Ten days ago was my mom's 80th birthday, or it would have been. My mother was a Depression baby, a member of the Silent generation. Her life saw so many changes, not unlike her mother's or her mother's. Each one of these women has been an inspiration to me.
My mom was a feisty one, a fighter from the start. She fought whooping cough at 10 months old, she grew up through a war where her mother had to scrimp and save and barter for enough coupons to keep her growing daughter in shoes and clothes. At 13, my mom showed the first sign of what would become a strong advocate for women's rights. When the boys in her grade were to be excused one afternoon to attend a track meet, mom organized the girls so that when the boys left, all the girls stood up and walked out, too. She wasn't going to be left behind to wait like a good little girl, and she got all of the other girls to go with her.
My mom was the first person in the family to graduate from college. This wasn't such a surprise since her mother was the first to graduate high school and the first to attend post-secondary education. At the time my mom graduated from college in 1959, the choices presented to her were secretary, nurse or teacher. She didn't want to be a secretary, and had no desire to "change bedpans" as she put it, so she chose teaching. She taught speech and drama in the early years, and within 10 years was working her way up the ladder of the local teachers union. In 1974, when I was 3 and my brother was 1, she was instrumental in organizing a teacher's strike. Even when I was in high school there were teachers who talked about my brother and I picketing in our little red wagon. I still have the picture from the paper of us in the wagon being pulled by my mom while she walked the picket line.
She spent two years as the president of the local education association. During that time, she got a truly horrendous principal fired, had another moved out of the school and into the head office, and petitioned for girls soccer to be included in the high school (since I played and she thought that we should have a team). As the years went by, her activities slowed down due to her health, but she still managed to get her teaching buddies to support causes, from support for Patty Murray during her first Senate campaign, to advocacy for LGBT students, to the ouster of two teachers for inappropriate conduct with students. Fiesty.
Eight years ago, my mom and I had a serious conflict over the presidential election. You see I was a big Obama supporter and she supported Hillary Clinton. She told me that one day I would understand how huge of a deal it was to have a female candidate for president, and how it was a dream for her to see a female president. She talked about her grandmother who cooked lunch everyday for the local school and brought it to the kids there. She never worked a day in her life, but she marched for women's right to vote. She told me about my grandmother, who was fired from her first job when she got married and was unable to find a new job until after my grandfather died. She told me how these women worked and fought and lived and died and raised kids and fed communities and survived husbands, wars, depressions and children.
And now I look at Hillary Clinton with new eyes. I see a woman who put her dreams and ambitions on hold so that her husband could be president, who graciously stepped aside when another man stepped forward to be president. Who has faced decades of abuse, accusations that she is too feminine, too masculine, too smart, too conservative, too liberal, too corrupt, too vain, too ambitious. Her dignity, femininity, intelligence and ambition have been called into question, and she's still standing. Hell, she's rising above.
I wish my mom could be here to see this. She passed away a year and a half ago. But in November I will get to vote, and I will proudly vote for Hillary knowing that generations of women, of Americans, are there with me. I guess it's one more chance for my mom to tell me "I told you so."