Cornering has entered our language from a sense of an inescapable situation, causing desperate conduct in an effort to escape. As a lad working on a farm, I saw the lightning motion of the lady of the house, farm wife and mother of my best friend, leap from her place at the dinner table and, in a trice, corner and dispatch a mouse in the kitchen. Deftly on her way to the tragic end of the mouse she seized a broom and the lethal weapon served her purpose. In the moment I saw the mouse turn, rise up a bit as though to take on the tormentor only to become an even better target for a marksman who knew no mercy for mice.
In something of a sophisticated way, the experience of the mouse is ours with invisible accompaniments and conflict. It may begin with parents who themselves may have been deprived of needed guidance and education for life. Some parents corner their children by trying to fulfill some of their invisible hopes for their children. My mother, dear to me, tried to fulfill some of her hopes related to piano playing for me. I hated it, especially when buddies wanted me to play ball with them. The public school teacher found that she had a boy in class who could play the works of Mozart. You guessed it. We put on a play for parents based on the life of Mozart. Guess who was Mozart? I remember that I played Minuet in G. When we closed the play after two matinee performances on Thursday and Friday, I never touched the piano again except to move it. If challenged I could probably identify middle C on the keyboard. Do I wish I could play? Of course I do, but I was never given the reasons why I might like to play the piano. It was because of mother’s unrequited love for the piano that I played. I was cornered and fought back. She gave in.
A brother-in-law, a moose of a man, wanted to play football in high school. He would have played with Jackie Jensen, an ultimate star through a professional career. Milt was denied because his mother feared he would get hurt. Years later he said to me as his little son crawled across the floor, He’s going to play football. My mother wouldn’t let me. He will make it up. I challenged him: You will do what your mother did, only in reverse. He will play because you want him to, as your mother would not let you play because she didn’t want you to get hurt. In fact, she didn’t want to get hurt – if you got hurt. He responded, I guess that’s right, but he will play football. His son never played football, but he did learn how to play the piano and organ. (I must confess, in all this I did learn to love classical music.)
That sons and daughters have followed their parents in running the store, or farming the land, and done well, there is no doubt. It is common course to be often followed if love for the profession is instilled, and the choice is that of the son or daughter, not consequential of some pressure. It is the secret of teaching the new generation the meaning and responsibility of freedom and work to fulfillment as human beings. The discovery of self and responsibility rests in the activity and instruction brought into a young life. A friend told me of his experience with his distant father. One experience occurred on a wintry Minnesota morning when he asked his father if he could ride with him since they were going in the same direction. The father agreed if his son were in the car when he was ready to leave. The Father drove past the university, not remembering his son was a student. Informed that he was well passed the stop, the father pulled over, let him out to walk back to the university in the stormy weather. That was the way of it in the family, and the son never seemed to get over some bitterness – that his father had no affirmative effect on his life. During my ministry I have sometimes seen persons cornered, and something inside them seemed to die. One lovely sixteen years old girl wrote to me: I want my mother to be my mother and not a substitute for the mother she missed. The family is the seed of not only physical life, but personal. Here is where we learn the intimacy of persons making families; we find manners to function respecting the sensitivities of others; we learn language that gives dignity to discourse; and, where grace for life and faith are instilled through acceptance and confidence for self and a future for joyful life and relationships.
PS: There is more here, especially to note the text. We will pick up the theme on this date next year. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020