Going from Life Preserver to Life Boat

In Celebration of My Mother

May 01, 2025

Last Tuesday in the midst of logging in an order of books at our shop, I got a call from my mom.

First things first: my mom and I talk to each other on the phone A LOT. Mostly, it’s my mom calling me because she absolutely adores talking on the phone. She loves people and talking, so to have both of those things literally at her fingertips at all times, well, that’s one of the greatest goods this world can offer her.

Second things second: my mom calls for a variety of reasons, all within the same day. And I kind of love it. It’s just who my mom is. If she ever stops making multiple phone calls to me in a day, I’ll know the end is nigh. And she loves to stretch the calls out throughout the day. She might just want “to chat” at 9am or to give me the latest update on any or all members of our family at 11:30a (Mom is our main information hub). At 2:15pm I might field her call looking for a recipe or after dinnertime, she might choose to share with me a fun cleaning tip she saw on a You-Tube video.

But some of the best ones are like the one I got last Tuesday.

“Oh, Maile, you have to see these chairs I found at the Re-Store,” she said breathlessly into the phone. “I’m gonna Facetime you.”

“No,” I moaned into the phone, but she’d already hung up. We, my mother and I, are both technologically inept, which means the Facetime connection that takes most people two taps and less than 5 seconds to make, actually takes us upwards of 10 minutes, while we volley calls back and forth to each other, hanging up when the other answers, connecting only to have one or both cameras not working, battling through sporadic speaker issues. It’s a complete circus.

Finally, ten minutes after her initial call, we managed to decipher the complicated code of Facetime and Mom turned her phone camera to a pair of floral armchairs, exclaiming, “Maile, they’re brand new and only $30! Do you want them for the shop?”

Friends, if you know me at all, you know that my “Loves” go in this descending order: God, my family, my friends/chocolate, and following close behind in 3rd place, a good deal.

This love was planted in me at a young age and was watered and cultivated through the years by the very mother who was now wheeling two armchairs to the checkout desk at the front of the Habitat Re-Store for me.

My parents divorced when I was in elementary school, and the whole ordeal was traumatic for all of us. One of the ways my mom dealt with the loss of her marriage, the complete upheaval of her life, and her subsequent responsibility as a single parent was to shop.

A lot.

Problem was, my mother had expensive taste, but she didn’t have the income to support it. So she became a bargain hunting bloodhound. Oh, the thrill of the chase! She’d keep her ears perked for talk of those hole-in-the-wall outlets that she’d hear whispers about from fellow deal hunters. And when she got the lead, friends, we were off to the races.

Being that I was her only girl and a more than willing participant, I was always her sidekick during each chase. The scent took us far and wide; from the Elder Beerman Outlet in a sketchy strip center in Dayton to the Gap Clearance Center in a squat brick building on a back road outside Cincinnati. If there was a deal to be found, we’d find it.

And when Mom shopped, she SHOPPED. I mean, the kind of shopping that required multiple shopping carts and elicited curious looks from fellow customers. The kind that left little-to-no room in the car for us once we got all the bags shoved in.

Now if your mind is filling with visions from the tv show “Hoarders,” imagining that all our quarry was brought home to a house brimming with unopened shopping bags piled up to the ceiling with barely a pathway to lead to our rat-infested bathroom or kitchen littered with months old dirty dishes, well, let me put your mind at ease (and rescue my mother’s reputation.)

My mom loved to shop, but she wasn’t concerned with keeping everything. She’d buy bargains for any and everyone she knew. And if she found a cuter brand-name dress on a clearance rack that she liked better than the one she had in her closet, she’d buy one in every color and donate her old dresses to Goodwill. That’s how we kept from drowning in all the purchases.

While I never adopted shopping as my coping mechanism like my mother (overeating was doing the trick for me), there was a part of me that loved benefitting from her compulsion. We’d make the hour and a half drive to The Gap Clearance Center, spend 4 hours in the shop sorting through mounds of returned, damaged, and discontinued prime label clothing, and come home with a new wardrobe. For any teenager, it was a dream come true. But for a nerdy, overweight girl with serious self-confidence issues, it was a buoy in the turbulent ocean of adolescence. At least I was wearing brand names.

And, no, I’m not speaking of The Gap Outlet that you’ve probably seen at all those big, fancy, so-called “outlet centers” that always spring up around major highways. I’m talking $4 Gap Jeans, $5 Banana Republic khakis, $70 sweaters snatched up for $7 a piece. One of my mom and I’s favorite activities was to bring all our purchases home, add up the original prices on the tags of each of our finds and then compare them to what we actually paid. We could spend $250 at The Gap Clearance Center and come home with a thousand dollars worth of clothes. It was a high like no other.

