hard, and I don’t have one, and I’ll tell you why. My mother said something to me years ago and I never really understood, but I do now. She said, ‘I am only as happy as my unhappiest child’ and I thought about that and thought, oh my god, she’s right, and no matter how I try to separate myself from the lives of my children in a ‘they’re on their own journey…it’s not my journey…they need to experience whatever they experience and the universe is there to teach them,’ it’s a lifelong lesson for me.  But if you want to know what I love doing everyday- it’s playing a racquet sport and knitting.  I think for me it’s like working a Rubix cube or something…it’s a puzzle. When I’m playing tennis, every game is fresh and different and challenging. When I’m knitting, I can’t knit the same thing over and over again because I’d be bored out of my mind. I like a challenge, and I like to keep my hands busy. Also, I guess I better say this in case my kids read this, I love spending time with my grandchildren…preferably without their parents around.

    If you could have tea with anyone, real or fictional, dead, or alive, who would it be and what would you talk about?

    That would be Anthony De Mello.  I discovered him in 1992, after he died, in 1987. He wrote a book called Awareness. I had been reading Wayne Dyer, but De Mello took me up to a whole different level.  He was a Jesuit priest who woke up one day and thought, the Catholics don’t have all the answers so he incorporated Hinduism and Buddhism and every other ‘ism’ that you could possibly imagine and was basically the first person who helped me understand that it’s all the same.  All religions, at their core, they’re all the same.  And I read his book a million times and gave it to as many people as I could find.  When my husband, George died, De Mello was instrumental in getting me through it all.  It helped me understand the cosmos on a different level.

    We would talk about how he got to where he is, his whole philosophy of life, death, and everything in between.  Now that he’s dead, I’d ask ‘How’s it going on the other side?’  The book, Awareness was released posthumously, it’s  just snippets from talks that he had, and it gave me a whole new lease on life, a whole new way to experience joy in ways I didn’t understand before and it started me on a journey of self-awareness.  I would love to know how he got there.  Here is an example of a story that he told.  He was a Jesuit and a professor, and he travelled extensively, and he was in a rickshaw somewhere and the guy pulling him had TB and had just pre-sold his soon to be corpse for science, for the sum of 10 dollars American. De Mello wrote that the driver was a happy man, and thought he himself, was miserable, always complaining, and so he asked the man why he was happy, and he said, ‘well, why wouldn’t I be, what’s not to be happy about?’ And for De Mello that was a beginning of understanding.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    My grandbabies, my sports, and my kids. 

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    Guilty…I don’t feel guilty about stuff… ever,  so I can’t really think of one.  Maybe lame TV, I mean I’m watching Agatha Raison right now which is really poorly done but set in the Cotswolds… so I don’t care. I like lame tv and lamer murder mysteries and I mean really lame, like Midsomer Murders lame…because I can knit and not pay attention.

    Do you believe in life after death? What does it look like?

    I certainly do, but not in the way we experience it.   Do I think that the avatar Margo goes on? No.  Do I think the consciousness that is watching Margo as she goes through life, the consciousness that neither lives nor dies, continues…yes I do. When I wake up from a dream sometimes, I really have a hard time trying to figure out whether it was a dream or reality.  Sometimes it feels like real life, starring the Margo avatar, the life that we think of as reality, is actually just another kind of dream.  I believe that when we die, we just wake up and go ‘God, that was a rush, what was that about?’

    I remember watching some three-year old’s get into a fight and I remember them being upset and thinking…that’s just kids.   Well, that’s how a higher consciousness is likely looking at us and thinking oh, that will be over soon, don’t worry about it.  I mean how can you possibly believe and take seriously anything happening on this planet when you know that there are billions of other galaxies and multi verses… and you’re gonna take this seriously, I mean, come on. I always thought if Merle Haggard’s mother died when he was 21 and in prison she would have died thinking she was a failure as a Mom.  Ultimately, he ended up a rich, country western singer. Why worry about kids…you don’t know what their journey is gonna be.

    What does life after death look like…It’s impossible to imagine. When I look up at the stars on a really clear night, I say I’m not even gonna try to figure it out. I have no frame of reference. The Buddhists have a saying, something like ‘when the Sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger, or something like that.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    I don’t want a eulogy at all.  I’m not interested in the traditional experience of death. I am not arrogant enough to think that anything I say or do will matter anymore than it did when my great great great great great grandmother said whatever she said. I mean the framework that humans have established, the goalposts for life… buy a house… go to school… all that stuff is just a concept that we all agreed on.  It’s like money, money is only worth something because we’ve agreed that it does, and assigned it a value, but if money means nothing to me now, then you saying it has value is meaningless to me. 

