My mother: A panegyric

More than a year has now passed since I felt my mother’s final heartbeat. It has been a year of grief, and yet it has also been a year of discovery, for this is the year in which I came to realize that my mother was a hero. My mother, a devout Catholic, would certainly never have claimed to have been semi-divine, but she certainly did practice magic - for there was no other way she could have accomplished all the things she did.

My mother grew up in the backwoods of maritime Canada and never had so much as a single day in high school. She was the child of two people who never spent a day in high school. Yet she studied at home and went to the “big city” and sat the tests and was awarded a high school diploma. No one is quite sure when she found the time to read and study since she spent the greater part of her day working on the farm, cooking and cleaning. The only indoor plumbing was a pump in the kitchen. Water for baths, water for washing clothes, water for cooking and water for cleaning the house had all to be pumped, boiled and carried in buckets.

My mother went off to teach in one-room schools for meager wages. She saved every penny she could in order to buy her mother a good coat. In the depths of the Depression she got on a bus and headed off to the really big city (New York, New York) in order to save every penny she could and send it back to help support her family. My mother waited tables and washed floors and looked after other people’s children because she wanted to send back money to her parents instead of going home and living off them.

My mother returned home and worked on the farm when her father lay near death in the hospital and her brothers were both deployed “overseas” in World War II. She didn’t feel well and would have to stop regularly to throw up as a result of waves of pain and nausea that would wash over her as she went about her chores but she and her mother were able to keep the farm going.

My mother joined the Canadian Army (where, finally having adequate health care, she had the surgery necessary to remove the tumors that can been causing her so much pain.) She worked hard, became an officer and sent money back to her parents on the farm. When the war ended and she was demobilized the government paid her tuition through post-military training. She scrimped and saved so that she could buy books and still send money back home. That meant that sometimes she ate little or nothing.

My mother and father married. They lived in one room. She learned to cook entire meals on a hot-plate and he volunteered for everything in the army that allowed him to earn “danger pay.” She gave birth and he was sent off to war again. My sister’s first memory of her father is the day he returned from the war.

I was born and diagnosed with what was then considered a rare food intolerance. My mother, with few resources, experimented with ways of cooking for me. My father was posted to Europe (which gave my parents the chance, rare for members of the working class of “seeing the world”) and my mother struggling with how to feed in me in a foreign land where she could not speak the language. My mother, unlike most women at the time, could drive and had a driver’s license. Word came down that if, as was feared, war broke out again, my mother would be one of women driving in the refugee convoy of the wives and children of the men who were sent to the front. For months, she kept stashes of canned goods and bottled water in the car, in the closets and under the beds and the suitcases were packed and ready.

My father was posted back to Canada and soon diagnosed with the same “rare” food intolerance as me. For the next forty years my mother made every piece of bread, soup, stew, cookie, cake, casserole and curry that appeared at the table.

As soon as her children were old enough to go to school my mother worked outside the home. By day she taught. In the evening she cooked and cleaned. She told us bedtime stories. She taught us both to read. She went over every piece of homework we ever brought home. When her father died her mother came to live with us. When my grandmother fell and broke her hip and was no longer able to walk upstairs to the bathroom she continued to live with us.

No hospital room was kept as clean as my grandmother’s. Her commode was cleaned (scoured) at least three times a day.

When my grandmother went into a chronic care hospital my mother continued to work, to cook (special food for restricted diets), to clean, to check our homework and serve us good meals three times a day. Yet she went to the hospital every single day and spent at least two hours with her mother. And on Sundays my grandmother came home and had a special meal with the family.

Through all of this my mother went to school herself. She took classes in the evening and on the weekend. Somehow, late at night after her daughters and her mother and her husband were in bed my mother sat up and read her books, wrote her essays and studied for her tests. She didn’t have a desk so she must have waited to the house was quiet and worked at the dining room table. There was never any sign of this is in the morning. The books were always back in their places and the table was set for breakfast.

My mother, a girl who had to steal moments in the day and night to study for high school, spent much of her adult life doing the same in order to get a university degree. She was in her sixties when she finally graduated.

