Goes Without Saying?

No. 110

Hi. It’s again been a long while since my last written article in August 2025 but I’m still here. Hopefully you’ve been listening to my continuation of “A Changing Frame of Reference” series in podcast format, Better Than Not. I hope you’ll subscribe to my YouTube channel. The numbers certainly indicate that you have, passing 1 million views in December. Thank you. But I’m switching gears a little here with this article, or better, letter, and why what I’m writing about, won’t go without saying.

I think it was between my second and third birthdays that I first became aware of being alive. Sixty years later, I can’t name the feeling as a child, but those fleeting moments stand as my earliest memories—glimpses, really, like today’s social media shorts: vivid snippets, nothing more.

One image: a cold storage room with horizontal boards separating potatoes from onions. There, tucked away, was a shiny new tricycle. The trike was someone elses, I was told at the time, to keep my birthday surprise intact. But I didn’t believe it was mine even after I unwrapped it. (I still struggle to unlearn something once it’s set in my mind.) Maybe I truly remember this, or maybe the story has been retold so often it’s become memory. Doubt about whose bike it was definitely comes from family lore.

Around the same time: playing in a small den, surrounded by Christmas cards and decorations, listening to the song “Sleigh Ride” on television. Another: hurling a plastic play knife—the spring-loaded kind where the blade retracts on impact—up a tree, never to be seen again (a toy that feels macabre by today’s standards). Still another: a dim basement with a dusty, unused bar, liquor bottles coated in neglect, and those swinging kitchen doors like the ones on Mister Ed’s barn—top half open, bottom closed, perfect for peeking over.

What ties every fragment together? Mom was always close by.

Recently, these memories brought back the phrase “it goes without saying.” We assume certain truths are obvious—“Of course Mom was there.” But as Christopher J. H. Wright observes in Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament (paraphrased), things that “go without saying” often need to be said most clearly. Too many assumptions stay silent, and what’s left unsaid can fade. So, for Mom, on your 89th birthday, some things must now be said.

Mothers are often thankless in our society. Expected to raise children while juggling jobs to afford the endless “needs” our culture sells us—always just a little more. We downplay the enormity of motherhood, our lives so filled with distractions, transactions, and destinations. Yet every one of us enters the world through our mother’s labor, and that labor never truly ends. It’s a lifelong commitment. Just ask your mom.

Mom raised three children who grew and have intact nuclear families each with enduring marriages—something remarkable, almost rare today.

She was born in Clear Creek, Ontario—a tiny hamlet on Lake Erie’s north shore—the second of twins and the youngest of six. Not especially healthy as a child (she even had rickets from calcium deficiency), yet she excelled in school, skipping two grades and becoming I’m sure one of Ontario’s youngest Teachers College graduates ever. At seventeen, she was already in the classroom. But even with that early success, she knew her deepest calling was motherhood.

In Teachers College she met Dad—a city boy from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, as foreign to her rural world as another country. He was a banker. They married on July 9, 1960. Mom left the countryside for Thorold, Ontario, teaching while Dad worked at a nearby bank branch. A year later, pregnant with me, they moved to the mighty metropolis of Toronto. I was born above the bank at Bloor and St. Clarens in March 1962. Two months later, her father died. Whirlwind doesn’t begin to describe it.

Pregnancies were hard—no Diclectin then, only bedrest and chicken noodle soup in the shadow of the Thalidomide tragedy. Yet that’s where Mom truly became a mother. She chose to leave teaching to stay home with us.

The bank kept moving us: Oshawa in late 1962, Kitchener in 1964 (just before brother Phil arrived), Petrolia in 1966. Each transfer upended life, but Mom was the constant. In Petrolia my memories sharpen: the big “palace” of a house, trips to the library, Dr. Seuss, and Mom’s presence everywhere. My first stitches (crashing into a porch rail), first day of kindergarten, first grade—all with Mom nearby.

She fell seriously ill in early ’68 while pregnant with sister Lynne, bedridden, help was brought in (a kind woman named Helen). Still, Mom was there upstairs. After Lynne’s birth, I battled pneumonia, ear infections, and tonsillitis—off school for over a month, my first hospital overnight in Sarnia Hospital with Spirograph. But Mom was there.

Through school disappointments (missing the rep hockey team, high-jump failure), through a burst appendix at fifteen (when she tracked down an unknown doctor on a Sunday evening to save my life), through nineteen days in the hospital—she was there. Always.

Mom could surprise us too with her quiet strength. Once, in Toronto visiting cousin Linda (practically a sister to Mom), Dad struggled to park the car. A man yelled down from an apartment above, “You can’t park there!” Mom, ever calm, retorted sweetly, “My, you’re in a good mood today.” Silence from above. And now family legend.

From boisterous birthday parties to weddings, bumps to broken bones, the moments blur—but one stands out: Mom’s eulogy for her twin sister Nancy. Doubting herself at first, she rose and spoke with a fearless, eloquent grace, honoring her sister’s life in words that left no dry eyes. A stunning, unforgettable moment.

Mothers give a life for a life. Never doubt it—even when it “goes without saying.” You’d be wrong.

Lately I’ve learned about attachment theory from a few counsellors close to me. It holds that a child who receives consistent attention, affection, nurturing, and guidance from their primary caregiver—Mom, for us—develops secure attachment. That security builds self-worth, emotional resilience, healthy relationships, and confidence to explore the world. In short, it equips a person to connect deeply and live well.

What greater gift could a mother give? It goes without saying—which means it must be said:

Mom has given us that.

Mom, we love you. Happy 89th Birthday! Thank you for being our Mom—always there, saying what needed to be said through your presence, your love, and your life. Mom, we love you.

Happy 89^th Birthday! Thanks for being Mom.

Thanks for reading “Goes Without Saying?” Feel free to comment. I’d like that. Also, I hope you’ll join me on my Better Than Not podcast.