True Feminist

For years, I wanted my mother to be someone other than who she was. Or at least I wanted her to get who I was. As the first-born, overly-serious, and tender-hearted one, roles reversed as we both aged. I cared for my mother as though she were the child, protecting her from the razor sharp rages of my father, secretly sewing her a blue wool suit one Christmas, wrapping her in my arms when the hurts and despair became visible on her innocent face. What I really wanted, what I really needed was for my mother to be a mother.

Though my father stimulated the writer in me with his verbosity and eccentric stories, inspired my intellect with the classics, and broadened my cultural horizons with Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, it was deeper conversations with my mother that I longed for. I yearned to have my mother embrace me with an instinctual love, brought forth from the history of what it meant to be a female. I had little idea of what I was missing until I became a college student and broke out of the authoritarian cage my father had constructed for us. My twenties erupted with the wave of women's consciousness raising groups. Completing my Bachelor of English and German literature, I became acutely aware of the dearth of women writers I had read. Thus began years of my own women's literature studies and the creation of my own women's literature community education classes.

During a lovely spring week while I was attending graduate school, my mother came for a visit. I was extremely enthralled by my course work in Women's Poetry and African American Women's Literature. Wasn't it time to share with my mother something more honest about who this daughter of hers was? Our usual relationship consisted of superficial conversations over coffee and pastries and clothes shopping. Wouldn't it be wonderful for my mother to experience the lyrical voices of women singing their thoughts of personal growth and reflection? Couldn't my mother be stimulated to see being a woman went beyond motherhood and make-up? I would be the gallant damsel riding to rescue my mother from her mundane, narrow existence.

My Women's Poetry class was taught by a highly regarded professor who was one of my advisors and “a true feminist.” I note this last title only because at the time I equated feminism with literary and historical liberation. Feeling like a motherless child, I was in awe of and thirsted for kernels of feminine truths. I decided to bring my mother with me the next day to a class session.

As my mother and I entered the back of the classroom and took our seats, my professor noted my guest by giving me an acknowledging glance. Then the talk and discussion about Adrienne Rich's poetry took off in a whirl of large and small words founded on intellect and ordinary common sense. My undergraduate shyness had dissipated with the ripening of my literate self-awareness and pure love of women writers. I raised my hand and added my comments to the exhilarating swirl of energy. My mother sat politely silent next to me. Her eyes glazed over and I instantly knew this had been a huge mistake. What had ever possessed me to believe my mother could fathom even a smidgen of this life?

I walked out of the poetry class thoughtful and despairing. My mother continued to smile by my side. We reached the cafe with zero comments from my mother about her experience in this class. I was afraid to mention too much about the academic discussion but merely stated my awe and appreciation for the professor. My mother nodded. We sat down at a table by the window and ordered our coffee and pastries. I glanced out the window at the imposing university buildings. I glanced back at my mother, gratefully sipping her coffee. Her stiffened shoulders were relaxed now, her blank stare more focussed. I suggested we could go shopping at the Valley River Mall. I needed a new pair of pants.

My mother's face brightened.

From that visit, I unearthed this gem of wisdom: My mother was my mother and I would never be able to remake her into the vision I wished for. She grew up in the 1920s and 30s and raised us during the 50s. I had the revolution of the 60s and the feminist awareness of the 70s. But can't a person buck one's own given history? Can't a person walk out on the edge rather than cushion oneself in the middle? I was hoping for too much. My mother read gossip rags and Hollywood biographies. My mother never dared to cross my father. My mother lacked curiosity and a sense of adventure.

However, over the years, I saw that it was I who lacked curiosity. Why hadn't I tried to discover the truth of my mother's life rather than feel deprived of the fantasy mother I thought I craved? Uncovering my mother's story would happen slowly. We were visiting my Aunt Davina, my mother's older sister. I remember standing in my aunt's living room refiguring my birth... conceived in January, born in August. “Oh, we wanted children, so it didn't matter.” My mother and my aunt laughed. Then Aunt Davina confided she had conceived my cousin before she and Uncle Paul had married. “What?” I, the supposed revolutionary, suddenly became prim and proper. “I thought no one was supposed to have sex before marriage.” My mother and my aunt gave me broad, wholesome smiles. Later my aunt whispered to me, “Your mother has always been the spoiled youngest. She's frivolous. She doesn't understand the harshness of everyday living.”

