Sometimes, we know when someone has had influence on our lives as events unfold, but often it is in retrospect that we see the impact. For the remainder of this month, I want to honor all those that have helped shape who I am today and continue their whittling on a future me. In coming days, I will tell the stories of those for whose influence, I am eternally grateful.
But first I want to honor my mother. Most of us adore our mothers and a few of us are able to look at our mother as an inspiration to search for the better part of our selves. The specific details of my mother's story are hers to tell, I sketch it now with a broad brush. My mother's early was life a struggle that untold millions have buckled under from the weight--yet she survived. At a tender age she was cast in the role of in locus parentis for two younger sisters. Their lives were a choppy sea of separation, turmoil, and uncertainty. Uncertainty if there would be food on the table, clothes to wear, a safe place to be. One of her most horrific memories is being 11 years old and having to save them from a house burning down around them.
The one thing my mother yearned for was an education, she loved history and wanted to be an archeologist yet time and again, eduction was kept out of her reach. By the time she was 17, she realized the only real option open to her were to drop out of high school, get married and become a full-time caregiver. Oh yeah, the other option was to work untold hours trying to support three people on the pay an uneducated teenage woman would make--not much has changed in this regard.
The years unfolded with the arrival of my bothers and me and it wasn't until I was 6 years old that my mother found time to get her GED. This involved traveling 20 miles each way several times a week into town. This at a time when going into town was a special occasion to dress up and put on shoes. So many people would not have put in the effort. Looking back, I am not quite sure how she was able to achieve this goal. In my memory, I see her at the kitchen table, with the book open. But now I know that there had to have been a stream of interruptions and demands that only a 3, 6, and 10 year-old along with their father can manufacture. But she persisted and she earned her high school equivalency.
Books have always been my mother's solace and tool to maintain her sanity. They were her escape to a place where she wasn't struggling to make ends meet or tamp down the urge to chuck it all in. When we moved into town it was to a rambling turn of the century house--she staked out her space. It was called the library/ sewing room. In the library there were shelves upon shelves of books some of which would spark the fire as a bibliophile and lead ultimately my career. Education was always important to her. I never one second thought there was ever any option than to go to college. Me going to college involved her getting a second job, so that I could make those years the most formative ones in my life. It wasn't until years later that I understood that was the motivation for the second job.
My mother taught her children that there was value to work and effort. As a result, she has three children dedicated to their individual roles as law enforcer, salesman, and Librarian. She also taught us that courtesy and good manners can make up for social standing. As a child, I may have had one pair of shoes that once I stopped growing got replaced when they fell apart, I may not have worn store bought clothes until I could buy them myself, and bean and cornbread might have been on the menu five nights a week, but by God, we had clean bodies, clean clothes, and clean mouths. The latter was enforced with a vinegar bottle and paper towels. We might be poor but we were not white-trash and we would never ever act as if we were.
My mother is a Steel Magnolia. She has firm values that are unbending and unwavering in their strength. She loves beauty and feels that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. She was my early Civil Rights role model. Growing up in an area known as Little Dixie, seeing the world as Black and White where the two should never mix was tempered at home with a gentler message that we are all humans, there is always good and bad and a mixture of the two in varying portions in each of us. And just as white-trash comes in all socioeconomic stations, it also comes in all colors. See people for who they are and not the color of their skin or the clothes they wear. It is this message that has allowed me to travel the world and live as a minority for most of my adult life. It is also this message that I take to heart when I serve the variety humanity that walks through the library doors.
In my adult conversations with her, my mother tells me about letters she has written and phone calls she has made. Now, I realize that she has been a stealth activist for a long time. Quietly, without much ado, she has encouraged those she admires and admonished those she doesn't.
I will end with a story she told me recently: I was home for vacation, my mom was out when Esther, her long time friend, called. She told me to tell Mom that she was doing better. When Mom came home, I relayed the message to which she responded that she was glad to hear the news as Esther hadn't been doing well at all. Several months earlier, Esther had called is see if my mom would be able to drop by the pharmacy and bring her medication to her. My mom agreed and was on her way to deliver the medication on the West Side of town--read this as across the tracks. She was making her way, when she noticed that the trash truck was driving down the middle of the road, stopping at each house preventing her from getting around it, thus making a 10 minute trip into a 30 minute one. Since she had never experienced such a thing before she could only conclude that the white sanitation workers had decided that a white woman had no business being on THAT side of town and was making their opinions known. When Mom returned to home she called City Hall and gave the Sanitation Supervisor an earful about sick friends, old ladies and how dare they. Well, apparently, they no longer did as she encountered no trash truck problems in future visits.
This is what I love most about my mother. She is pleasant, and amenable until her values are brushed up against. Then watch out--because she can breathe fire. Proudly, I call her the Dragon Queen. I only wish I could be as elegant and firm in my convictions as she is.