In Celebration

Here comes Mother's Day.

In the past, as the only adult female in my family without children, I would frequently take on Mother's Day organizing as "my" holiday. I liked to book a nice restaurant and let it do all the work; to me Mother's Day is all about champagne brunches and really good food, with a big present that is something my mother will enjoy immensely and/or never think to get herself.

We've eaten all over DC and in many places down toward where my grandparents live. There are four adult females in my mother's generation and there was my gramma. We have  a tradition of providing carnations of varying colors for those whose mothers were living and dead (a tradition I find morbid, but that's just me). There would be many bottles of champagne to drink and differing cuisines to sample. There would be many small people running around and lots of fun conversation; sublte tensions that come up in family gatherings over slow burns from years past; differing view points in lively discussions; lots of photo ops.

This year will be the first without my gramma, and the first year in a long time without a big shebang. In truth, I'd forgotten about Mother's Day, having been so focused on round trips to Barboursville (and all of the attendant items to bring with me), making various arrangements, and trying to keep my career afloat. I was reminded, however, on Wednesday, and hastily made reservations at a restaurant that I know my mother will love. And it was easy to get because it was just a reservation for two.

I don't like the sappy Mother's Day cards that are for sale this time of year. Well, I don't really like cards, period. I prefer to write my own sentiments. There are always sort of schmaltzy articles this time of year, too, about Motherlove and Motherwit. The Daily Beast asked a bunch of prominent women to write about their mothers. I appreciated Barbara Walter's piece, because she talked about hearing her mother's words come out of her mouth, both good and bad, and how she says, "I love you, Mom" silently to her mother every time her daughter says it aloud to her.

I thought that Maria Shriver's piece in the same compilation was weird. Her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, is the dynamo who organized and founded the Special Olympics. Lemme say that again-- The Special Olympics! It's a big deal. Maria Shriver talks about her mother and says how her mother lamented to her that she (Eunice) was not encouraged to run for office or be particularly politically active because her family was so male-dominated, as was common for the era in which she became an adult. Maria sort of carries that lamentation forward, and wishes that her mother was about 15 years younger, so that her mother could serve as her "chief of staff" and help her with all of her political responsibilities as Governor's wife.

I think that there is a tremendous temptation for younger women to lament the overt sexism that was much more the rule in days gone by. We want to point at women in our families, of past generations and say, "wow, she could have been x, y, or z in a different era." What about celebrating what they were in their own time? There are a lot of institutions and work roles that women occupied for which they are unsung, not the least of which being "mother". If you can't celebrate their vital leadership roles in women's clubs and charitable organizations, academic achievements, "amateur" research and "family" roles, celebrate the fact that they most likely consciously cultivated your success, as they saw (and in many cases actively worked on) the changing world.

My great-grandmother started a successful nursery school, only the second of its kind in DC, on the eve of the Great Depression. It would thrive for several decades and educate hundreds of children who would go on to become the civic leaders, doctors, teachers, lawyers and business people who helped grow the ever developing city. My grandmother taught at the same school, was an early shaper of the Head Start program's implementation in DC; she taught in DCPS and helped found child day care centers in Roxbury, MA, too. My mother taught Afro-American History (as it was called then) at UVa; founded a nursery school for me when I was child; concieved of and implemented a nationally recognized housing program that made over 2,000 people homeowners. Each generation in my family has had to take the bitter with the sweet, facing racism, sexism, and economic set back. Each generation has persevered, most successfully, because of the familial love that was the bedrock of its values. The women in my family have been lionesses in their respective eras-- active in so many different areas it's difficult to catalogue. I don't see them as lost in their lifetimes. Rather, I see them as examples.

My favorite freedom song that my mother used to sing to me at bedtime says, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round." The mothers in my family have provided ample example of that, to me.

Happy Mother's Day. You are each genius in your own time.