Ode to Maybelle for the Mother's Day Blog Carnival: "Mother Knows Best"
Shannon Lowe of Rocks In My Dryer has thrown down a mighty challenge: A Mother's Day blog carnival called "Mother Knows Best." I doubt I can match Shannon's lovely, spare prose about the lessons she most prizes from her mother; instead I pass the hat to my sister's post, Angels R Us. But it's my mother's inner political fighter that I'd like to talk about, as I did with Nordette Adams earlier this month in her series I Remember Mama Voting.
I come from a long line of women for whom the ballot box is a sacred duty. A self-described yellow-dog Democrat, my mother was born on Nov. 4, a date that is regularly Election Day in the United States. Perfect karma.
Lord, how she loves politics -- and how her politics have deepened my love for her. Mom was born to it -- one of my favorite memories is of her fortieth birthday, an Election Day, when my parents' friends stretched her name on a husting between two maple trees.
"Did your mother win?" the neighbors asked later. I laughed. She sure would have, had her name ever appeared on a ballot. But rather than be a politician, my mother was all voter, all the time. Some of my earliest political memories are of my mother and father talking about experiencing race riots in the late 1960s in Baltimore, Nixon's resignation and the sacred duty they both consider voting to be.
"Your vote is private," Mom told me, in the wake of Nixon's resignation as gangs of kids roamed the neighborhood, asking whose parents voted for whom. "Don't ever forget to do it, but you don't have to tell anyone what you decided," she assured me.
My favorite political memory is the event that sent her over the edge....the Anita Hill | Clarence Thomas hearings. Every day during the Hill|Thomas hearings, I'd pick up the phone from the California newsroom where I was working and hear an iron slapping cotton to the rhythm of a Georgia accent. Mom.
My mother was a teacher first, and then later a principal, but she always did my father's shirts. I think she had two motivations: One was love. The other, when she was furious, was anger.
Dad looked good during the hearings, I'll tell you that.
"Strom Thurmond cannot die soon ENOUGH!" she'd rage, working through the day's insults to Anita Hill and ironing his button-downs to a fare-thee-well.
"I cannot believe what they are putting her through, these men. Listen to them! All of them...." I cannot further re-print her parody of Joe Biden or Strom Thurmond without (a) further permission or (b) nearly peeing my pants. It was that good.
And to think that she was shipped north to private school during de-segregation. You'd never know from her politics. My mother's deep concern for other women, her love for other people, has always tinged her approach to public policy. She probably wouldn't always call it politics -- she'd just say she was doing what's right.
That's why, all these years, the little lady -- now a grandma many times over -- who can put herself in the shoes of other people has been such a terrific example for me. And why Election Day will always feel like a celebration.
Okay, blog carnivalists -- tag, you're it! And if you are interested in more stories across the generations, don't miss I Remember Mama Voting at ACORN.
Photo thanks: Caribbeanfreephoto
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