You Burn Your Arse, You Sit On a Blister: The Wisdom of My Mother

By Sandra Nichols

Author Sandra Nichols pays tribute to her late mother, Tilly, in this collection of her insightful and humorous expressions about enjoying life and overcoming hardship. In each chapter, Nichols shares one of Tilly's sayings and explains its relevance in today's world. Together, Tilly's phrases comprise what Nichols calls The Tao of Tilly, a prescriptive path for living a better life and having a better world.

Nichols explains that the healing principles of compassion and cooperation have not only established our evolutionary survival, they hold the secret to our health, longevity, and enjoyment of life. The Tao of Tilly shows us how to heal our own emotional suffering and that of our world by:

•Accepting the power of love
•Appreciating the intelligence of kindness
•Achieving the confidence of having a purpose
•Understanding the power of belief
•Enjoying the freedom of an authentic life
•Becoming more hopeful through conscious optimism
•Improving our self-image with empathy
•Adapting to adversity with compassion

This book shares the art of healing in a way that will make you think less about your problems and more about your power and potential. It will give you faith in yourself and hope for your future. It is a must-read for anyone seeking happiness and a better way of life.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Nichols
• Release date: Mar 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201111823

Sandra Nichols

Sandra Nichols is a Canadian author from Peterborough, Ontario. In diverse genres, she writes inspirational books about self-awareness and conscious optimism. Nichols has an extensive background in nursing and healthcare management as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Multidisciplinary Studies. She is the mother of two adult children and lives with her husband, Alan, and their tabby cat, Zoey, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Follow Sandra at www.sandranichols.com.

Book preview

1.  An Introduction to Tilly

About thirty percent of people are auditory learners which means they learn mostly by hearing and listening. I am one of them. When I was a kid, I often read books and studied out loud. Even now, I can hear myself pronouncing the words on a page as I read them. When I’m writing, I am easily distracted by sounds of any kind. Even quiet music interferes with my concentration. I have to work in silence to hear myself think. The only time I’m not listening is when I’m sleeping which might be why I get a lot of it. Only my babies and the earth-shattering snoring of my husband have managed to disturb my slumber over the years.

As a result of my auditory preference, (or affliction), I have a better memory of what I’ve heard than what I’ve seen. The curse of an auditory memory probably explains my poor sense of direction, among other things. However, a distinct advantage is that I remember what people said to me many years ago, even though I may not recall where I was at the time. I can still hear their words and the quality of their voices, with clarity.

Having an auditory memory can be a bit of a nuisance for my friends and family, especially when I remind them of something they can’t remember having said to me. I get looks ranging anywhere from awe to bewilderment, making me think I should have kept my recollection to myself. But, I can still hear the voices of those who are gone and I’m pretty sure they don’t mind. I am not a medium. As much as I wish I could still talk to my parents and my late brother, Jeff, I have no connection with the dead. I simply remember the sounds they used to make. I can hear the way Jeff pronounced my name and the sound of my father’s whistle as if they were still here. The words of my mother come back to me with regularity, those of her joy and her sorrow, and especially, her words of wisdom.

Everyone remembers their parents’ expressions. As we get older, we even find ourselves using them, although we can’t always explain what they mean. I once found myself thinking someone was crazier than a Pontypool bedbug and then wishing I had asked my father what it meant when he used to say it.

It’s a good thing I adopted more of my Mom’s expressions than my Dad’s. My father’s verbiage could be a little risqué. In fact, by today’s standards, they’d be condemned by the PCP (Politically Correct Police). I’d be regarded as insensitive for saying, if he had a brain, he’d eat it in reference to an intellectually-challenged person or for concluding that someone with an overbite could eat an apple through a picket fence. As a nurse, I would have lost my job for saying a patient’s added weight must be jelly, ‘cause jam don’t shake like that.  And I would have risked epic embarrassment to have ever uttered, for no good reason at all, Step right up and see the spotted leopard! Ten spots on his belly, and ten spots on his...cock your eye to the next caravan!

My Mom used a few slang words, but her sayings were far more refined than my father’s and I have never risked censure by using them. She didn’t mince words; she chose them carefully. In fact, she had an eloquent style, even if she did use a few choice words at times. Small talk was not her thing. She was articulate and straight-forward. What she had was a gift for nailing it with words, whatever the topic. Mom’s phrases were mostly observations of the human condition, ideas derived from her insightfulness.

My mother’s name was Matilda but everyone called her Tilly. She was born in Peterborough, Ontario, on January 11, 1923 to Italian parents, Vito Miccoli and Emelia Febbo, from Francavilla al Mare in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Vito and Emelia had five beautiful girls. My mother was the fourth child. Dad once told me that when he met my mother, he was enchanted by her beauty. Actually, he didn’t say those words exactly. In reference to my mother’s good looks, Dad made a face that conveyed he was captivated by Mom’s beauty. Not only did words fail to describe how pretty my mother was, they failed to come readily to my poor father. He suffered from aphasia that resulted from a stroke and the disability plagued him for over twenty years.

