This one sounded suspiciously like farm work.
If you grew up hearing Mama’s sayings, you learned early that she could turn almost any conversation into a life lesson. You might be complaining about a friend, a teacher, a sibling or the general unfairness of the universe when Mama would calmly announce, “Well, you reap what you sow.”
There went the sympathy.
Technically, the saying makes perfect sense. Plant corn, you get corn. Plant beans, you get beans. Nobody puts tomato seeds in the ground and spends July wondering why watermelons haven’t appeared.
But Mama wasn’t talking about vegetables.
She was talking about you.
If you were kind to people, kindness had a way of coming back. If you worked hard, eventually there should be something to show for it. If you treated people badly, well, Mama suggested you shouldn’t act surprised when the harvest wasn’t particularly pleasant.
It was cause and effect, Mama-style.
Of course, as a child, I thought the saying had some flaws.
What if I didn’t want to sow anything? Could I skip the whole reaping business?
Apparently not.
Mama’s version of agriculture had no off-season.
And unlike an actual garden, where you could blame poor results on drought, bugs, bad soil or the neighbor’s dog, Mama’s crop failures tended to have one person responsible.
You.
There was also an uncomfortable possibility buried in those five words: Mama might not have to punish you at all. She could simply wait.
Life would take care of it.
That was considerably more ominous than being grounded.
The older I get, though, the more I understand why Mama liked this one.
We sow things every day without ever putting our hands in the dirt. We sow kindness or impatience. Encouragement or criticism. Generosity or selfishness. We sow through the way we treat our families, our friends and people who can do absolutely nothing for us in return.
Not every good seed produces an immediate harvest, and life isn’t always fair enough for the equation to work perfectly.
But Mama wasn’t promising instant results.
She was reminding us to pay attention to what we were planting.
Because sooner or later, she believed, something was going to grow.
And Mama wanted to make sure we could live with the crop.
What Mama said: Life lessons you didn’t know you needed—until Mama said them.
Enjoyed this article. Read more What Mama Said… by Susan Espiritu.
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