Picture Above: My mother, Ethel Cipri, with students at a prison in Ecuador, where she taught English.

In any good and worthy friendship there must be a foundation of trust to start. If I am going to bother you for your time and rightfully be able to call you my friend then let me offer a bit of myself. A bit of my heart—a deep cavern of memory that is precious to me—so that you may know that I am available to you and take our friendship seriously.

I was raised by a single mother in a very tough and sometimes violent neighborhood. And I often felt scared and alone.

My mother was full of love and wisdom and tender selflessness and she was also endowed with worldly knowledge. She was a poet and a university graduate, a Peace Corp volunteer, a speaker of many languages, and a Christian who read and lived by the word of God. In short she had much to offer me in the way of instruction and guidance.

I had many questions that needed answered. Why is there violence, inequality, poverty? How does one rise above them? My mother rarely answered these questions in words. Hers was a more subtle way of teaching me  life’s lessons.

On Wednesday afternoons, after her shift at the Admitting Department in the Stamford Hospital, she would rush home, walk the dog, gather her satchel left by the radiator in the kitchen and hurry out the door, whereupon she would walk several blocks down a dangerous, unfriendly street to Sacred Heart Church. There she taught Catechism.

On top of that, she offered her Thursday evenings at the Berlitz School of Language to teach immigrants English. Occasionally her students would even come to our house and my mother would put the lamp on and ask my sisters and me to be quiet as she continued teaching them their lessons. And then there was the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. Every other Saturday my mother volunteered as a docent. I cannot tell you the amount of research and study she put into each and every exhibit. She had stacks of books piled up all over our kitchen floor and she would be up till the early morning hours poring over her studies and jotting down notes.

As a child I didn’t understand what my mother was really doing, volunteering her time. Giving her precious minutes, her energy, her lifeblood to others, when she herself was in need. We were on welfare a few times when I was very small and for the totality of my youth we were supported by Section 8.

Did she not get it?! We were poor! Poor people, especially poor single mothers did not volunteer their time! Am I right or am I right?

I never really came right out and told my mother I feared and resented her preoccupation with altruism and how I thought it only added to her wearing down and eventually passing away from Cancer when I was 22 years old. But I think she knew it.

It would take me another ten or so years to finally realize exactly what kind of mother I had and what she was really doing with her life back then and what it all meant to me and those nagging questions I needed answered.

I wouldn’t benefit from it then. But after she was gone I would reap the neverending reward of my mother’s giving heart.

This is how my mother taught me. Not in lectures, but in quiet action. She taught me that a good parent, a parent who loves their child and wants to protect them from the many evils in this world, will teach them love and kindness. Will teach them charity, teach them patience. “This is where you will find your shelter, Jennifer. Long after I am gone from this world, when my arms can no longer hold you, when the heat of my palm cannot draw the fever from your aching body. When I am not standing in the flesh by your side. When you are what the world will call an orphan, this is where you will run to.

“Love. Pure love. It is all encompassing. It is neverending. It is everywhere around you. Reach out and help others and you will be living the good life—the life of kings and queens.”

I have decided to dedicate my life to the cause. The cause of giving back. I will give back through my writings, through my stories, through my love. And I hope I will make a friend in you today. I hope you will trust me and come along on this journey.

Jennifer Cipri