My mom is a badass old lady

I have decided to start blogging about my family. I have made this decision, not to strike fear into my wife and children, though that is a bit of a side benefit (keep them on their toes), and not because I have noticed that on Facebook if you post about your kids you get like 50 likes and comments, but if you post a well-reasoned essay about obscenity and trigger warnings, you get close to zippo. I admit there may be subconscious motives at work, so I can’t discount the second entirely. I believe I have decided to start writing about my family because I was thinking about my dad, and about how he would have enjoyed blogging (and how he sort of did, in fact, have a blog). So I was going to start writing a post about my dad, and then I thought of President Obama (He is actually still president, right? This is all just some sick joke, I assume).

I do try to take Obama as a model, as a point of comparison. I guess it’s kind of embarrassing that I compare myself to Obama. It’s kind of embarrassing because I usually don’t come off so well in those comparisons. I should probably stop doing that. You may know that Obama wrote a book about his dad (you may not, that’s OK, I’m not judging). He got a bit of grief because people said, “Well what about your mom? Wasn’t she important too?” His answer, I think, in part, was that he wrote about his dad because his dad wasn’t around, and his mom was, so he didn’t see the urgency. Then, after he wrote about his dad, he was too busy being awesome to have time to write another book about his mom. I hope now that he has some time, he will write a book about his mom. I’d totally read that. But my point is, I don’t want to make Obama’s mistake. I want to write about my mom first. Then I’ll have something up on Obama and I won’t fare so poorly when we are compared.

I suspect that when Obama starts to write about his mom he will find, as I have, that it is hard to write about your mom. For most of the time I have known her, she has simply been, “my mom.” Not ignored or unimportant (far from it) but not really quite an individual person. I think this is what Nancy Chodorow was talking about. I’m not sure about the psychoanalytic part but there’s certainly a huge cultural part. As my mom was growing up there were not that many options open for women and being a wife/mom was pretty much supposed to exhaust it—at least for white middle-class women (see Nell Irvin Painter on this point ). My mom’s life was somewhat constrained. She didn’t get a lot of autonomy. For example, when she went to college (which was a big deal, she was born in 1929), she wanted to be a botanist but was told to major in Home Ec. and be a teacher. It’s not clear told by who exactly (though my bet is on her mom), but such expectations are more powerful for being general and assumed.

I don’t want to paint the picture of my mom as completely controlled by social expectations (she’s not on Mad Men). She was a bit bohemian. Her mom was European (which back then meant rigid and old-fashioned, not hip and progressive). My mom taught school in England for a while. She joined the NAACP in the 1940’s. She tells a story about impressing her brother- and sister-in-law to be by eating an artichoke and arranging the discarded petals in a flower shape. Even knowing what an artichoke was in 1958, let alone how to eat one with style, reflected outrageous sophistication. The joke in my family was that my dad married my mom for her back issues of Gourmet magazine. If you know my family, you know this is no joke. I think she was into health food a bit in the 70’s: I remember carob.

I kind of have no idea what her life was like while I was growing up. It’s not like my brother and I asked her how her day was when we get home from school (I will speak for my brother here. If he disagrees, he can start his own blog). My mom was a housewife. That’s not the way we describe it now, but that’s the way we all thought about it then. After my brother and I left the house she worked in an office for the State of New York.  Probably not a huge step up in terms of stimulating environments. I don’t think life was bleak or anything, but choices were limited. She didn’t have a lot of opportunities to be the decider.

After they retired, my mom and dad moved back to Boulder, where they had met and I was born. One of the best gifts they have given me, and my family, is a very positive model of aging. My mom and dad had a great time being retired in Boulder. They still had a large number of friends from graduate school days in town, and some other moved back as well. The old gang (who called themselves the “Young adults club” (YACs) in 1958), reunited when my parents got to town (Now “Old adults club”). They got involved in book groups, hiking groups, show-slide-shows-of-your-trips groups. My mom joined a quilting group. Of course there were lots of doctors visits, which is almost a full-time occupation. My parents presented such a healthy example of aging that one of their doctors started coming over to the house and bringing her family to see them. They traveled, ate well, and their family was always happy to visit them in Boulder (especially since the passing of Amendment 64). My dad passed away a little while ago, but the strong community and connections they made have been there for my mom.

This was a huge transition for my mom. Now she was the decider. Everything was up to her. It was all autonomy all the time. From small decisions (what to make for dinner), to medium (how to replace the broke fridge), to huge (whether to sell the house and move to senior living). This is a lot of complex stuff to be faced with in your mid-80s.  I have to say, my mom is killing it. She’s handling all these decisions with confidence, acumen, and grace. One of the things she is best at is getting help. Getting people to do things for you is a great decision strategy. When her car radio needs adjusting, she can take it to the dealer, who will also throw in a free car wash. When she’s flying around the country visit friends and family, she will get a wheelchair to the gate (though she can easily walk) because that way you get to the right place, and get budged to the front of the security line.

One of the things about the traditional female gender role is that if you are very luck and play your cards right you get to be an old lady. An old lady has passed beyond the social expectations of marriage, fertility, and mothering. She has power and freedom. She is badass. And my mom has been lucky and has played her cards right. My mom is a badass old lady.

My mom is in independent living now, but it’s a relatively structured environment (more than living in your own house) and there are rules. My mom is not big on the rules. For example, each unit in the building has a parking space in a nearby garage. There are also a bunch of spaces out front for visitors. My mom likes to park her car out front instead of using the garage. I have pointed out the signs to her, but she says it doesn’t matter. She’s doesn’t believe much in signs these days. The building also has meals and a buffet. There are signs about not taking extra food from the buffet into your unit. But… The joke used to be that my mom’s mom had rubber-lined pockets so she could steal soup from the buffets. The apple does not fall far from the tree (insert joke about tolerated theft of apples). In many respects, my mom does things her way and lets the chips fall where they may. She’s a bit of a honey-badger.

Recently my mom met Maria and me in Austin, TX when we traveled there for a conference. (At 88, she travels like a pro.) One day while I was conferencing, Maria and my mom toured around Austin looking in shops and such. My mom mentioned that she had never had her ears pierced and regretted not being able to take advantage of some interesting jewelry they saw. They got back to the place we were staying, in hipster East Austin. Maria, being the kind of can do lady she is, noticed there was a piercing place on the corner.

There is an ancient idea of the triple goddess – Maiden, Mother, Crone. People have started having ceremonies, croning ceremonies, for this third transition. Women gather to mark and celebrate. Maria took my mom over to the piercing place, in hipster East Austin. In many initiation rites there is a quest, and a confrontation with a beast. In vanquishing the beast, the initiate achieves their new status. Here is a picture of my mom at the piercing place confronting the beast. The beast bloodies her, but she survives. From the beast’s lair she carries two stone amulets. She fastens the amulets to her body, and claims her maidenhood and her motherhood. That’s badass.

There is a move to rehabilitate the term “crone” and remove the negative associations. That seems like a great way to go, but I could also imagine substituting another term. I prefer “badass old lady.”

Part of the point of being badass is knowing you are badass. You get to own the attitude and enjoy a little swagger. A badass commands respect. I don’t know that my mom sees herself that way, yet. That’s the main reason I wanted to write this piece: to let my mom know that she is a badass old lady.