My father says that my mother was the smartest person he ever met. I think she must also have had access to some special form of magic, for without a wand how could anyone, no matter how smart, have managed to do all those things? Through all those years she looked after children and parents and spouse her children never realized how hard she was working because she always had time for us when we needed her.

In the last years of my mother’s life she was crippled with arthritis and physically limited. She was so frail that she was knocked over by the wind one day as she was walking. She no longer had the mental or physical strength to perform her miracles in the kitchen. She would sometimes get confused about current events, although she never forgot the details of every Austen, Trollope, Thackery, George Elliot or Hugo. Every weekend my sister, my spouse or I would visit her. We would bring pre-cooked food to stash in the fridge and prepare a big meal. We would sit around that dining room table and ply her with her favourite foods. And sometimes I would sit and look at her and wonder that such a small person could have been such a tower of strength.

My mother decided not to have possibly life-extending surgery because “she didn’t want to be a trouble.” They predicted she would live five days but, as always, she did things her own way. We spent forty-two days by her bedside. Her last words to us were “I love you all.”

A friend of mine (a doctor) tells me that my mother is now being included in seminars/workshops as an example of an “exceptional” case. I could have told them that years ago.

--mmy

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Being a hero is not a zero-sum game. The fact that my mother was exceptional doesn't mean that your mother (or your father) was not. I welcome reading comments from readers about the heroes in their lives.

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[Brin]

I welcome reading comments from readers about the heroes in their lives.

Perhaps I'll think of mine later, but for now your post makes me think about time-spans and the multi-generational nature of our community. If I understand correctly, your mother was already an adult when my grandmother was born (in 1929).

[Mmy]

@Brin: your post makes me think about time-spans and the multi-generational nature of our community. If I understand correctly, your mother was already an adult when my grandmother was born (in 1929).

Oh yes, we are multi-generational here. But your question/comment also highlights something that many people don't realize--that one of the impacts of both the depression AND World War II was to delay what had been normal life trajectories.

Mom was a teenager when your grandmother was born. My mother put off the normal "settle down and get married" partly to help out her family as a wage earner and partly because most of the young men of her generation were putting off getting married in order to work (sometimes in dangerous and remote places) to send back money to their families.

Then WWII broke out and for people in the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, ...... that war lasted from 1939 (and began earlier in parts of China, Ethiopia and Libya) to late 1945. I have the dance invitation card that members of my dad's regiment sent members of my mom's unit -- it was more than six years between that dance and them finally being able to marry. Dad was sent overseas and Mom to officer's training.

Mom (and other women who were pioneers in the military) ended up also being pioneers in marrying, and having their first children, late.

[Josh Enigma]

Powerful piece.

{{{}}}}

All of the most important figures in my life are women. My dad spent his life slaving way in the shop, working all kinds of ungodly hours, so I never knew much of him when I was little. It was just me and my mom, and my paternal grandmother. Both of them were very strong women. When I was undergoing my mental break down during my student teaching experience, my cooperating teacher was one of the strongest people I've ever met, and she was the one kicking my ass in order to move on, and the one who insisted that I get the help and told me I deserve to be happy.

I appreciated this post in more ways than one. :)

[Bay]

@Mmy I'd argue we're getting the same effect now due to the recession - my fiancee is 27 and a student (graduate school, to be fair, but he works the same hours as high school students at the only job he can find) and will be so until he's 30. At 30, he ought to have a solid job, working his way up, settling down to start a family - but he'll just be starting at entry-level jobs in his career, because thanks to the recession he hasn't been able to find a non-retail (or customer service) job in ten years of looking. We don't expect to be able to afford a house until after we're married and don't plan to marry until after he graduates - the only reason I'm not worried about our ability to have children is because I'm four years younger than he is and age is more crucial to my fertility than his (and I chose to go right to graduate school from university based on his experiences). Many of our peers still live at home because they can't afford housing despite working any job they can find -- they, like us, would love to shower their parents with gifts for being so patient and understanding, but minimum-wage jobs don't pay enough to live on anymore, let alone send money home.