    I never understood Jesus in the desert, when the devil comes to him and says you can have castles and all the money you want and Jesus goes, ‘yeah, no thanks, I’m good’.  I never understood that.  Now I get it.  Because no matter what you get…a big house…a fancy car…then you’ve gotta work your ass off to keep it and worry that its gonna go away. So instead of it being something to aspire to, it’s a thing that loses its joy.

    One of my favourite quotes from when I was in leadership is, “Of a great leader they will say, we did it ourselves.”  So, if I shaped anybody, or if I influenced anybody, it wasn’t because that was my intention.  If they got something out of anything I ever did, power to them, but that was not my intention.  I’m just doing my dance and if other people benefit by my dance, good for them, even if all they’re saying is ‘I hate that dance.”  I never ever wanted to be a leader, but I certainly was someone who wanted to control things, and those are two very different things. It’s funny, every now and then my kids will say, ‘you were a good mom,’ but ten years ago when they were teenagers, they were saying something else entirely…it’s all relative, and it’s all irrelevant.

  • On Mothers, Mothering, and the Mother Choice

    “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone

    “You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars” – E.E. Cummings

    Author’s Note:

    The decision to become a mother and the experience of being a mother is highly individual and personal.  My thoughts on the matter are based solely on my own experience of being mothered, becoming a mother myself, and a recent discussion with my adult children about the pros and cons of choosing to become a mother (parent).  The following essay is an opinion piece, not intended to critique or explore anyone’s choice or experience but my own.  It is part love letter, and part cautionary tale, as written by a little old lady…in waiting, the mother of two twenty somethings who recently asked, incredulously, “If you got to do it all over again, would you still choose to become a mother?”

    This post is dedicated to everyone who has ever asked themselves if motherhood was for them and, however they answer, a celebration of the right to choose and define that role on their own terms.  There are many ways to mother, and we need not be corseted by traditional paradigms.  As every mother knows, there is a bottomless well of love inside to bestow on all those whom we choose to call our own.

    A few months back I was walking into a glass fronted store when I caught my reflection in the entrance.  It was my mother’s face that stared back at me, and not my own.  It shocked me at first, and then a feeling of such unexpected happiness and peace came over me, as though she was there with me for a moment, and covertly always close by, watching over me, even when she “walks invisible”. My mother passed away suddenly almost ten years ago now, a massive hemorrhagic stroke at the age of 82.  She was old, I guess, but I didn’t know it.  She had survived breast cancer and open-heart surgery and she was very much alive and present in my life, my companion most days, and my first and closest friend always. There are days when I miss her so badly, I surrender to the emotion, I crumple, and after a time I rise and try to remember everything she taught me about life, including how to be a mom.

    My mother, like so many women of her generation, stayed at home with us when we were growing up, and her constant companionship and attention informed our understanding of our worth.  Surely, we must be important if we could command so much of her time.  In those early years our family did not have much in the way of material wealth, but I was blissfully unaware. I felt like a princess because that’s what I saw in my mother’s eyes when she looked at me.   She didn’t work outside our home, so our humble abode was spotless. There was always a home cooked meal for dinner, and most days a cookie as big as your head when I got home from school.  And so beget a lifelong addiction to sweets … but that’s another post.  It’s always the mother’s fault.

    My mother took her work seriously.  She saw her role as the keeper of the home and the keeper of our hearts.  She never cared if we earned good grades, or made AAA sports teams, but she was hard core when it came to the inner workings of our moral compass.  She was always our True North and is largely responsible for what I have come to refer to as a strong Catholic sense of guilt.  We were just as rotten as other kids, of course, but Mom made sure we learned how to feel bad about it afterwards.  She was a master class in empathy and a maker of men who will, 9 times out of 10…perhaps with a little prompting, attempt to do the right thing…if convenient, especially with the promise of a sugary treat for good behavior. And I guess if we’re talking world peace and the survival of the planet and, you know,…the human race, there can surely be no more important work, no higher goal than making sure the next generation feels a bit bad about not being good.

