My Mom is 80 years old today. You’d never know it from meeting her -- she walks with a spring in her step and has more energy than many people half her age. But she is 80 years old today, and this diary is for her.
My Mom was born in the American side of a house that staddled the Canadian border in Derby Line, Vermont. The library there is half in the United States and half in Canada -- there was a ruckus there a couple of years ago during the height of Homeland Security . . . seriously, were they going to post guards along the duct-tape strip that marks the border? Who knew?
This is what I knew: when GWB was President, my Mom, a former life-long Republican, bemoaned the fact that she hadn’t been born on the Canadian side of her house. But I digress.
When she was small, her parents moved to a small town on the Connecticut River in the Northeast Kingdom. Her Dad, my kind and wonderful grandfather, had a dairy, made cheese, was the President of the local bank, and constructed a ski-slope for her and her friends on the hill behind their house, which he lit with Christmas lights all winter so they could ski at night.
She attended a four-room school that had rigorous academic standards and graduated as the top 14 percent of her class ("as" being the correct word, as she was first in a class of 7). She won a four-year scholarship to the University of Vermont, but went to college in New York instead.
On a sunny June day in 1950, just after she had finished her junior year, she was a bridesmaid at a wedding in Connecticut. A handsome Ensign, recently graduated from the United States Naval Academy, made sure that all the other cars had left so that he could drive her to the wedding. He was a groomsman. He was my Dad.
Three dates and a world of correspondence later, in February 1951, that Ensign proposed to her over a long-distance telephone call from Naples, Italy to Troy, New York. The Ensign followed it up with a gorgeous engagement ring.
My parents were married 8 days after my Mom graduated from college, on the base in Pensacola, Florida, where my Dad was completing his flight training.
They had many happy years in the Navy, and then moved to New York, where my Dad joined the family business.
When I was still in elementary school, my Mom, who was not one to sit still, decided to get her Master’s Degree. She organized our home (which by this time also included my brother), went to class, did her volunteer work, helped my Dad in his career -- I don’t think she ever slept. She worked so hard.
She did not "need" to work; my Dad was by then on Wall Street. None of her friends worked outside the home. But my Mom wanted to do what she wanted to do, and she did. She earned her Master’s degree and her PhD (ABD) from Columbia University, with straight A’s. And then she took a job teaching 2nd grade at a local Lutheran school . . . and she taught there for 30 years. She was not Lutheran, but she was an amazing teacher. In the 1990s, she was voted Lutheran School Teacher of the Year . . . .she didn’t tell me or my brother about this and we weren’t there when she got the award. I am sorry about this.
Throughout my childhood and adolescense, my Mom was a Republican. But she was an old-school Republican ~ she does not recognize the Republican Party today.
She has always been pro-choice. She remains pro-choice. She has said that the most unpatriotic thing John McCain (who was one of my Dad’s students at the USNA) ever did was to nominate Sarah Palin to be his running-mate.
My Mom believes in smarts and education. She left the Republican Party permanently in 2000 because they nominated George W. Bush for President. She was just horrified. It didn’t hurt that Al Gore was in favor of stem cell research, which she favors because her eldest granddaughter, my niece, Kate, was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when she was 16 months old. Our whole family supports ALL research that could lead to a cure.
In the early 1980s, my Mom told me that I needed to get a graduate degree. She said I needed a JD, an MBA or an MD. She told me that I could pick, and that she would pay from her teaching salary. She said that all women needed to have a way to support themselves, so that they could be independent.
I chose to get my JD; she paid for my tuition with her teaching salary. I got my degree free of debt. I cannot imagine a greater gift than that.
She has always stood beside me, and has always stood beside women. She would not recognize herself as a feminist, but she is: the best kind. And I am so amazingly grateful to be her daughter.
Thank you, Mom.