I imagine that my father not only found a beauty in his young bride; he discovered Tilly’s clever wit and her engaging charm, as we all did. Obviously, Mom fell for Dad too, despite his crude expressions, but probably not because of them. Tilly and Cal married and had five children to whom they devoted their lives—two boys and three girls. Like my Mom, I was the fourth child. Tilly used to say her kids were her claim to fame and that pretty much sums up what it was like to be raised by her. We were loved.

Young Tilly

We grew up in an era during which mothers did most of the parenting while fathers went to work and my family was no exception. Apart from a wartime job working in a factory in the forties, Mom stayed home with the five of us while Dad established and managed a successful moving and storage business. We were not lavishly doted upon. Parenting was more laissez-faire back then. Individuality wasn’t fostered; it was allowed the freedom to develop on its own. I was left to be what I wanted to be, although I didn’t have a clue what that was. When I left the nest for my first job, I was free to make the choices and mistakes that parental counsel wouldn’t have prevented anyway.

She may not have counseled me much, but my mother was nurturing, selfless, and kind. Tilly was the sort of person who wasn’t afraid to show her vulnerability. People connected to her because she was real and she made them feel at ease. She loved reading, music, gardening, movies, cooking, baking, and word puzzles, just like me. She could play piano and the accordion by ear, paint landscapes, plan the best parties, cook the most amazing dinners, and tell the best jokes. No one who met Tilly could easily forget her. She was warm, funny, and sincere.

Tilly was among a rare group of people the personality theorists call the Healers. About eight percent of women have this distinction. Healers live in an intense inner world of ideas. They are idealists, dreamers, and romantics. They imagine ways of making things better all the time. Healers have a unique gift for identifying the separations that create human pain and suffering. They dream of ways of making those separations whole again. In fact, the Healers have to try creating harmony and mediating conflict even if they’re not sure how. They are deeply compassionate and enthusiastic people whose perceptions are based on their intuitive awareness and whose decisions are guided by their feelings. My mother was selflessly devoted to her family but she didn’t venture far from home unless she had to. Like all the Healers, she cared more about the condition of humans than their company. She was strongly introverted.

My mother didn’t claim to be philosophical or clever. She was humble. Some of her expressions were common-sense ones. But, others were unique and profound. What impressed me most was her ability to define the essence of a complex situation. Tilly would quietly listen to family dialogues. When they ended, she would summarize with a laconic phrase that got everyone’s attention. Tilly’s insights usually made it clear there was nothing further to say. She was a master of brevity, wit, and timing. When Tilly turned a phrase, shared a story, or told jokes, she turned heads.

Mom may not have had a formal education, but she spoke like an English or Theatrical Arts major because her vocabulary had an intellectual and dramatic flair. Instead of saying No Way! Tilly would exclaim, Not for love nor money! Instead of cold-weather Canadianisms like You’ll freeze your arse off out there! she would say the weather wasn’t fit for man nor beast! She wasn’t sick to her stomach; she felt bilious and she wasn’t stuffed after a big meal, she was as full as a tick. When Mom took a swig of Diet Coke, she would emphatically announce with pleasure, Nectar of the gods! And something done well wasn’t just great, it was masterful. She was passionate.

At the family cottage one summer, we watched from the shore as our boat capsized with my father, my brother Rick, and our friends on board. Mom bolted from the cottage in her bra and shorts and ran to the dock where she watched the scene, panic-stricken. Thankfully, everyone was safely rescued. Later that evening, while discussing the incident, Mom explained to everyone that she was so terrified, she ran out of the cottage "in my Maidenform!"

Mom’s kindness was unparalleled. She used her own version of Rousseau’s quote about breaking the mold when she said respectfully to my father, quite a few times, "When God made you Cal, He broke the mold". She often called my father duck, an English term of endearment. In reference to inter-racial marriage, I once heard her remark with a smile that chocolate and vanilla go together. Although I remember some commonly used parental threats like, if I have to come up those stairs, and the next one who acts up gets the wooden spoon, she didn’t admonish and we never got the spoon. Tilly was never forceful, offensive, or condescending.

She was nearly perfect, really. But she did swear. In Tilly’s defense, swearing is widespread among Canadians and my family was no exception. In fact, Canadians swear more than the people of most countries, so we come by our curses culturally. Tilly was both a Canadian and a wordsmith for whom word choice was based more on economy than the avoidance of censorship. If she did make some off-color remarks, they were never objectionable. To swear without obscenity is an art form, and she possessed the gift. I especially liked when she’d say something was as useless as tits on a hen, perhaps the bawdiest of her expressions, which she used when cursing a broken appliance or utensil. She did adopt the use of F-bombs like most of us did back in the sixties, but, unlike me, she used them judiciously.

Mom had a