[Ellen Brand]

I've been very lucky. My mother and her mother and HER mother were all strong, independent women. They even all three of them went to college, as did I. GG, Great-Grandmother, got a degree in music and was an Opera Singer. Grandmother got her degree in English, and taught school, and was a reporter during WWII. Mom got her degree in Forestry. All three of them married relatively late, Mom later than Grandmother or GG. Mom was 27 when she and Dad got married, because they both wanted to establish their careers. Mom was 32 when I was born, her only child. And she continued to work until I was 15, and we moved to where she couldn't do her job anymore. She spent about three years as a housewife and running the local Welcome Wagon, and then promptly went into local politics. She's 65 right now, and is a liason to one of the state Assemblymen. Mom is TOUGH. ... I don't take as much after that side of the family as I'd like, sometimes.

[Laiima]

mmy, I was moved to tears reading this. Thank you for an extraordinary tribute to a remarkable woman.

One of my heroes is my uncle Ed, the oldest brother of my father. He was named after his father, but they did not get along. So much so that when Ed Jr. was 10, he was sent to live with friends of the family, as people feared Ed Sr.'s explosive temper directed at Ed Jr. I don't know how Ed Jr. got along with his foster family, but I do know that at age 15 (1943), he ran away to join the merchant Marines. At some point his age was discovered, and he was sent home. He kept running away, and eventually was old enough to serve the US in some branch of the military, I think Army. He was an MP in China at the end of the war. He was later stationed in the Aleutian islands. He married an adventurous and intrepid woman named Eileen, who was his sister's best friend (therefore three years older than he). They had four children.

Unlike others in my family who served in the military, uncle Ed was not pro-war. He spoke frankly of how there is no glory in it, that the process is brutal and de-humanizing. He also spoke of the lifelong friends he made in the service, and unlikely experiences he had there. Serving overseas and elsewhere certainly broadened the horizons of the son of Irish immigrants, from the Southside of Chicago, who never went to college. His post-Army work was steamfitting, and he was a proud member of his local labor union (possibly Local Union 597). He encouraged me to consider the trades as a job because he said it was an excellent opportunity, and you would always have work. Also there weren't many women in it. (I regretfully decided not to do that because my fine motor skills aren't the best. But I've often wondered if maybe I should have.)

He was very interested in learning from other people, no matter who they were. And he seemed to enjoy my company. I wish I'd known him better.

He died unexpectedly in 1993.

[Mink]

My mother passed away on 14 February 2005. I took it hard at the time, and cried a lot, but carried on as I knew she would want us to. Not a day or a week goes by that I don't think of her in some way, but I had let go of the grief and accepted life without her.

Today after reading this I broke down a little at work (not as bad as it sounds, I occupy a cubicle that's out of the way) after reading this. I'm not quite sure why, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intended effect! Even so, it did let me remember how hard-working she was and what she put up with.

I do not have heroes at this time. There have been a few names that waft up at me through the colander that is my memory. (I have a mind like a steel sieve.) But mostly I am moved by the amazing life your mother lead and what must have been her profound influence on you.

A few weeks ago I attended Westercon, and there was a panel discussing 'Writing Formidable Women.' Unfortunately the panelists were so hung up on giving seemingly random and often contradictory examples that they never defined what a 'Formidable Woman' is, despite saying, 'Yes, we should define this term.' I think in the time it took for me to read your piece I learned, definitively, what makes for a formidable woman, since your mother seems to not only embody it but define it.

[Michael Mock, who is pleased to gift himself with an absurdly long title once again]

My mother got Polio when she was young. Despite the fact that she could no longer move her legs, she went on to get degrees, have a career (marriage and family therapy), get married, give birth, and raise two boys. She fought to get us into the sorts of schools where we would do well. She was also the stable income for the household for much of my youth. (Dad is very bright, but not always very reliable. He's not irresponsible, exactly, just... absent-minded.)

