A mother's advice: 'This too shall pass'

During these tumultuous times, Gloria Golec, a retired English professor from Glen Ellyn, thinks back to her mother, who was an infant during World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic, a teen during the Great Depression, and a young mother during the polio epidemic. She remembers her mother's mantra, "This too shall pass."

By Gloria Golec

Emeritus Professor of English, College of DuPage

My mom, Jean Golec, passed away in 2011 at age 93, and I know I had her for a very long time, but I really need her during our current global situation. My mom knew that many things in life were out of her control because she had lived through numerous crises. Her mantra was, "This too shall pass."

My mother told me about the time she was so hungry as a child during the Depression, that after my grandmother left for work as a cleaning lady in a downtown office building, my mother ate the crust on the entire rim of a pie she had made before she left.

"Did you think no one would notice?" I asked her.

"I wasn't thinking," she replied. "I was just so hungry I had to put something in my mouth."

Of course, my mother was scolded for what she did because that pie was meant for seven people.

I have never known hunger, and when my mother told me this story I had no reference for either the visceral feeling or the fear that must accompany it. So when I went to the supermarket a few weeks into our pandemic and saw empty shelves, I froze in shock. No toilet paper. No eggs. Brands of other items I had never heard of.

I bought what I could and went to another store, only to find the same situation. When was the store going to be fully stocked again? When I came home, I was consumed with anxiety. I thought about my mother and the pie crust and what it must have been like to never know if there would be enough food.

My parents had very little money.

As an adult, my mother took the bus to go food shopping, and when she got to the store one day and opened her purse, instead of the $10 bill she expected to find, she only saw her CTA paper transfer.

"I looked and looked and finally realized I must have thrown away my $10 bill by mistake. I ran back to the trash can by the bus stop and dug around, but it wasn't there."

She cried for days. She lost money that she needed to buy food for her and my dad. How did they pay their bills? And we wonder the same thing right now.

In the 1950s, polio was spreading at alarming rates. I remember the one especially bad summer my mother did not want me to play with my friends. She only wanted me to stay in my own yard and I was not happy about this.

"But I see everyone else out on the street," I protested. My mother intuitively understood social distancing, and the terror in her eyes when she looked at me gave me my answer.

Now as I worry I will get sick, I realize how scared she was. When the vaccine came out, my mother immediately took me to a park district field house and we stood in a line that went around the block to get the shot. It was finally over.

My mother lived through hunger, poverty and illness.

If I could have called my mother during any of my anxious moments, I know what she would have said.

Yet I wish I could hear her say, "This too shall pass," one more time because, while I believe it in my head, it was my mom's voice that comforted my heart.