As I write this, I realize that not everyone “gets” this. Bargains just don’t give some people a buzz. These folks buy what they want and they’ll pay what they must to get it. The hot pursuit of “the deal,” the station wagon bursting at its seams as we ferried all the goods away, the constant turnstile of old and new that went through our house—it probably sounds a bit dysfunctional. That’s because it was.

And not just “a bit.”

While I loved going on these shopping sprees with my mom, there was always a steady hum of anxiety beneath it all for me. I loved getting new clothes or shoes or purses or decor for my room, but I knew it would eventually come at a cost. Like when Mom sat gnawing at her fingernails as she forlornly looked over her newest credit card bill or needed to pick up overtime shifts at the airline where she worked to pay for our latest shopping spree. I felt like our family was always burdened with bills. And I hated how that felt.

But then my mom went and got sober.

Yep, she kicked the shopping habit. It’s actually one of the things for which I am most proud of my mom. As the years progressed, she recognized what shopping had actually become in her life and took the necessary steps to break free. I marvel at it to this day. When I look at who my mom is now, a vibrant and financially-secure woman in her seventies, I’m astounded…and inspired. Because my mom wasn’t the only one steeped in addiction. I’ve fought my own battles with compulsive behavior through the years. Let’s be honest…I’m still battling it now. And then I look at what my mother has overcome and I see hope.

A few weeks ago my mom moved into our home, permanently. This summer when my dad passed away (whom she remarried years after they were divorced; a story for another time), Mom wasn’t sure what she wanted her new widowed life to look like. At that point she was in Tennessee, where she and my dad had moved several years ago. And to me it seemed oh so far away from Pennsylvania where I live, especially now that Dad was gone.

I, in all my adult years, never had the joy of living close to my parents. Shawn and I’s adventures led us far and wide, but never anywhere less than eight hours from them. I missed that opportunity with my dad, but I wondered if there was still a chance to have that experience with my mom.

So, this past autumn, we delicately offered her an invitation to move into our home, to spend her remaining years with us. That might seem extreme to some, especially when my mom is still very active and could easily live on her own, but in Lancaster County where the Amish tradition of generational living is still very much practiced (and the heritage that Shawn grew up with), it felt like the right fit. Still, I wanted to respect my mom’s grieving process and not pressure her away from the home she had last shared with my dad.

We presented the idea. She sat with it. Mulled it over. I saw in her decision making the very steady and grounded thinking that has evolved over the years of her “getting clean.” She wanted to make the decision that would lead to peace and wholeness for her. At the beginning of the this New Year, she accepted our invitation, and our whole family has been anticipating this move ever since. Three weeks ago, we packed up her home in Tennessee and brought her north.

I was hoping this move would be a gift to my mom. She wouldn’t have to worry about caring for a home and yard by herself. She wouldn’t have to be alone in the evenings. Honestly, if she wanted, she wouldn’t have to be alone ever; with 8 people in our family (plus Winnie our Lab), there’s always someone around.

But this move is turning out to be a gift to me.

There were so many years in my mom and I’s mutual past that were turbulent, both of us splashing through the thrashing waters, just trying to find a life preserver and hold on for dear life. Many times that life preserver was addiction or unhealthy relationship patterns. We did what we knew to do.

And now we both know better. My dad’s death threw our whole family back into the crazy waters of grief last year, not unlike their divorce did so many years ago. But Mom and I both found our strokes and steadily made our way into a life boat that’s keeping us afloat, keeping fresh oxygen in our lungs, giving rest to our weary limbs. It’s good to do hard together in a healthy way.

So last Tuesday, my mom delivered two new chairs to our little bookshop in downtown Lancaster. She was as thrilled about it. And I didn’t have to worry about whether that $60 purchase would be the straw that broke her financial back. I didn’t wonder if the rest of her van was packed with “bargains” she couldn’t afford. I just got to enjoy a good gift from my mom.

Now, every time I look up from our front desk at our shop and see those chairs, I feel so grateful. I’ve got a chance to experience a new way of being with my mom. We get to go back to living together, but doing it, this time, in a way that’s truly fulfilling and life-giving.

And it’s good. Oh, so good.

Friends, how have you managed life when circumstances have thrown you into the deep? Are you scrambling for a life preserver or settled into a life boat? Are there people around you whose own time in the waves have inspired you? I’d love to hear some of your story down in the comments below!

Nooks & Crannies

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