    My own daughter, aged 24, has a slightly different take on the whole mothering concept.   She recently returned home from her first peer group baby shower with a serious case of “ick”.   Although she was happy for her friend, near bursting with an almost fully baked baby, she was a little disgusted by the idea of body sharing with what she currently considers a kind of parasite, and as a qualified nurse she is more than a little horrified by the idea of the coming out party.  It doesn’t take Psych 101 to understand in my small, Catholic guilted heart, that as her mother, I must be to blame.  Did I overshare when I recounted her own birth story, that in the absence of an epidural, if I could have gotten off the birthing gurney and thrown myself out the window, I would have.  Too much?  I mean it was still one of the best days of my life…right?  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that pregnancy, labour and delivery are the easy parts. 

    The truth is that I felt very much the same about becoming a mom when I was in my 20’s. I’m still not sure what happened to make me change my mind: falling in love, the biological imperative, socialization, FOMO.  I don’t know how it happened… well, I mean, I know how it happened …I’m just not sure exactly when or how the idea first came for me. I only know that when it came it was a complete knowing, not some indifferent or half-hearted decision.

    “Would I do it again,” they asked me, would I choose to become a mother knowing all that I know now about the sacrifices, the highs and lows, the weight of the responsibility and the constancy of the relationship?  Of course, I told them what every mother must, that knowing and loving them as I do, I could never choose differently.  But a little later that same evening I gave their question a more rigorous and honest consideration.  I thought about what I had willingly given up or done without to accommodate the mother role.

    I spent 12 years at home with my kids in their formative years.  I had never mentally prepared myself for that kind of mothering, I had my mom set up to be the 9 to 5 Nanny, but after her heart attack, it became clear that I had just landed a full-time position well above my aptitude test.  Let’s just say I wasn’t a natural. I had never really learned to play, I had the patience of a gnat, I hated crafting, and organized sport remains a mystery to me to this day.  I had only the vaguest understanding of toddler milestones.  Looking back on those challenging years I will admit it wasn’t all idyllic or Instagramable.  Being a mother is, without a doubt, the hardest job I’ve ever had.  It’s a learn-as-you- go deal with no gentle onboarding.  The hours are unacceptable, the pay is shite, and the performance reviews can be eviscerating.

    The pragmatics of mothering, the meal prep and lunch bags, the homework, the chauffeuring and learning to tolerate the child centred activities: the birthday parties, the bowling alleys, the soccer fields and hockey arenas… all of that can be managed.  For me, by far the hardest part of being a mother is that you’re “only ever as happy as your unhappiest child.”  The scraped knees and fevers, the broken hearts, the car accidents, and the plethora of little wounds that befall our children are far more agonizing than anything we could experience ourselves. The mother bond is like a Chinese finger trap and cuts deep when tested.

    Despite all the hard graft of mothering, the blessings…the gifts far outweigh the grievances.  I am not the person I was before I became a mother.  My children changed me.  Mother love is the fiercest, most intense, highest frequency, unconditional love that we can experience.  No one… no one will ever love you like your mother does.  Motherhood is a transformative experience.  It taught me humility and patience, it showed me how little we can control and how much we have to be grateful for every day we get to spend together.  Even as adults my kids continue to help me grow with their contemporary take on what constitutes a life well lived and their insights on how we should best spend our time. To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that cohabitating with twenty somethings is easy.  It is not.  But the Zoomer zeitgeist does keep things interesting.

    In short, being a mother, in my experience, is both the best of times and the worst of times.  Would I choose to become a mother again, with the perspective of time, and the convenient memory of a woman well past the heavy-lifting years of mothering – an emphatic, “yes.” Adding up all the mom hours I have logged over a lifetime, do I sometimes wonder what I might have accomplished had I spent that time in pursuit of projects more in keeping with my natural inclinations  – again “Yes.”  Do I crave a more serene environment with less shoes at the door, fewer dishes in the sink, with more time to read and walk and wonder, without consideration of anyone’s needs but my own?   “Perhaps.” Do I sometimes fantasize about an alternate life where I am a lady of leisure and letters, in Rembrandt-lit rooms filled with books, reclining in a Chaise-lounge overlooking the sea… CBC radio my only company?  Of course, I have…Moms are human beings too you know.  Did I live up to the bar my own mother set?  Did I do my job well?  Am I the True North that will help guide my children in making decisions that align with their values and beliefs when it is my time to “walk invisible?”   I hope so. All I know for sure is that I would rather be a merely adequate or average mother to my two darling descendants than an excellent anything else.

    If you’re still searching for the perfect gift for Mother’s Day, take some advice from a little old lady in waiting – make dinner, wash the dishes, clean the house, do the laundry, and if you still live at home, maybe take yourself out for the day.  Give your Mom some time to herself, time to remember the woman she was before you owned her entire heart, in the days before your chapters of her story, when she belonged only to herself.