The most important gift for a child is love
It’s a chilly November afternoon and Teresa Lawler curls up in a chair in her living room and sips a hot cup of coffee. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, but in many ways, the holiday will be the same as so many other days in her adult life — she will be surrounded by generations of family.
At 77 years young, Lawler is the proud matriarch of her family, mostly girls, where the most recent addition to the group is a baby girl who is the second great-great-grandchild for her.
There are daughters Terri and Denise, granddaughters Melissa and Misti, great grandchildren Madison, Camron, Clay, Colin and Jacob and two great-great- granddaughters, Aubrey and Annaliese.
“I told them if we had all of them here we’d have five generations,” Lawler said.
She continues to take an active role in helping to rear the young ones in the family, though the days of rearing her own daughters are well over.
“I loved being a mother. They didn’t mind too good, but I loved it,” Lawler said with a laugh, as daughter Terri sits nearby. “Being a single mom was kind of hard. We ate lots of biscuits and gravy — and they were good.”
Lawler worked several different jobs as her family grew. She worked at a sewing factory, Trend Mills, Flowers Vending, Fairbanks and then Berry College, where she retired from the college post office after working for the school for 25 years.
Seemingly her only regret is that her income is not what it once was, not for herself, but for the family around her.
“When I was working it was wonderful,” Lawler said. “I could give them what they wanted.
“It’s more difficult now, I don’t have the ability to give them all that I want to give them.”
But the small house in West Rome that used to belong to her mother and is the same house that Lawler has called home for decades bears plenty of evidence of a loving matriarch who continues to serve her family with any and all they could need — a cozy sofa, games, children’s toys, snacks and a door that is always open.
“I’m just glad they’re all healthy,” she said.
As Lawler sits with her legs tucked under her, daughter Terri has been quietly watching her.
“She’s my hero,” Terri said. “I can’t imagine life without her. She’s my rock. She always has been. She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
Terri is often on the road with her job but stays with her mom when she is in town. Today, Lawler is nursing a stuffy nose and a lot of congestion and daughter Terri is tending to business around the house. She is very close to her mom and remembers that they have always spent a lot of time doing things together.
Even though her mom was working full time when she and her sister were teenagers, Terri remembers her mom coaching softball and cheerleading for West Central Elementary School, and she was her mom’s assistant.
“I learned a lot from my mom,” Terri said. “I learned that I can do anything. I don’t have to depend on other people. I’m strong and I can take care of things. She taught me a lot about strength.”
“Family is everything,” Lawler said. “If you don’t have family, what do you have?”
Lawler said the biggest lesson she wants to impart to all of her children, younger and older, is that the most important gift that they can give to their own children is love.
‘I learned a lot from my mom. I learned that I can do anything. I don’t have to depend on other people. I’m strong and I can take care of things. She taught me a lot about strength.’ Teresa Lawler’s daughter Terri
“I know they won’t be able to give them everything they want, but I hope they’ll be able to give them everything they need and lots of love,” she said.
“Because of her,” Terri said about her mom, “they know what family means. They know how important it is to be there for each other and stick together. As they get older, they learn from her example that things don’t always go the way you want, but you can make it work.”