What I Want to be Remembered For

First off, I went to aikido Monday night. I can’t decide if I like it or not. I really don’t like trying new things. And I think I may have given myself too many new things to try at once. I’m considering signing up for a second aikido class so I can have two classes a week and get more practice. This is consistent with the “just jump in the cold pool” school of thought rather than the “ease your way into the cold pool” school of thought.

I’m not a big fan of swimming.

OK, now the topic of this post. The Daily Post topic #11 is “What do you want to be remembered for?” Yes, there’s a preposition at the end of that sentence. I don’t want to be remembered for being a jerk about grammar, I know that.

But for what do I want to be remembered?

I asked my husband this question first. He said he mostly wants to be remembered as a guy who did things, rather than as a guy who just sat around watching sports all the time. He used to want to be remembered for making some big discovery or contribution that changed a lot of lives, but that’s become less important as he’s gotten older.

“Someone once said,” he said, “‘Imagine what you could accomplish if you didn’t care who got credit.’ I hope to not worry about who gets credit and just do great things even if I’m not remembered for them.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer. But what about me?

Well, the earth is billions of years old. I don’t even know the names of my great-great-grandparents, much less what they did (aside from sire/birth my great-grandparents). I’m a tiny insignificant speck and even if I became as famous as Homer (the poet, not the Simpson), I will eventually fade into nothingness.

Which is a really depressing train of thought, and clearly one I don’t readily accept (or at least one against which I fight). Otherwise, what’s the point of all of the blogging? Unless maybe it’s just a shout into the darkness hoping to get back an echo to keep me company. (See what kind of mood trying new things puts me into?)

But, taking a step back, I can look at it from my limited influence. I really just want to pass along a little nugget, not even with my name attached to it, but which can shift a person’s thinking and perhaps cause gentle ripples through the future of humanity.

I already have done a little something like that.

I’m a breastfeeding support-type person. I’m a member of a whole group of other moms who hold monthly meetings and take phone calls to help nursing women address their breastfeeding and mothering questions. There’s one little piece of encouragement that I received as a new mom that I’ve made a point of passing along to as many other moms as I can. It’s this:

You know your baby better than anyone else in the world. You know him better than your doctor, better than your mother, better even than your partner. You are the expert on your baby.

I say this a lot, and even though it had a profound influence on my own mothering, after saying it so much it starts to sound trite and a little worn.

But then I was sitting in a meeting, and I heard a mom repeat back this bit of wisdom to another mom. She told me later that my telling her this at her very first meeting was a turning point in her mothering journey, and gave her the confidence to trust her instincts in mothering her baby.

I cry when I think of this.

I won’t be remembered for this except by the mom I told directly, but it’ll carry beyond my direct influence to people I’ll never even meet. It’s only fitting that I won’t be remembered as the person who said this, because I didn’t even come up with it. It was shared with me by another mother, and I simply passed it along. I wasn’t the pebble, but merely a ripple extending out into the waters, which triggered another ripple, which, I hope, triggers another and another.

So maybe that’s what I want: to be remembered not as an individual since my individual existence is going to fade in a shockingly short period of time, but to be remembered as that little feeling of confidence and love passed from one mother to another.