Cincinnati, OH
May, 2007
by Mary Pierce Brosmer
Close your eyes for a few seconds: whom do you see when I say "leader?" The success, ambition, ego, profit driven win-at-all-costs, rack up grades and activities to put in your resume, compete dog-eat-dog in every arena to have a career in theater, visual arts, make a name, become a household name, celebrity, get in the best schools, shock if necessary, build a comedy career or visual arts or poetry career from shock and vulgarity-anything to be a "player" permeates our sense of leader---and I say look where it's got us---
I know a writer on leadership who thinks the word itself should be discarded has become so tainted it is dangerous to use: my own preference is that we rehabilitate the word.
Now, close your eyes and summon an image of the person or persons whose presence in your life has most helped you be fully who you are. This person is so authentic, so real, so who she or he is that you learn by seeing both her gifts and her failures, challenges because she doesn't hide them.
The person I summon did not go beyond the sixth grade; she was no one's idea of Woman of the Year, prom or homecoming queen--queen of anything, but the qualities I saw in her-- have informed my own sense of leadership and I believe as fiercely as I believe anything are more necessary in today's world than the status, ambition success and ideology-profit driven leadership which brings us Enron and deteriorating cities and
schools, the iraq war and the devastation of the planet.
Early Letter in Spring II, 2006
Dear Mother,
This morning the prayer words
“Mary Queen of Heaven”
float into my reverie
on our you & I
stalk of motherline,
grandmothers pruned long
before we could know them.
Today I am naming you
Isabel Queen of the Kitchen
Chairwoman—though we said “man" then
of the annual Crestline High School
Marching Band Uniform Fund
Spaghetti Dinner.
In the new, state-of-the-art
South Elementary School
kitchen you reigned.
With my girlfriends in our frilly
servers’ aprons setting tables in the cafeteria
I watched you above bubbling pots
of homemade sauce, your non-recipe/recipe,
stout Italian woman weaving
among the other mothers
prepping salad, cutting homemade pies
setting kettles to boil for pasta,
your never-manicured, clean hands
speaking your language of encouragement,
direction-without-condescension
It strikes me now how this was
the only place I could watch you perform.
Women then were so far behind
scenes, the cleaning, ironing, arranging flowers
stage-hands for priests and principals,
petty town politicians, policemen
all the princes
of our lives.
But through the kitchen pass-through
a proscenium of sorts, I saw how
you inspired—
my friends all loved you
brothers’ friends too
crowded our tiny concrete porch summer nights where you
reigned from a porch rocker set between geranium pots
dispensing no-nonsense advice
You joked and laughed
but ALWAYS appropriately.
You were steadfast that mothers should be mothers
not faux girlfriends flirting and preening.
You courted no one, did not engage
in village intrigue
what could be intense competition
for small town prestige.
Mother, your reigning was the raining-love-and-common sense
kind of Queenship,
if you had
a status-conscious,
bone in your body I never felt it
press in on me
and we hugged often.
(Dad said his mother was cold;
stoic Scotch-Welsh
the Pierces
were a more imperious lot
with their books and well-spoken
aloofness
in coal-mining towns)
Despite the jealous rumor of one
of my friends’ mothers that
“you pushed me” into achievement:
band, choir, honor society,
in musical theater---
Oh, not a bit of it
you made space for me to express
what your life suppressed but did not
extinguish
JUST LOVE, put to good use.
What I would hope with my heart of hearts for you is that you would see leadership as my mother practiced it in her small arena: Encouraging, directing-withoutcondescension, appropriate boundaries / use of power/ raining love and common sense/ Making space for yourself AND others to express Love, put to good use,
Inspiring, not with empty words but with: showing up, making: (food and art and businesses and classrooms and organizations)
I hope that you will always understand leadership as being about creating not destroying the fabric of the community,
I hope that you will understand leaders are not ABOVE the law, or above returning phone calls, honoring commitments, cleaning up messes, admitting mistakes, telling the truth---
not only are leaders not Above such things because they are very important people, bigshots on campus---you hold yourself to a higher standard in these mundane matters--
that is leadership expressive of a clear vision of what you hope the world could be with your help, but not you as the "HERO" but as the one who is more in touch with his soul than his Role.
