As I sat at the Atlanta International airport this Friday afternoon in transit, I whipped out Sen. Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams from my Father to finally finish it up. Sitting there beneath the overhead TV monitor, I heard something on Wolf Blitzer's CNN Situation Room about McCain's latest TV Ad starring his 96-year old mother that perked up my ears.
I felt a twinge of sadness that the woman that Sen. Barack Obama describes so lovingly in the book I was reading could not physically be here to share in this historic moment in her son's life. In fact I recalled a response he gave to Wolf Blitzer during the interview this past Wednesday when asked what his Mom would think of him at this time. He replied:
She'd say, don't let it get to your head, just keep on working hard. But I think she'd be pretty proud. Everything that I am I owe to her. She was the kindest, most generous person I ever met. And her values and her integrity still guide me.
She is somebody who when I am confronted with difficult choices, I have to ask myself, you know, what would she -- what would she expect of me? And I think that's usually a good guidepost.
Just as soon as my mind drifted back to what I was reading, another segment came on the TV about Sen Obama's demographic challenges in West Virginia (and Kentucky, my state) vis-a-vis Sen. Clinton's recent remarks about "Sen. Obama's support weakening again...with...hard-working Americans, white Americans" So I thought what if Ms. Stanley Ann Dunham were here and visibly on the campaign trail with her son? Would those optics affect the discourse on "race" in the election?
We are all familiar with the sepia toned family photos of the young Obama and his beautiful mother. Time Magazine did a recent piece on her story giving us some glimpse into the free-spirited woman who stepped out with gusto into cultural worlds remotely familiar to a Kansan girl relocated to Hawaii.
Yet the key word here is "glimpses." Ann Dunham's story remains elusive, and perhaps that is the way it should be, even after paging through all 457 pages of Obama's memoir. She remains a breath that flows through the narrative, gently, yet boldly prying open a complicated and often ugly world to her two children without ceremony. It's as if she wanted to say to them in her unapologetic way, that the world is what it is and either you face it and put in your two cents to change it, or you get overrun by it. Not a particularly syrupy sweet way of mothering, but in all likelihood developed her children's humanity. Today we see the fruits unfolding before us in her son's candidacy and her daughter's (Maya's) radiant independence as a teacher.
Her fortitude as described by Barack in the book, reminds me of the logic of ‘blues’ music. That is all about toughening up, staring loneliness in the face, and confronting whatever life throws at you without waiting for divine intervention. Ann Dunham may have been a white woman, but she had her own equivalent of Blueswoman Bessie Smith’s sassiness that she threw at "all that trouble."
All of this makes me wonder what she would have said to all the hoopla and jabs thrown at her son, including his progressive "blackening" as the primaries have worn on. Methinks she might have given a wry smile, told him to keep his chin up and gone right back to her work with the women of Marrakesh, or Jakarta, or perhaps she might pick up some sandals, international development reports and gotten on the plane to Myanmar to lend a hand helping people get back on their feet.
I wish her a happy Mother’s Day...Rest in Perfect Peace.
I also wish Michelle, Toot (Obama’s Grandmother), and Sarah (Kenyan Grandmother), and Mama Robinson (Obama's Mother-in-law -- thanx blackbox for the reminder) also a Happy Mother’s Day
Update:
Thanks litho for the reference to the Ellen Goodman piece in the Boston Globe.