[Froborr]

One of the sad realizations I came to a couple of years ago is that I have no non-fictional heroes. I envy you all.

[Dav]

I should have waited until I got home to read this. Crying at the office is so unbecoming.

[MercuryBlue]

My grandmother is responsible for there being an accounting degree at Misericordia, or so I hear.

...that's all I've got. *joins Froborr in envy* I mean, I admire my parents and my mother's parents for being able to raise five kids apiece in hard times, but. That just seems so...ordinary.

[Laiima]

Wow, Pthalo, that one account taught me a lot I didn't know. Thank you for sharing.

I guess I should talk about my grandparents; I didn't think of them at first because they were so much more than heroes to me. Julijona was born in Chicago in 1913, the middle child of Lithuanian immigrants. She was the only one of her sisters to finish high school, where she began calling herself June, and learned to speak Spanish, besides the Lithuanian she grew up speaking, and the English she spoke everywhere else. She borrowed her older sister Helen's papers so she could get a job at 15. She worked her entire career -- 50 years -- as a telephone operator at the phone company. She outgrew the racism she was raised with, and made friends with her black women coworkers.

My grandfather Stan (6 years older), was the apple of his mother's eye, and the head of his family since his father was murdered when he was a teenager. Stan's mother did not like June, and she was not made welcome by the others either. When June was a newlywed, Stan contracted rheumatic fever. He almost died, and his heart was permanently weakened. She nursed him devotedly for a year, until he recovered (while working full time -- she only ever missed work to deliver her children). He worked many jobs over the years, despite having only finished eighth grade, but because of prejudice was not allowed to join the skilled trades. Together they raised three children. Just when they thought they could start thinking about their retirements, their oldest daughter's marriage disintegrated, and she came back to live with them, with her four young children in tow. My grandfather built a third floor onto the house for them to have their own apartment. heEventually my aunt remarried and moved away.

Somewhere in there my grandfather had a massive heart attack, and was again in the hospital for many months. He was one of the first people in the country to have open-heart surgery. (1964 or so.)

My grandparents were able to travel in their older years, but they were really looking forward to my grandmother's retirement, on her 65th birthday. But my grandfather contracted pneumonia, then died in his sleep of a heart attack, four months before my grandmother's birthday. (I was 11.)

As a widow, who was almost completely deaf, my grandmother went white water rafting, rode roller coasters at Disney World, and lived a busy and fulfilling life for another 20 years. I still think about her all the time, and am inspired by her example.

[Lonespark]

Third time I've cried reading something today. What an amazing lady you've shared with us.

Maybe when there's a year gone I'll be able to write something about my grandmother.

[Lonespark]

One of the other bits that made me cry was the Globe Magazine article about Rev. Reeb. Now I'm curious what standards you have for heroes, Froborr, that no one real can meet?

[Coleslaw]

I'm exhausted just reading about your mom. She sounds, I want to say, "formidable" except that that word doesn't conjure up the warmth she apparently had, since you say, "she always had time for us when we needed her". I'm glad you wrote this.

[Froborr]

@Lonespark: Did you intend that to come across as highly accusatory? Because I feel like you're attacking me, and I'm not sure what I said that's so awful.

[Lonespark]

No, I definitely didn't mean it to come across as accusatory. Just puzzled.

I thought maybe you were saying you didn't have any nonfictional heroes who were alive or that you knew personally, but that didn't seem to see what you meant, so I'm just wondering what qualities you identify as heroism and why fictional folks can have them while nonfictional folks can't.

Plus also I know there (largely from reading too much TV Tropes, but also from discussions of saga heroes and whatnot) that there can be a lot of definitions of "heroism" and that people's definitions can conflict.

Not trying to derail, though, so maybe it's a conversation for another time.

[Amaryllis, who has tried under easier circumstances and failed anyway]

A lovely post, Mmy.

MercuryBlue: I admire my parents and my mother's parents for being able to raise five kids apiece in hard times, but. That just seems so...ordinary.

Wait until you try it.

[Lonespark]

Yeah, it's...common, I guess? But still extraordinary.