My aunt's description of my mother lingered through the years. My father did treat my mother like a naïve child. But when he had a nervous breakdown and was fired from his job, it was Mom who found full-time employment and steadily continued to work throughout our childhood. My mother also

continued to cook, clean and take care of us. My mother had had one other previous marriage and given up my half-brother to be raised by his remarried father. Discovering the truth of this past event took time. My half-brother came to my childhood birthday parties but somewhere in adolescence his presence in our lives disappeared. My mother never talked about him and he never attempted to visit us. “What happened with your first marriage, Mom?” My mom sat me down at the kitchen table and poured us each a cup of strong, black tea. “I met Rex in high school. He wanted to get married right away, but I told him I wanted to get a job and work first.” My eyes widened. Here were facts of revolution, not compliance.

In the 50's, women got married and had children...or so I believed. But my mother never raised me with these goals. She raised me to believe that whatever I chose to do would be the right thing. She never judged me. She never asked when I was going to get married. Though I fought her battles with my father, as an adult she told me not to let my father see my tears or my frustrations. “ Be strong,” she encouraged. “So why did you leave Rex? Why did you leave my half brother Wayne?” My mother's face contorted in puzzlement and her eyes drooped and dimmed. “I worked for several years for “The Glendale Star” newspaper. I loved my job, but Rex kept badgering me. We got married and I thought this was what I wanted. But I wasn't happy. After a few years I thought if I had a child, I might feel better. So I had Wayne. But it didn't make any difference. I told Rex I wanted a divorce and he said only if I gave him custody of Wayne. And so I did.”

Try as I might, I could never discover how my mother felt about giving up her first born child. She walked away from that first marriage and kept her promise by rarely seeing Wayne. It wasn't until I had my daughter that I began to understand the pain of this decision. My mother's feelings were buried deep. Though we occasionally interacted with Wayne, to my mother we were her authentic children. And though marrying my father might have begun happily, his later post-war mental depression would make my mother's life hellish.

So her story was not as simple as my aunt believed. Life's harshness knocked on my mother's door several times. Puzzle pieces were beginning to interlock: my mother worked before marriage; my mother initiated her divorce from an unhappy marriage; my mother began supporting us when my father faltered. Could the definition of feminism be expanded to include my mother?

I had come to believe my mother was the weak and powerless one. She rarely, if ever, stood up to my father. He made all decisions regarding furniture, carpet, house paint, garden, etc. He decided the destinations of all vacations and my mother did all the packing preparations. He decided what books and music were in the house. When he came home from work he expected to be served dinner and never washed a dish. These details for me described a marriage I vowed I would never have. I will be able to discourse with my partner and we will share equally in the determination of our relationship, I promised.

After my father died, I uncovered some of the final puzzle pieces. We all worried about my mother, and how she would cope. But then we discovered boxes of organized folders covering house deed, bills, insurance,etc. in my mother's handwriting. She was, and always had been, the household manager. My mother's brightest years began when my father passed away. She completely redecorated our childhood home. She bought records of music she liked and listened to her own radio stations. Though my mother had never been a reader, she began reading biographies about her favorite celebrities. My relationship with my mother did not really change, but my perception of who my

mother was and had been was beginning to reshape itself.

Every daughter tells herself she won't be like her mother. But it is the mother who tries to clear or bend the branches in front of her so the daughter can emerge from the woods less torn than she was. When my mother went to work, she stepped outside her box. When my mother gave up her first child, she was trying to reclaim her own life. When my mother encouraged me to believe in myself, she gave me permission to take a different path. It took years for me to forgive my mother for not standing up to my father. But the definition of her feminism could only stretch so far. During her last years, we shared often how much we loved each other. She provided the stepping stone I needed to become the questioning, independent woman I am. I gratefully have not experienced the harshness of domestic emotional belittling and cruelty my mother experienced. My mother was hardly the spoiled child my aunt referred to. She endured. She survived to gift me her true feminine strength. My mother never professed to understand what a feminist was and yet she gave me the time and the ability to uncover its broader definition. My mother died recently and I now realize it was she who was the damsel who rode to my rescue.