By Carl Sampson
By and large, I think mothers are under appreciated.
I can just see approximately half of the readers of this column nodding in agreement. Though I’ve never personally been a mother, I do know that good mothers are in short supply.
I had a mother myself. I suppose I still do, technically speaking. She’s been dead a long time — it’ll be 18 years this spring — and I still miss her.
Oh, we were never particularly close. She was a Swede, which meant that warm-and-fuzzy moments were generally non-existent.
I remember when I introduced my wife-to-be to her and she shook hands. Heck, she also shook hands with me. Fun was generally frowned upon in our home. Again, I think that’s a Scandinavian trait.
But her life was not particularly sweet. She was the 13th child in her family — and by far the youngest.
Her mother was 47 when she was born, and died when she was a kid. She was raised by a sister in an Upper Michigan farm house with no electricity or indoor plumbing and the only heat was from the wood stove in the kitchen.
She joined the Army during World War II and was lucky enough to meet my Dad. For the record, he was lucky, too.
She had some funny ideas, about religion — she was against it — and politicians — “They’re all crooks,” she said about every 10 minutes.
But she was kind-hearted, even if she didn’t like to show it. And smart. One of the smartest things she ever did was bug me about money. She had grown up during the Depression and knew a thing or two about poor.
“Have you started an IRA yet?” she would ask me every time she called.
After I got out of college, I generally worked for newspapers run by tightwads who underpaid and overworked their employees. And they didn’t even consider offering an adequate retirement program. An Individual Retirement Account was my mom’s way of telling me to put aside some money for a rainy day, also known as old age.
At first I resisted her advice — what 22-year-old wouldn’t? But that year I got a tax refund and decided to use it open an IRA just keep my mom off my case. The next year, I did the same thing. And the next.
The money grew like topsy. I learned a little about investments — everything from stocks and bonds to limited partnerships — and I learned not to panic every time the stock market sputtered. I followed the market and eventually became a stock broker and financial planner for a couple of years.
As a result of listening to my mother about IRAs, my wife and I have a bit of cushion so I might be able to retire without standing along Cascade Highway with a cardboard sign saying, “Retired and broke. Anything helps.”
The way Congress is going, Social Security isn’t a sure bet. It’s because of a mother’s advice that my wife and I will be OK. Mothers are like that. They offer a dab of advice, hoping for the best.
Years later, the light bulb will light up over a stubborn son’s head with the words, “Listen to your mother.”