Annoying Minister Guy ended up calling my grandmother "boring" because she was always law-abiding and married to the same guy and stuff. Screw you, buddy. (Also, dude argued with me, beside my grandmother's body, about when in the twentieth century the Red Sox won the World Series. And he was wrong, and she was such a big Sox fan I'm surprised he didn't burst into flames on the spot.)

[Froborr]

@Lonespark: I think you're conflating what I see as two distinct usages of the word "hero":

First is "hero," a person who does heroic things. Under that definition, I'd happily place Rev. Reeb based on thirty seconds of looking up the Wikipedia page.

Second is "hero" as in "personal hero," a person I find inspiring and whose life or sayings I turn to for guidance.

The second is what I meant. And it's not a matter of having criteria that real-life people can't meet, it's just that I happen not to have any real-life people like that. Or, half-joking What Would the Doctor Do bracelets aside, fictional people, really.

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: I admire my parents and my mother's parents for being able to raise five kids apiece in hard times, but. That just seems so...ordinary.

It doesn't seem ordinary to me. I could have described my mother as growing up in hard times, becoming an adult in hard times and raising her children through somewhat less hard times. We have, as a culture, been taught to recognize only a rather narrow set of behaviours as heroic. In my opinion there are a lot of people out there raising children, supporting families and looking after friends/relatives/parents whose bravery and heroism gets almost totally overlooked.

[schweinsty]

Thank you for writing this, mmy. Your mother sounds like she was an amazing woman.

My personal hero - I don't know that much about him, actually, beyond that he had to work hard for what he got and that every other weekend, he made a nine-hour drive (each way) to care for his aging parents, but that devotion to his parents was mirrored in the way he interacted with his students, and he was the only person, when I was in a difficult spot, who offered to help me. As far as I can tell, he's agnostic, but I don't think I've ever met anyone else who showed me what it meant to be a light unto the world. There aren't enough people like that around.

[P J Evans]

My mother worked, first as a newspaper proofreader, and later, after moving halfway across country during WW2, as a lab technician for an oil company. She never said or did anything to make my sister and I feel that that kind of work wasn't for women; I think she was proud of what we can do, even though she'd say that she didn't know what she'd done to have two daughters who get lost in hardware stores. (I think that my brother might get lost in one, but I've never been in a hardware store with him.)

My mother died in 2005, and I still want to call her on the phone.

[Lunch Meat]

I have...mini-heroes, I guess. I can't think of any one person whose entire life inspires me and leaves me in awe, but there are many people that inspire me in different ways.

In middle school I went to a tiny private Christian school that I've made fun of here for the somewhat-ludicrous things that they taught. I have several problems with the school and their political/religious views. But...the principal was one of the first women to graduate with a Bible degree from the school that I went to. She and her husband have adopted five special-needs children, in addition to the three of their own (unless they've adopted more since the last time I saw them). She was the first person to tell me that it was not acceptable to use the word "retarded" as n insult. She inspired me with an eager desire to learn and to create, as well as to teach. She and I will probably not see eye to eye on many things (which is why we don't talk about them), but she has done heroic things.

[Sarah Jane]

Wow... this is stunning, and inspiring. I lost my dad 3 weeks ago today, and although I don't have the presence of mind right now to write out all the delightful things he did with his life, reading this makes me think that someday I would like to do just that. Thank you for sharing.

[DS]

I never had a proper role model growing up; my father's accomplishments were so absurdly titanic (police chief! corporate titan! inventor of the cell phone! confidante to presidents! tamer of tyrants! owner of sports team!) and yet so profoundly removed from the present (he was 60 when I was born and retired shortly after) that I could never really hope to match them.

My birthday is in early October; when I was a little boy, they showed a Chinese National Day parade on TV on my birthday. My father, having a joke at my expense, told me that they were celebrating me, over in Beijing, with a massive military parade. That got me interested in their country, and I decided to make their leader - at the time, Deng Xiaoping - my object of study, and later my hero.

