By participating in a Mothers Opposing Bush party hosted by the MN Chapter in 2004, I felt more marginalized than ever. I thought I could meet like-minded people there, it was a party for mothers, progressive thinking mothers, and a place where perhaps I felt I could fit in; make more friends ... or something.
Moving to Minneapolis in 2003, I felt relieved to finally get out of North Dakota, that perhaps I could start my life in a way that I could appreciate things more, learn and unlearn things and finally start college.
I got pregnant when I was 18, a senior in high school. The father was 17, a drop out of high school student, but would have been a junior that year. I gave birth to our daughter a month and half after I turned 19 on September 25, 2001. At the time, I never gave much thought into the fact that I actually was a teenage mother, a poor teenage mother, who had just graduated from high school with no plans for her future at all. I hadn’t thought of college, I didn’t know what I wanted in life, neither did her father.
After two years of me being the one who was working and after a jail sentence with him for four months and me working my ass off, we moved to Minneapolis in October of 2003. I loved the city and I was starting college for graphic design at Minneapolis Community and Technical College in January. I wanted my life to begin with something, to go somewhere.
That first year, I became quit involved politically, paying attention to the news and politics going on. I never liked George Bush in the first place, but I had really never paid complete and total attention to those issues that are so important to me now. I began volunteering with local chapters for Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice MN, Outfront, and other social groups. During the 2004 election, I found out about the local MN chapter for Moms Opposing Bush and I was so excited! I didn’t hang out with anyone but my daughter’s father at the time and our child. I had friends that moved there the same time I did, but apparently I didn’t do enough coke and drink enough. Or something.
I got on the local email list and found out around Halloween 2004 there was a house party in a suburb past St Paul. And I had been in contact with the Head of the MN chapter for Moms Opposing for Bush and she was the one hosting the party, I was so excited. I could finally meet like-minded mothers, let my kid meet some other kids and just have a good time.
The drive from my two bedroom apartment in Minneapolis to this suburb ended up being about 30 minutes. I was extremely broke, working 30 hours a week, school full time and living off of student loans, but I thought this small trip would be worth it. Because well, meeting new like-minded people and activism.
I had a feeling something was going to not be very amazing because as soon as I figured out the turn, the houses were massive; it was in a wooded area that I felt like I was back in North Dakota again. I finally figured out where I could park and in the dark, holding my daughter who was dressed as Dora the Explorer for Halloween (there was a kids thing at the Mall of America that day) and me, wearing my favorite ripped jeans, my green converse shoes and a band shirt with a corduroy jacket, walked up the driveway. The drive way was more like a small gravel road surrounded with trees.
Of course, walking up the driveway, I tripped on something, fell, ripped my jeans open even more, and had mud all over me and my kid. She started crying; I calmed her down, walked up to the house and opened the door.
A woman answered.
I said, Hi I am Heather Jackson.
She remembered me, smiled, showed me in, and showed me the bathroom, the play room where her nanny was with her kids and where the grown-ups were.
She was dressed up in a poofy 50s-style cocktail dress. That there, already made me feel completely inadequate.
I took my child into the bathroom because she had to go, than made my way into the play room with the nanny. I heard the adults talking and I was offered if I wanted a drink, some man even asked me where the bathroom was, later finding out – he thought I was another teen nanny.
That night I stayed in the play room with the nanny and the host’s two kids and mind. No one else brought their children because they could actually afford to get a baby-sitter and pay them decently. I was 22 at the time with a three year old child. I felt so completely off in a completely different world than everyone. Most people were highly-educated, upper class, suburban living, in their 30’s, married, white couples.
I was a former teen mother, still in college, wearing muddy, ripped jeans, living off of paycheck to paycheck and than some, living right in the city, single ... yah.
I ended up leaving. I didn’t say a word to anyone. I drank the water I had and left. I walked out the door, feeling a bit stupid and extremely disappointed. I had gotten along with the 17 year old nanny than I did with anyone else there.
I drove home that night, feeling a bit ashamed, stupid, silly, anxious and disappointed. There was a Moms for Kerry picnic that following weekend, but there was no way in hell I was going to that. I did get an email from the host of the party, saying she was happy I attended and a bit of pity towards me, saying how wonderful it was that I was a single mother and that she felt bad for the stuff I had to go through, being I was a single mother in college.
I don’t need anyone to say that to me. I don’t want people to feel sad and sorry for me. Because I don’t and I don’t need that. A huge problem I find with certain organizations is that there is judgment towards others still, there is a pre-conceived idea or something of what a certain thing should be that I was automatically a nanny at that party, and the fact that no one made me feels welcome there at all. And perhaps, I should not have even gone; I am not the cocktail party-type girl, although I must say I did not get that impression from finding out about this party.
I left that party realizing how much more marginalized I really was at that moment. Perhaps those type of politics wasn’t and isn’t the place for me. I felt completely out of place, almost in high school again. I felt pity from others that I didn’t need to feel and learned that single motherhood isn’t always put into play in these so-called liberal organizations. I honestly would have felt more in place being a married, 30-some, year, college graduate mother than I did at that time of who I was and even who I am now.
And needless to say, I didn’t participate with that organization anymore; I took my MOB (Mothers Opposing Bush) button off my backpack. And started, again the process of learning and unlearning – find something that I could truly feel accepted. And to this day, I haven’t found any politician that can completely match that, no party that I and feel so passionate for and I probably won’t living in the USA. I think we desperately, need to get away from the two-party system because more and more I feel like I don’t even want to vote. And that’s sad. But no one says the things I want to hear, they all are for trying to figure out how to get this certain group to vote for them and what they can say to make things better for voter turnout for THEM. They say and say things that they can do, but will they really do it? Or are they saying it to get people to vote for them?
Single motherhood is a part of life and we and our children are our own little families. We aren’t leeches of the welfare system, nor are we just not people with our own passions and love. We are a reality. A reality that most of us don’t get child support and a reality that a lot of us have tried for child support and NOTHING HAPPENS. I am one of those single moms.
Or maybe I’m just a burden on the tax system and those MOB house parties.