“Scene it?” is a DVD game to check your recall on who the stars – as in celebrities – are. If you’re star-struck you probably have perused one of the categories called “From Trump to Tiger – Most Expensive Divorces” among the falling-stars.
Lessor known stars, unheralded even, shining nonetheless are those whose brief time orbiting through their small part of the universe have left a trajectory – not to mention a legacy – reaching far beyond their so-short life-span and our so-limited vision.
They are mothers. And grandmothers.
Of the 1,724 pages in the book, this mother’s story is told on but one page, double-sided. But her influence upon the story that would be told of the son to whom she gave birth is in great measure why he would become not only the man of the hour but one of the very few men in all of history whose “unsullied and godly life was a rare example to the people.”
It is his story – and that of his mother’s – that needs retelling today, both of their lives “noble, standing out resplendently in this age of decline” said one star-struck observer of the relationship between Hannah and her son Samuel.
The painstaking love and attention to detail required to create something of beauty, whether a marked-down china cabinet, or raising a child – or grandchild – to take his or her responsible place in society, is the same.
Day after day after day: repairing, sanding and painting; teaching, modeling, living.
And then, having done all, one day, arriving all too soon, standing back and admiring what it has become. and because of that devotion, the different world it will be.