Made sense to me at the time; still does. Here was a man who survived everything evil in the world, fighting the Japanese on the ground, tooth and nail, gun in hand being shot at all day. He never lacked for physical heroism, neither as a warrior nor as a politician.

When the war was won, he was a true believer for a while, but then after the Great Leap Forward he had the courage to realize he was wrong and did everything in his power to ameliorate the evils of his bosses. Sure, he could have just thrown down his badge and quit, but he didn't - someone else, someone worse, would have come along to take his place. So he accepted all the blood on his hands with dignity and played his part, even when it got him and his family into personal danger. But, like a true hero, he saw the bigger picture, and refused to retire from public life, even when he and his family were sent to labor camps.

When he finally outlived all his enemies, he opened the floodgates that had been keeping back his country's productive forces, and turned China from a starving garbage dump into something approaching a modern, developed country. And this, too, took courage - he had to stare down all the old war heroes who still kept the faith, all the luminaries and great men who had been sleeping for the last 40 years, and basically cow them into submission to him. "I am in charge now," he said, "and socialism means whatever I say it means, whenever I say it, and today it means we're going to open up the country, free the people, and give them the power to feed themselves and do something with their lives beyond toiling in the fields and dying for a flag or a five-year plan. Anyone who thinks otherwise, go explain to the man with a gun why you don't think I know what I'm doing." And with a wave of his hand, he swept away the cruft of the hidebound 'heroes' that had governed the country for decades, the kind of people who thought physical courage meant moral authority, like the garbage they were.

There wasn't a perfectly ending, but real life doesn't have those very often. But to me, that's what made Deng a hero - he knew that a truly happy ending was impossible, but he made all the hard choices necessary to have one that was happy enough. Is China now, after 20 years of his stewardship, a land of perfect justice, contentment, and equanimity? No, of course not. Is China now, after 20 years of his stewardship, still better-off than it was before? All signs point to yes. And could anyone else have done it? Never.

That's why my big hero is Deng Xiaoping.

[Dash]

That was a very moving account, mmy. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Speaking of heroes, yesterday (the 18th) was Mandela's birthday.

[Rebecca]

I wrote a piece about my grandfather some time ago, so I'll excerpt it here (names and a few other identifying details removed, along with some of the style and some of the less interesting parts):

My grandfather was born in Poland, the oldest son of the seven children of a horse trader. He grew up helping his father deliver horses to his customers, and from his early youth loved horses and learned to ride. (Even fifty years later, when he lived in America and could not ride anymore, he loved to drive and was quite downcast when his failing vision forced him to stop.) Though he attended cheder, the Jewish elementary and middle school, he had to leave after his bar mitzvah at thirteen in order to help his father in the business.

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, and life for the Jews in Zayde's town and the rest of the country grew more and more difficult. Rumors reached the town of the large-scale murder of Jews being taken away to “work.” Zayde, with his parents’ encouragement, left home to go to a larger town, where they thought he would be able to volunteer in a factory and have a better chance of survival.

Over the course of the Holocaust, Zayde was in several concentration camps, some worse than others. As the Russian army advanced west across Poland, the Jews in the last camp where he, his brother and sister was working were loaded onto a train. Zayde and his siblings found out from others on the train that it was going to Auschwitz, where they knew they would probably die. They jumped off the train. His sister was hurt in the jump, and could not keep up with her brothers as they tried to get away. The Germans caught her and took her to a hospital, where they injected her with poison and killed her. In trying to avoid capture, Zayde and his brother were separated. Zayde hid in fields and barns during the day and walked at night. Later, he and his brother were reunited in their town, which had been taken by the Russians as the front line shifted, though they left Poland and split up again.

One day, a man approached Zayde and asked if he would like to go to live in Israel. This man, as it turned out, represented an organization that helped European Jews settle in Israel, and he had a false visa on which Zayde could enter. He took the opportunity. Once he arrived, the visa was sent back to the organization so another Jew could use it to flee Europe. In Israel, he stayed with his cousin, in a city which had a little community of refugees from his town. Here he met the Israeli man under whose name and face he had entered the country, but more importantly, he met my grandmother, who was from the same town. We have photographs of him from this time. He looks exactly like my cousin.

