Promises I Made My Mother

Book by Haskell Sam Rensin David

Character Is All You Have in the Dark  
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. –HELEN KELLER 

Always let character be your guide. –MARY KIRKPATRICK HASKELL 

My mother grew up during a time when people had few material possessions, so her character and reputation were her most valuable assets. She nurtured and guarded them with her every breath. Character is the rock on which my mother built her life, and she passed that value on to me. It is the foundation that supports everything else. 

To some, character means integrity. Selflessness. The ability to inspire. Kindness. I think character is simply a unique combination of mental and moral qualities that distinguish us from one another. The Boy Scout Law best describes the complete recipe for good character: “Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”

 Character tells us most of what we want to know about someone, but more important, what’s essential to know. 

Here’s how to tell: In the absolute dark, you can’t tell if a person you meet is good- looking, plain, tall, short, fat, or thin. You don’t know eye or hair color, or if they have any hair at all. You can’t judge them by their clothes or body language. In fact, the only way to really assess who they are is by what they say and, more important, by how they act. 

When you take away everything, when you strip a person of the superficial add- ons, all they have left is their true self. Character is what gives a person meaning. Character is the core of our being. I first learned about character where we all do: at home. Since my father traveled often for work, my mother embraced the chance to show me the way. 

HONESTY 
Momma expected nothing less than honesty from all her sons, and she never missed an opportunity to teach us the importance of always telling the truth. 

My mother loved to read, and she worked hard to instill that same passion in her children. When Jamie, Billy, and I were little boys, my mother took us to the nearby Amory Municipal Library every Saturday. In the ’50s and early ’60s, the library was housed in the City Hall, a large old building from the ’30s. The outside walls were smooth concrete, and the inside smelled of history. I loved walking between the stacks looking at the newest selections, and I also loved the more timeworn volumes. Often, I would open those old books and read the names on the card that revealed who had read the book before me. 

When I was eight years old, my mother thought I was mature enough to walk to the library by myself and be responsible for checking out and returning my own books. That meant I got to have my own library card, which made me feel so grown- up. I have always loved English history, and one Saturday I rushed to the library to check out a new book on the kings and queens of England. When I got home to show my mother the book, she asked if I had returned the books I’d checked out the week before. I hadn’t, but I lied and told her that I had. I knew those books were still in my bedroom, but I figured that I could put them in my book satchel and drop them off at the library on my way home from school on Monday. 

Unfortunately, I forgot the books on Monday, and the next day, and the next day as well. Soon they were buried in my room under boxes of model cars and airplanes, baseball cards, parts of a Monopoly board, a kite with a tail made from old pillowcases, and my GI Joe paraphernalia–and there they remained for several months. Imagine my surprise when my mother received a notice in the mail from the library inquiring about my books– and there was a late fee charge of eight dollars . . . a lot of money in those days! 

My mother marched me into my room and we started digging for the books. After we finally unearthed all four she walked me to the library, made me return the books, and made me pay the late fee with my own money. I had managed to save over ten dollars from my fifty- cent- a- week allowance, and in a flash it was almost all gone. 

“Honesty means owning your mistakes,” my mother said. 

“And apologizing for them.” Before we left the library, I had to apologize to the librarian for keeping the books out for so long and promise my mother to never be dishonest again. 

That lesson stuck–I was always good about library books from then on! But there were other kinds of dishonesty that I hadn’t yet learned to avoid. When I was a high school sophomore, my cousin Nan Elliott, my friend Debbie Morris, and I would get together every night and study for our world history class. Well, sort of study. Actually, we’d laugh and tell stories until midnight, while my mother came in every half hour with snacks, asking, “Now, are you kids studying?” We’d all nod our heads and assure her we were. 

When the girls went home, I’d stay up the rest of the night poring through my books so I could still make the A. I don’t think Nan and Debbie did. One day in class, I squished down low in my chair so Nan and Debbie could look over my shoulder and compare their answers with the answers on my test paper. When I looked up, there was our teacher, Jane Lancaster, standing right over me. “You seem to be slouching today, Mr. Haskell,” she said. For some reason, I burst out laughing. Then Nan and Debbie started to laugh. Though it was so unlike any of us to pull that kind of stunt, we couldn’t stop. 

Mrs. Lancaster didn’t laugh. Instead, she gave me a look that froze me. She didn’t have to let the incident slide, but she did. At that moment I realized that while your mother might always forgive you, the world doesn’t have to. All anyone has is their reputation, which is easy to shatter and difficult to repair. I was put on notice that I’d been lucky to keep mine. Nan, Debbie, and I still remember the moment as one of the funniest things that happened to us in high school, but the lesson stuck. 

Eight years later, after moving to Los Angeles, I worked in the William Morris Agency mailroom. My salary was $125 a week, before taxes, so I also had a part- time job at Professor Bloodgood’s Olde Time Photography Shoppe, on the Universal Studios tour, taking pictures of tourists dressed up as movie stars or gangsters or Western saloon people. 

When I tell you that I had no money in those early days, it is a fact. Each Sunday night, I would purchase only what I needed to make my lunch for five days. For ten dollars, I could buy enough bread, ham, and cheese to make five ham and cheese sandwiches. I could also get one large bag of potato chips, which I’d divide evenly into five Ziploc bags. And I’d get a six- pack of Coca- Cola. 

Yet every day at work I was surrounded by food–and temptation. I’d have to drive to the market to pick up Danish, fruit, lox, bagels, and sumptuous lunches for the agents. I was given the money to pay for the food, and I would give the change to the mailroom clerk. Another trainee who did the market run with me said that he and some of the other guys would order more food than was really needed and leave some groceries in their cars to take home. I saw him do it several times, and he suggested I do the same. Maybe it seems like no big deal to some people– you know, I’m just one guy and the company can afford it–but as much as I needed and wanted that food, I remembered the promise I had made to my mother about valuing my reputation and self- respect, and said, “No, that’s not honest.” 

Good character, my mother had always explained, meant never letting yourself go anywhere you can’t come back from. Don’t do something you can’t retract. Don’t make the fatal error. Don’t delude yourself that something wrong is right because you wish it were right because life is unfair. If I had been comfortable stealing a quart of tuna fish, who knows what else I might have eventually gotten comfortable with? 

My partner on the market run was astounded–angry even– and froze me out with some of the other guys as someone who didn’t play along. Was he ashamed of himself, or worried that I might spill the beans, or both? I know I spent the next few days wondering if I’d been ostracized because my refusal to cheat had seemed too judgmental about what the other trainees did to get by. It didn’t matter. I still couldn’t do it and feel morally straight. 

Damage to a person’s character can start with the smallest crack in the mirror. So I ignored their attitudes and focused on my work. I also vowed that if, in the years to come, the business ever required me to do something that made it difficult to look at myself in the mirror because I’d not been true to what I knew was right, I would not and could not continue doing it. 

Today, I believe that turning down that minor opportunity to take what w...