I am fortunate to have Ruthie M. Hopkins as my mother. She has been one of the most wonderful gifts that God has given me. The stages of life that I remember my mother being most pivotal was during my adolescence, my young adult years and today during my middle-aged stage of life. I am the man that I am today because of the love and life lessons of my mother.
One of the fondest memories I have of my mother was on my eleventh birthday. She surprised me by coming to my school at lunchtime for a lunch date. I remember being called to the front office just before lunch, not knowing that my mother had showed up. I enter the front office and remember seeing her huge warming smile. She checked me out of school and we rode to the newly opened Louisiana Fried Chicken restaurant. I remember this as if it were yesterday. I ordered: spicy hot chicken, French fries, a yeast roll, and a strawberry soda. More important than the happiness of being checked out of school in the middle of the day or the delight of eating at a favorite spot and consuming delicious spicy hot chicken, was the precious moments of spending time with my mother. I remember feeling special. My mother is my first best friend and I hold many special memories of the various times we spent together. During my adolescent years, I also loved going to the supermarket with my mother for our weekly grocery outings. She was well organized with her shopping list accompanied by her neatly sorted coupons that were placed in a portable accordion folder. While she walked down each aisle combing the shelves for the best savings, I would make my way through different parts of the market hunting for specific grocery items from the list. As a pre-teen, whether it was shopping together or sharing special birthday moments, spending time with my mother was as joyful as visiting an amusement park. Between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three, my mother and I would spend virtually every day talking, often late into the evenings. It was during these times that I would glean from her wisdom, learn valuable advice about life, and lean into her reasoned sensibilities. I believe these were the moments that my mother was passing on to me the value and awareness of spending quality time with those you cared about. She taught me that this is how you develop trust, love, kindness, compassion and gentleness and they are all necessary to cultivate healthy relationships. These were the natural traits that my brothers and I grew up witnessing from my mother. These were also the qualities that I needed to carry me successfully through college, graduate school, and moving away from California to develop a family life and career. Mother’s lessons and special talks are yet deeply embedded within me. As an adult in my middle-aged stage of life with my own spouse and children, the lessons of life, the calmness and quiet resolve, the poised beauty, and godly grace of mother is yet a model worthy of emulating. The man that I am, the father I have become and the husband to Karen that I am blessed to be, testifies of the gift that my mother has been to me. My mother is a quiet soul! Poised in her disposition! Her calm and caring demeanor has always extended beyond the archetypal depiction of the Proverbs 31 virtuous woman. My mother has exuded peace and calmness when uncertainty or chaos manifested itself. She embodies gentle inspirational motivation needed to give assurance when making difficult life decisions. I am blessed to have been loved, cared for, and invested in by my mother during all the stages of my life. I will forever cherish her lessons of life as much as I treasure her, not just on Mother’s Day, but every day! [Jamal-Dominique Hopkins is Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. He is also a Christ and Being Human Pedagogy Fellow with the Yale University Center for Faith and Culture and the author of the book Cultic Spiritualization: Religious Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Gorgias Press, 2022). He can be followed on Twitter and Instagram @phdhopkins.] |
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