The family moved to America when my mother was six years old. Unlike his brother and his friend, who owned stores, Zayde, who had worked as a construction foreman in Israel, continued to work outside, with his hands. He was employed by American firms and worked side by side with American construction workers. Though he spoke no English when he arrived, he learned it through exposure. Soon, he could not only get by, but speak eloquently.

My mother says that unlike other fathers, who would tell their daughters how pretty they were, Zayde would tell her how smart she was and call her Golda Meir. She and her sister always knew they would go to college, though their father had never received more than an eighth grade education. Both my mother and my aunt have master's degrees.

By the time I was born, he was already declining; he didn’t hear very well and was more and more frequently ill. I wish I could have known him. I knew very little about his past experience while he was alive; I had heard a vague story about the train incident, but that was all. It was only after his death that I watched tapes he made for the Survivors of the Shoah project and learned the full extent of his extraordinary achievement. I am in awe of him.

[Stella parva]

Thank you all for sharing these stories! They are amazing, inspiring, and help me to get back a little hope for humanity. I didn't cry, but more than once I had goosebumps all over.

I'll read them again tonight and share them with my husband. My own family is not composed of heroes, though I think highly of my father and his father. I miss grandpa still, he died the year I graduated high school, in 1998. They both encouraged me to be curious and to love learning for it's own sake, to be open to the world. I only learned a lot later that my achievements in school, especially the sciences, changed grandpa's views on the abilities of women. But he never ever limited me with his prejudices.
My Dad is still around and a great help. He sees that we are in need and does his best to be there for us, even though he has a lot of work of his own.

[Pensnest]

Your mother reminds me of my grandmother, tough and with the biggest heart and undauntable willpower. My grandma was born illegitimate in the East End of London in 1910, and all her life was willing to battle anyone who said she wasn't as good as anybody else. She coped with real poverty when she was young, and when our mother was killed, took in her elder son's three children even though she and my grandad lived in a tiny house with two bedrooms - and had a sixteen year old son at home. She loved us fiercely, never let us get away with anything, and had enormous pride in us all. She was my second mum, she died in seven years ago, and I miss her still.

[Gela]

Thank you so, so much for sharing this. Your mother sounds like an amazing woman, and I'm sure it was hard for you to write this... it made me tear up, and I didn't know her.

[spinetingler]

On this, the fourth anniversary of my Mother's earlier-than-expected death (at 68) I am moved to tears by your story.

Thanks for writing it.
k

[Izzy]

Thank you very much for this post, mmy, and thank you to everyone who's commented for your stories. They're very beautiful.

[storiteller]

Fascinating, inspiring story, and I've been wanting to comment since I read it. I think we need more books about women like your mom - I think both boys and girls would enjoy reading about her.

My family hero in terms of exciting heroics is probably my great-grandfather (my mom's grandfather). He came over to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia when he was 14, knowing no English and few people. He stayed with family friends for a year, and then set out on his own. He decided to bike around the world with three of his friends when he was 18. While one of them never left NJ, and two of them reached California, he got to Ohio before he became very sick and had to stop. He even served in the Calvary! And perhaps most importantly to my family, he adopted his brother's illegitimate son, my grandfather, as his own. Although he probably should have told my grandfather he was adopted before he did (on my great-grandfathers' deathbed), he treated him as his own in a time when illegitimate children were not treated well by society. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to really meet him, as I was only 3 when he died.

Another person I really wished I could have met much earlier was an influential community activist in my town, Carl Henn. He had this huge passion for sustainable food and bicycling, two of my big issues. Because of his efforts, the town established three additional community gardens and a great bicycle beltway/path. Unfortunately, he was killed last year in a lightning storm while he was attending a picnic at one of the gardens, just a month after I moved into town. Our Bicycle Advisory Committee is having a memorial ride this weekend to commemorate him. He's one of those people who I probably almost met many times, yet never actually spoke to and wish I had.