I am a leader by virtue of being the mother of a dream, the dream of an organization in which reverent attention to the quality of relationships, telling the truth, creating spaces for people to build a better and more conscious world through the art of writing and the practices of community an arts/ a literary organization which is not afraid to use the words: "sacred"
grateful, humble, conscientious, hospitable, kind, and even love--
If in some even partial way I have been able to be for these few minutes on stage, which is not my preferred place from which to lead, like my mother I lead best from being among rather than above, but if I have been able to enact even a small bit the qualities of a poet-parent-seeker-ordinary person fiercely standing for something model of leadership,
I will have earned the honor it has been to be listened to by this good gathering tonight.
Thank you.
Mary Pierce Brosmer
South Elementary School
kitchen you reigned.
With my girlfriends in our frilly
servers’ aprons setting tables in the cafeteria
I watched you above bubbling pots
of homemade sauce, your non-recipe/recipe,
stout Italian woman weaving
among the other mothers
prepping salad, cutting homemade pies
setting kettles to boil for pasta,
your never-manicured, clean hands
speaking your language of encouragement,
direction-without-condescension
It strikes me now how this was
the only place I could watch you perform.
Women then were so far behind
scenes, the cleaning, ironing, arranging flowers
stage-hands for priests and principals,
petty town politicians, policemen
all the princes
of our lives.
But through the kitchen pass-through
a proscenium of sorts, I saw how
you inspired—
my friends all loved you
brothers’ friends too
crowded our tiny concrete porch summer nights where you
reigned from a porch rocker set between geranium pots
dispensing no-nonsense advice
You joked and laughed
but ALWAYS appropriately.
You were steadfast that mothers should be mothers
not faux girlfriends flirting and preening.
You courted no one, did not engage
in village intrigue
what could be intense competition
for small town prestige.
Mother, your reigning was the raining-love-and-common sense
kind of Queenship,
if you had
a status-conscious,
bone in your body I never felt it
press in on me
and we hugged often.
(Dad said his mother was cold;
stoic Scotch-Welsh
the Pierces
were a more imperious lot
with their books and well-spoken
aloofness
in coal-mining towns)
Despite the jealous rumor of one
of my friends’ mothers that
“you pushed me” into achievement:
band, choir, honor society,
in musical theater---
Oh, not a bit of it
you made space for me to express
what your life suppressed but did not
extinguish
JUST LOVE, put to good use.
What I would hope with my heart of hearts for you is that you would see leadership as my mother practiced it in her small arena: Encouraging, directing-withoutcondescension, appropriate boundaries / use of power/ raining love and common sense/ Making space for yourself AND others to express Love, put to good use,
Inspiring, not with empty words but with: showing up, making: (food and art and businesses and classrooms and organizations)
I hope that you will always understand leadership as being about creating not destroying the fabric of the community,
I hope that you will understand leaders are not ABOVE the law, or above returning phone calls, honoring commitments, cleaning up messes, admitting mistakes, telling the truth---
not only are leaders not Above such things because they are very important people, bigshots on campus---you hold yourself to a higher standard in these mundane matters--
that is leadership expressive of a clear vision of what you hope the world could be with your help, but not you as the "HERO" but as the one who is more in touch with his soul than his Role.
I am a leader by virtue of being the mother of a dream, the dream of an organization in which reverent attention to the quality of relationships, telling the truth, creating spaces for people to build a better and more conscious world through the art of writing and the practices of community an arts/ a literary organization which is not afraid to use the words: "sacred"
grateful, humble, conscientious, hospitable, kind, and even love--
If in some even partial way I have been able to be for these few minutes on stage, which is not my preferred place from which to lead, like my mother I lead best from being among rather than above, but if I have been able to enact even a small bit the qualities of a poet-parent-seeker-ordinary person fiercely standing for something model of leadership,
I will have earned the honor it has been to be listened to by this good gathering tonight.
Thank you.
Mary Pierce Brosmer
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