Three mothers have shaped my life. In fact, these three mothers have been part of every decision I’ve ever made.

One of them, Marion, I don’t know as well as I should. I know that she raised five children and married into farming and often didn’t know how the bills would be paid and had her house burn down. I know that her dad abandoned her mom when Marion was old enough to know, old enough to feel the abandonment. I know that she knits and quilts and that’s how she says “I love you.”

I know her daughter way better. Her daughter is Nancy. For the last 29 years, what she thinks, what she cares about has mattered to me. I first realized that when her grandmother died and I wanted more than anything to give her a hug. And I suddenly knew that this friend that I hardly knew mattered. The diligence and detail and bookkeeping and pies and cooking that Nancy does to show love to us and to the organizations she’s worked with for many years were learned in part from her mother. Nancy is also a great herself.

The third, Ardis, I’ve known all my life. She has spent decades living as a loving second chair to a man who worked as a dedicated second chair. I have learned the value of being behind the scenes. Often, she has been unable to help her three children in the ways she would like. And so, she has spent hours talking of us with her heavenly Father in the way that I imagine this fourth daughter, born in her dad’s forties, talked with her Swedish immigrant father: a mixture of awe and hesitance and respect and complete confidence that underlying  his few words was always “I love you.”