Watch Me
Nobody thought Mary would amount to anything.
She was born in 1918 and back then, about all a woman could aspire to was to be a housewife and mother.
But Mary wanted more.
She got married at 17 and had two children. Her husband went off to war and when he came home, divorced her. Mary was alone with two small
children. And she was broke.
She went to work selling Stanley products, door to door. She was pretty good at it but since she was a woman, knocking on doors and hawking scrub brushes was about as far as she would ever go with the company.
So, she did what women did back then. She got married again and went back home to be a housewife.
And Mary would have stayed a housewife if her second husband hadn’t died and made her a widow.
And broke. Again.
Mary had been working on an idea for a business with her husband but with his unexpected death, she would never be able to start it without him.
She was a woman and women just didn’t do those kind of things.
So, what does this story have to do with anything other than being an inspiration for an episode of Paul Harvey’s ‘The Rest of the Story?’
Well, in six days, my youngest son will be getting married. He and his fiancé will be tying the knot here at our house under the shade of our pecan grove.
I don’t really remember the first date he ever went on. I think it was a double date with his sister to prom.
He hated it.
Not because he didn’t like girls but because he just wasn’t sure what to do or say.
For the past several years, he had been under the care of a psychologist who was helping him learn how to read visual and verbal cues from others.
He had always had a hard time doing that because he was different than the other kids in his class.
He had been diagnosed with a type of autism that made certain social interactions difficult. But dating was something completely new.
We had many discussions with his doctors, teachers and counselors and most of them warned us that he would struggle with intimate relationships. We should be prepared for the fact that he may never find a mate.
We were used to that kind of talk. We had heard it all of his life.
“He can’t do that…”
“He’ll never be able to..”
“Don’t expect him to…”
Those phrases were a constant murmur in our lives. But my lovely wife and I chose to just ignore them because we refused to believe any statement that had the words ‘he can’t.’
The ‘experts’ said ‘he can’t go to college’ but he did. They said ‘he can’t make it through graduate school’ but he did.
They also said ‘he will never have a girlfriend’ but he did.
He found someone in college who didn’t expect him to be someone he was not.
And they fell in love.
That was ten years ago. They’re still in love. And in six days, they will be getting married.
If he had listened to all those people who said ‘you can’t’ then he would never have had the nerve to ask her out. He would have never had the patience to stay with her. He would have never asked her to be his wife.
To be our daughter. The mother of his children. Our grandchildren.
If he had just listened to all those murmurs.
But he didn’t.
Some people like to say that it was his mother and I that got him to this point in life but that is not true. He has been on his own for almost a dozen years.
There was only so much we could do. He had to chose who he would be and where his life would go. He could allow his situation to ruin his life or he could choose to push on and be happy.
He chose happy.
He is who he is because of himself. Not us.
He is the one who didn’t listen to the people who said he would never make it in college. In graduate school. With women.
He became the man we always knew he could be and he did it on his own.
So, this Saturday when he stands up with his new bride and he says ‘I do’, what I will hear is ‘I did it.’
That’s exactly what Mary did all those years ago. When everyone told her there was no way that a 45 year old widow with no money could start a multi-billion dollar cosmetic company, she just smiled and did it.
Mary borrowed $5,000 from her son and started Mary Kay Cosmetics.
People told Mary Kay Ash she would be a failure. She said ‘watch me.’
I can only imagine what my son, who was told all the things he couldn’t do, will do next.