Last night, my son and I attended an open-seating event at which author George Saunders spoke.  We arrived early enough to have our choice of seats.  We picked the fourth row: close enough, we reasoned, to hear but not so close as to have to crane our necks to see.

Turns out, my hearing is not fourth-row grade; more like, negative-fourth row.  If Mr. Saunders turned his head to answer a question in my section of the auditorium, I heard almost all of what he said.  If he spoke to someone on the other side of the room, I heard almost nothing of what he said.

The room held hundreds of rapt fans.  They laughed when he cracked a joke; they murmured at eloquence. I mostly nodded, smiled, and browsed the copy of “Tenth of December” which came with our tickets.  Afterwards, we waited to cross the stage and shake his hand.  My son, who had met Mr. Saunders on a prior occasion, exchanged a few polite words with him and Mr. Saunders, on learning of our relationship, complimented my parenting.  He also asked my son to remember him to the folks at the school from which my son graduated.  We all smiled, and then we left.

I think Mr. Saunders’ speech went over very well.  But I heard almost none of it.  Later, I wondered if I should have quietly slipped to the back and asked for an increase in the microphone’s volume; or clammored down to that first row which we could have selected but didn’t.  And then, of course, my next thought came:  “Would either course of action have been tantamount to complaining?”  The second, surely not; but the first?  Possibly.

Then, because I am my mother’s daughter, I remembered a couple of occasions when my mom got into trouble with co-attendees at public events.

On one of those occasions, she was at the Symphony in St. Louis.  Two women in front of her whispered incesstantly to each other throughout the first half of the performance.  Mom tried tsk-ing, squirming, coughing, and harrumphing, without impacting the ladies in any way.  Finally, she leaned forward and tapped one of them on the shoulder.  The woman turned around, raising one eyebrow, and my mother stage-whispered:  “Must you talk?” Came the rapid-fire reply:  “Yes, we must.”

My mother later learned that the two women were reviewers.  Why that required them to talk during the performance, she did not learn.  That they minded her complaint, or the way in which she voiced it, she did not doubt.

The other event found my mother in the opposite role.  She and I attended church at St. Englebrecht after the St. Louis Diocese transferred our much-loved parish priest there to punish him for being liberal.  On one Sunday, he spoke about abortion and choice.  He always encouraged people to talk amongst themselves during his sermons, something that the folks at St. Englebrecht had not previously experienced.  Mother spoke, in low tones, about her views on abortion to me, her teenage daughter.

The woman in front of us kept turning around and glaring at my mother.  I ignored her, but Mother did not.  After the third or fourth audible admonishment from the woman, my mother turned to me and loudly uttered one of the meanest things I ever heard her say:  “Now there’s one woman whose mother should have at least considered abortion.”  Both the woman and I gasped.

I’ve told both of these stories many times, usually to illustrate my witty and clever mother.  But — and I mean her sainted soul no disrespect — I think now  that neither my mother nor these other women should have been complaining about the other.  All  missed a chance to be kind.  All felt justified; but in retrospect, I’m thinking that none of them were.

Sorry, Mom.  But you should be proud: You raised me right.  You demonstrated love, strength, courage and persistence.  You picketed civil injusice and slapped war-protest bumper stickers on your Maverick, despite your employer’s unlawful ban on political statements even in their parking lot.  You never let doctors treat your children as though we were unimportant just because we didn’t have money or health insurance.  I took these lessons to heart.  But now  I’m just trying to find a balance between legitimate protest and snarky lament.   I hope you would approve.