To My Mother - Toni Martin - For the Gift of Life

The movie 'It's a Wonderful Life' is a classic. People often watch it around Christmas. It starts off with a man thinking about committing suicide by jumping off a bridge into a freezing river. It's based on the short story 'The Greatest Gift' by Philip Van Doren Stern. Here's a powerful line from that story: "You had the greatest gift of all conferred upon you—the gift of life, of being a part of this world and taking a part in it. Yet you denied that gift."

My mother wasn't supposed to be able to have children because she had some internal injuries from a childhood illness. She had surgery, but it was still doubtful. Therefore my life is miracle adjacent from the beginning. Not only was I born, my mother also had my younger sister a couple of years later. Hopes and wishes made real, the first gift of life.

Life doesn't always feel like a gift though. Often it can feel like a curse of physical, mental, and emotional pain. Thirteen years later I was deep in all three and contemplated suicide myself. The thought of my mother's sadness turned me away from that and toward a replacement life pursuit of finding the meaning of life. The second gift of life. 

Another thirteen years later I was on a misadventure in Africa and in a situation I probably wasn't going to survive. My mother called some people and made some threats. It was still close, but I made it out. The third gift of life.

That's three times that my mother has given me the gift of life. If I think about it there are more. One time as a teenager I decided to walk from Blue Lake to Fremont, Michigan in winter. In total it's the same distance as a marathon. It had taken me all day. As I was getting closer to home the wind was picking up, clouds covered the sky. The road was covered in ice, the snow in the ditch on the side of the road was deep. As the wind picked up it was blowing so hard that when I stood on the road it would blow me back and I was sliding on the ice. It was snowing and the visibility was getting low, and since it was later in the day it was getting darker. I had a few more miles to go and I was exhausted. I decided to sit down in the snow in the ditch to take a short break. At that moment my mother pulled up in the car and saw me because of my red coat. It took me awhile to warm up at home. I assume I would have found deeper reserves to keep going on my own, but I'm not sure.

Years later when I was recovering from brainstem damage complications in my late 20s there were times that I couldn't walk more than a few steps without falling down, and at times I couldn't stay awake for even 30 minutes straight. Without her patience I doubt I would have been able to recover over the following years like I have.

I have lived a better life than anyone has ever earned. In the absence of the ability to repay, there can only be gratitude.

When my father graduated high school he couldn't read, and then he found out that you need to be able to read even for working in factories. So he believed in the importance of reading. My mother agreed and she was better at it, so she became my first teacher. It worked, and now I've read thousands of books.

There is much else that wouldn't have been possible without my mother: finding the meaning of life (value attainment), joining the high IQ society Mensa after recovering from brain damage, leading and reforming a local government, traveling the world, teaching thousands of students, and writing hundreds of articles.

Over the decades we've had a lot of adventures together, and they are some of my best memories. This one time I took mom to a murder mystery dinner in Grand Rapids. The host asked for a volunteer. My mother doesn't want to be in front of a group like that, so as the host walked near our table she put a bread roll in her mouth and turned away, thinking that she wouldn't be chosen if she was chewing something and not looking at the host. Well, I enthusiastically pointed at her, and she was chosen.

The host was a magician and she was his assistant. He took a handkerchief and produced a dove from it. Then he gave it to her and she was to put it down his throat, and he would magically produce another dove. When she put the handkerchief in his mouth, he choked and died (not really, it's a murder mystery dinner show remember). I got one blurry photo of it. When she came back to the table we had to figure out who poisoned the handkerchief and was the murderer. But at first it seemed like it was her. It was hilarious.

My mother was born of the 4th of July, and because of the festivities her birthday is often forgotten. For years I tried to get in at least one unusual adventure with mom every year, not on her birthday, as a type of replacement celebration. When she turned 60 I wanted to do something on the actual day. We had been on the riverboat in Grand Rapids before. It was a classic rear paddle wheel, which we both enjoyed going on. The problem was that they had only one cruise that day in the evening, and in the evening mom wanted to be back in Twin Lake to watch the fireworks show.

