Today would have been my mother’s 85th birthday, July 28th 2016! This is the third year I’ve celebrated her birthday without her, it’s also the day that Hillary Clinton will give her speech on why she wants and should become President of the United States!
My mother became a Baha’i, leaving her Christian upbringing, the small road side chapel that she took us to, when I was only 7 years old and she 32. She was looking for something that she could teach her children that resonated, that made sense and that she could believe in! She found that in the Baha’i Faith, embracing these tenets, the oneness of mankind, universal peace upheld by a world government, independent investigation of truth, the common foundation of all religions, the essential harmony of science and religion, THE EQUALITY OF MEN AND WOMEN, THE ABOLISHMENT OF ALL PREJUDICES OF ALL KINDS, universal compulsory education, a spiritual solution to the economic problem and a universal auxiliary language! She was not a complicated woman, she was a loving woman!
It was during the 1960’s when my parents became Baha’i’s! I recall guests coming to dinner that had been in the south, riding the freedom train, participating in the civil rights movement, others protesting our involvement in Vietnam! We hosted a Baha’i choir practice on Friday nights that was diverse and would sing around the Seattle area to promote the abolishment of prejudice! My mother would tell the story of being thrown tomatoes at and being frightened going to a singing engagement! I as a young girl watched and listened to these adults who had a passion for a better world, a more just world, who fought for that too! When I was 20 my mother remarried, Clyde was and is black! So I do believe that BLACK LIVES MATTER! They married 40 years ago when mixed race couples were not common, especially in a little suburb outside Seattle Washington!
Eight years ago during the primary season, my mother was for Barack Obama and Clyde was for Hillary Clinton! She wanted to see the abolishment of prejudice by electing the first African American to the highest office in the land, that to her was more important than a woman breaking the glass ceiling, where Clyde wanted to see the equality of men and women manifested! Actually I’m not sure if that was really his motivation or if he coming from St. Louis and the prejudice he experienced, which to this day prevents him from any desire to go to the south, whether he simply was afraid the country was still unable to see beyond the bias he had known for so long! Once Barack Obama became President Barack Obama my mother was on to promoting her next wish fulfilled, to see the first woman president! She had poor health and would tell all her doctors and nurses after President Obama’s re-election, that they needed to keep her alive so she could see the first woman president, seeing the first woman president was what motivated her to her dying breath.
“February 8th, 2014th my mother wrote this on a scrap of paper because she had tubes down her throat and couldn’t talk but wanted the doctors to know that she needed to stay alive to vote for the first woman president. I’ve kept those scraps of paper because she can’t vote, she passed away the next day, but maybe her scrap of paper, her dying wish will lead someone to choose to usher in a new age, where women are seen as equals, where they too want to see the first woman president of the United States of America!”
I wrote that when Hillary first announced her candidacy, because on her death bed when she was dying I begged her to stay alive, tears streaming down my face, I told her I’d wheel her to the caucus, to a rally, all she had to do was stay alive! Here we are on her birthday and Hillary is giving her acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States! I’ve been pondering what to write to Hillary or Elizabeth, for three years, to honor my word, to honor my mother, to wheel her!
So Hillary, we read your book together, It Takes a Village and we helped raise a young girl who now has a child of her own, a daughter, a bright and beautiful child! I want to believe in you, I want to have faith that you’ll stand up for that bright and beautiful, child! That when all is said and done, it is those bright and beautiful children we’re fighting for and it does take a village! When Bernie announced his candidacy I looked up to the heavens and said, mom, what are we going to do, Bernie’s running, she loved Bernie, a big C-Span watcher she was, I hope you and Bernie are working together to move towards a more just society where not just a few have all the advantages!
After my mother passed away in looking through her cards and various saved papers, I came upon a story she wrote about a teapot she was given when we lived in Germany in 1956! She, a young woman, a mother of two small children in a foreign country, my father working for Curtiss Wright, travelling all the time! They rented an apartment from Frau Mueller in a home that used to belong to a Jewish family who were killed in the holocaust. She saw the teapot high up on a ledge and asked about it, Frau Mueller then told her the story of the Jewish family that had owned the house and never came back; she was given the teapot because of her kindness. I never knew why she had so many teapots up on the ledge in our home, until I read her story, here’s an excerpt she wrote told as if by the teapot!
“The mama began to wonder why we had wars, why religions did not agree on one God, why there were such prejudices amongst human beings. She tried to bring up her children to accept all peoples of the world, to work for peace and to respect other people’s religious beliefs.
The mama is aging and has grandchildren. I still sit in the living room.
One day she looked at me and said, “You have been instrumental in helping me to arrive at a clear understanding of who I am as a human being, now it is time you go to a new home!”
The mama’s son-in-law’s religious heritage and beliefs are Jewish. She felt I should again be placed in a home that is loving and where the family will not forget what cruelties human beings perpetuate against their fellow man because of different religions, race and or nationalities.
The mama said, “You belong in a Jewish home. The last Jewish family you belonged to died in a concentration camp in Germany in 1943.”
I know my story will continue for another hundred years.”
Happy birthday mom, I love you and thank-you for educating me to be the fighter that I am, the fighter for a more just world, not for just a few people, because like your headstone reads at the National Cemetery, we really are, ONE PLANET, ONE PEOPLE!
Hillary, what gives me pause for hope is that you too have been a fighter for a more just world. I may not know the political ins and outs, but knowing you have a bust of Eleanor Roosevelt in your office that really gives me hope; she was a great champion for human rights!
“WHEN WILL OUR CONSCIENCES GROW SO TENDER THAT WE WILL ACT TO PREVENT HUMAN MISERY RATHER THAN AVENGE IT?”
Eleanor Roosevelt