Lessons I've Learned

In one of her blogs last week, my daughter posed an interesting quiz on learning and self-education and challenged her readers to take the quiz themselves.

What is a memory you have of learning with your Mom?

My Mom took a very active role in our education. She "heard" our lessons every night. My memory improved dramatically under my Mom’s tutelage because if we did not recite the catechism or history answers back to her "perfectly", we were sent off to study "until you know it!" My sister can attest to many homework papers that were torn up because she had crossed out or erased. OK in fairness, a few times she had erased holes in the paper. Maybe my success in school was a direct result of Mom’s encouragement, because she would not settle for less. She taught me to always strive to do my best.

I also learned many other life lessons from her. Like how to be a savvy shopper, hunting out bargains way before it became stylish. I will never forget the trip in-between dress racks to a remote corner in Bloomies to find a lone hidden rack of sales items. Now in those days, it was pretty awesome for us to find something affordable in Bloomingdale’s but Mom managed to find bargains in the classiest places. Just to negotiate her way around that store was admirable to me, who, like many others, finds it a major challenge just to find the exit out of Bloomies!

What is a memory you have of learning with your Dad?

On the meandering car vacations, which brought American history and geography alive for me, my Dad taught me a love of traveling, visiting new places and reading maps! I was not geographically challenged, as many Americans are today, because I had personally visited capitals of states or spent many car hours searching for them on road maps.

Dad also taught me to appreciate and reverence nature. He would point out interesting cloud formations and instruct me to take pictures out of the car window as we traveled the highways to some vacation destination. He never failed to point out sunsets, whether on a fishing expedition upstate or looking out the window from his easy chair. We spent many quiet hours in row boats on lakes, waiting for fish to bite. Now I realize I was learning to observe nature; in a way it was my first lesson in meditation. And it felt so peaceful.

What kind of education do you think you gave yourself?

Like my daughter, I loved to draw when I was a kid. It certainly spurred a lifelong love for art. In school, I did not enjoy history – it seemed to be all about dates and wars. Ho Hum. So after I graduated from college, I took on a project to find out about everyday life in other times. I was especially interested in medieval times and Barbara Tuchman’s classic "A Distant Mirror" got me started. I discovered that history was very interesting indeed and found a different perspective. I especially enjoyed the book by Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, two Columbia University professors. "A History of Their Own" approached history from a woman’s point of view, not chronologically but categorically: Women of the Fields, Women of the Churches, Women of the Castles and Manors, etc. I learned that women did yield power even way back when and my love for history was born. As a result, I have a sizable collection of history books, especially Medieval History focusing on everyday life. Any one can get an education by reading. Just ask my granddaughter, Marina!