I contacted them about renting the entire boat. That was a bit expensive, so what I did instead is guarantee a minimum number of boat ticket sales for them to open a new time slot earlier in the day. If they didn't sell enough tickets then I would cover the difference. I made a social media post letting everyone know, and more people than I expected joined us for the day. It was great.

One year we took a helicopter ride over Traverse City. One year we took the Badger ship across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. We fed and even petted a bear at a park in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We visited the Ark Encounter in Kentucky and the Parthenon in Tennessee. We went to an Amish zoo in Indiana. We went to Mackinaw Island and I did parasailing. We visited Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, which ended up being bigger than I realized, and rode in a 1914 Model T, and on a different trip we visited the Ford F-150 factory. And oh, there have been so many more adventures.

We've watched a lot of murder mystery and sit-com shows together. One time we were watching a comedian travel around Canada doing a documentary and a stand up show about small towns called 'Still Standing'. One of the towns was just a little way on the other side of Detroit called Amherstburg, about a four hour drive from us. They had a pizza joint that looked excellent, so we decided to give it a go. When we drove into Canada they asked us why we were going there. We told them we were just entering and exiting on the same day to get some pizza at a place we saw on a comedy tv show. The Canadian officer said he knew of the place and we would like it.

The pizza was decent. We also walked around and even found a store called Evelyn's that had everything labelled Evelyn where we bought some chocolate and things for Evelyn. When we were driving back into the US the officer told us her name had been flagged. He knew it wasn't her, but he put a sticker on the car anyway and we had to drive to the line with military security. They were opening and searching cars. I started thinking, "Wait a minute, were we supposed to declare the leftover pizza and the chocolate? Are we going to get in trouble for that?" I thought about calling a state senator that I knew, but then they removed us from the car and we had to leave our phones as we were sent into the detention building.

They gave us two assigned seats in a little room. No one was talking. We weren't allowed to move without permission. You said, "Just don't leave me, okay?" But, I had to use the bathroom. I asked the security guard and he let me in. I was gone for less than two minutes and when I came out you were gone, and two other people were in our assigned seats. I wandered around and found you at the counter with the manager overriding the alert. It was an odd little two hour adventure on its own.

This year we had our adventure of a cruise to Alaska to complete me visiting all 50 states, and traveling to twelve different countries in Europe. We had more adventures on just those two trips that I can recount. I know you had your doubts about being able to walk as much as we did, and especially about traveling for two weeks one time and four weeks the other time with just a backpack, but you did it. They were very different trips than if I had gone on my own, and I had a lot of fun. Even before we left it was surprising. I had put in a request with Buckingham Palace for a tour route with fewer stairs. I was sitting on the couch in the living room and you were standing in the kitchen. I got a call and answered it. You looked over and I said, "It's Buckingham Palace." You were quite surprised.

When I was in elementary school I wrote a poem called 'Colosseum Mom'. I remember getting corrected by the teacher for it being incorrect because I had referenced how you protected me like the roof in the Colosseum, and the teacher pointed out that the Colosseum doesn't have a roof. I had to look up reference material showing that the Colosseum had a partial retractable roof to protect against the sun and get my grade raised. This one is somewhat different.

Ode to My Mother

Before our beginning,

there is another.

Who hopes and dreams,

of our existence.

Who hopes and dreams,

that we will have,

hopes and dreams,

and some of them made real.

Who worries over our worries,

and worries over our non-worries,

and worries over worrying,

about worries and non-worries.

Who spends time and care,

for us to grow,

and become,

more than she can know.

With attention and direction,

we move from beginning to middle,

and slowly start to see,

her perspective.

From beginning to end,

nothing can replace,

the love of a mother.

To the greatest of all, my mother, Toni Martin.

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