Learning how to be in the world

The other day as I was pulling out something from the ACLU and Emily’s List, United Against Gun Violence and Human Rights Watch, I thought about how this daily encounter with my mother’s life, and what mattered to her, is a constant reminder of what she’d instilled in me — and my brother, David — about the importance of the responsible, civic-minded citizen.

As a child, I must admit, the significance of what she was imparting might have been only partially appreciated.

Each night as she was making dinner, she listened to a transistor radio she propped up on the kitchen counter. It was the late 1950s and she had it tuned to a 15-minute news show that, I believe, was hosted by Howard K. Smith. I was probably no older than 10, and I’d often be sitting at the kitchen table listening and watching her.

Sometimes, when the newscast ended, she’d turn off the radio and ask me if I had questions about something I’d heard. I remember she’d be standing at the stove, looking over at me, waiting for my reply.

“What’s segregation?” I remember asking once, and the reason I remember, is she moved whatever she was cooking off the burner and sat down next to me at the table.  She told me what segregation was, its history, and why it shouldn’t exist in America. Other nights, we talked about how juries worked and why not voting is bad for a democracy.

“We shouldn’t ever turn away from one another just because someone doesn’t look like us, vote like us, or whose histories are different than our own,” she’d say to me.   

And what I remember, too, is that she’d sometimes end these chats by placing her hand on mine as she rose from her chair, sealing the importance of what she’d just said with a loving touch of emphasis.

I don’t pretend I always comprehended exactly what she was talking about, but she did make me understand what was important to her: that living a safe, middle-class life in San Mateo should never completely insulate me — or my brother — from the type of world we’d live in if ignorance and inaction ruled the day.

She practiced this by gaining purchase in what was then essentially a man’s political world, by being one of the first women on a local school board, and by spearheading the integration of an elementary school district when many folks in the community were against it.

My brother and I never sat in an actual classroom where my mother was the instructor, but I believe she was the most important teacher either of us ever had. And, through the years, one of her most enduring lessons to us was that the human heart is the first home of democracy. It’s where we embrace the questions about whether we can be equitable, generous, empathetic and courageous.

In a phone conversation recently, I told my brother David I was writing something about her, and a while later he dropped me a note about a particular lesson she’d imparted to him.

“She taught me that taking personal accountability for my actions increases the chances I’ll contribute positively to the world. She showed me that I’m someone, and that means having a real impact on people and situations for both good and bad. It means recognizing that the world doesn’t exist to be in service to just me. I must give back. Just as she did. She lived the truth of democracy’s gift: to include, to listen, to participate. By giving her time and money to support the careers of other women, to the equal education of all children, to the cause of civil liberties — and in the raising of two sons with similar inclinations — she showed up and demonstrated the gifts of personal accountability.”

In the late afternoons, now, the postman delivers the mail. Though the days of sitting at that kitchen table are a distant memory, the lessons learned then are transported into the present each time I hold an envelope addressed to my mother.   

“You know,” she said once, “there’ll always be people doing more than you, and certainly people doing less. But the thing that’s important is for you to always be better than yourself, to be better than you thought you could be, to always be standing for a better world.”

Mike Nagler was a longtime member of the Burlingame Library Board and taught for many years in the Cañada College Humanities Department.