Submission from Hannah: what my mother (Rosanne Cash) has passed down to me
I could never begin to record all that has been passed down to me from my mother. The first and most obvious is a family that while is not my own through birth, is very much mine. I have no memory of my mom not being my mom, my aunts not being my aunts, my grandparents not being my grandparents, and so on. And from having grown up in this family, the belief that loyalty, love and commitment to one another is above all else, has become my foundation. It defines all that I do, every decision I make and has now become the blueprint for the life I have created for my own family. It is often said that it is nurture, not nature. While that is very true, as time passes and we live our lives along side each other, the lines become blurred. Now so much of who I am in nature is from my mom. My love of interiors and obsession with French glassware. My love of music… especially Broadway classics. My handwriting is eerily similar to hers and like my mother I could spend the better part of a day looking through a Nigella Lawson cookbook dreaming of all the dinners I would make for my family if I ever had the time. My mom is unbelievably generous and compassionate and I like to believe I possess a bit of that as well. But above all else she has passed down her rich and infinite wisdom when it comes to motherhood. When I was pregnant with my first daughter she told me, “Dear, motherhood is not for sissies”. Truer words have never been spoken. She is my shepherd and my support system on many, many days. That has been her greatest gift to me thus far and a gift that my children have the great fortune of sharing in as well. That, and she once told me, “You never go on an airplane or to the doctor without having dressed for the occasion”. I live by that as if it were gospel.


