MY MEDITATIONS: Life's not fair...

Sep. 11—My mother, Geneva Wilson, was a Laurel County Schools teacher for the first half of her career. I am almost positive that two things will stand out about my mother in most of her student's memories.

1.) During cafeteria monitoring duties, my mother employed a very distinct noise control tactic. Stomping straight back to the kitchen, she'd grab the biggest pot she could find and the fattest metal spoon or pan to pair with it. Out she would march, beating that pot like she was auditioning to be the next member of Stomp until everyone quieted down.

2.) My mother had a piece of advice that was often repeated in the classroom and my childhood home: "Life's not fair. Suck it up and deal with it."

Pot and spoon aside, the motto she doled out to many of her students over the years was one she carried throughout her life. It was always delivered kindly or matter-of-factly and never with malice. To her, those words were just a natural understanding about the way the world worked as she knew it: "Life's not fair. Suck it up and deal with it."

It took me many more years of growing up and leaving behind the halls of the elementary school my mother patrolled with her pot and pan to understand where her mindset came from.

It began over 100 years ago. Grant Baker, my mother's father, was born in 1907 in Leslie County. A man who was married and already had several of his eventual 10 children by the height of the Great Depression, Grant Baker learned firsthand the unfairness of life. The Bakers, like many Appalachians in the first half of the 20th century and even today, were intimately familiar with hard work. A moonshiner and a coal miner, my Papaw Grant broke his back in the mines so his family could break bread at the table. The Bakers barely evaded starvation to come out on the other side of the Depression intact.

The trauma of the experience scarred my Papaw for the rest of his life. The scarcity mindset of such a catastrophic event as the Depression engrained itself in those who endured it firsthand — to the point that even my mother felt it 30-plus years later as their very last baby.

What I believe my mother learned earlier than most, is that oftentimes you can want and desire and hope and toil away and still not come out on top. My Papaw saw this in the Depression and my mother sees it in life. Now,so do I. It made us resilient — a strong Appalachian characteristic. Cherish the happy times and fight the tough times. My mother was not a fan of bellyaching.

She had a gift at turning this somber truth into a gentle reminder to her children and her students. In her estimation, it was a lesson best learned early. Sometimes, life simply will not be in our favor no matter how hard we will it to be so. In my mother's eyes, there was little point in trying to extrapolate meaning or fairness on the course of life's random events, but rather to learn to accept undesirable outcomes. It's the difference between a man lamenting about the woes of the Depression and the man who put away his complaints in order to take action to feed his family however he could.

Over the years, I've heard other Kentucky mama's repeat some variation of this phrase. Though none so eloquently as my backwoods southern mama, born in the heat of summer with a temper to match, banging on her pot in my elementary school classroom because we were too loud.

PS: Mom, if you're reading this...there's a reason I've never gifted you cookware.

Sarah Wilson Gregory is a Laurel County native and 9th generation Kentuckian. She can be reached at [email protected].