my Superhero

Today we celebrated my mom's 75th birthday with a surprise party. Her birthday was on September 13th so I've had a couple of weeks to think about this (about 50 years actually).

My mom fell in love with my dad when they were both very young. They got married and had kids. My mom grew up and accepted the responsibility while her husband (my dad) seemed determined to destroy himself and he wasn't too concerned about the collateral damage to his family. My mom kept plugging along, getting some help from her family, friends and government but doing the day to day worrying and drudgery on her own.

She worked as a nurse's aid, ironed other peoples clothes, babysat, negotiated with people that were owed money and stretched dollars farther than you would have thought they could be stretched. She then went to nursing school--and studied really, really hard, while continuing to do all the other things because her husband was still a mess and she was still the only support for her kids.

And while all of this had to be really hard, and tiresome, and sometimes seemingly impossible--the thing that makes it really incredible is that she did it without rancor or complaint. Without benefit of parenting books, classes, Oprah, Dr. Phil and all the other gurus of raising children, living your life, and other topics of pop psychology--my mom just did it. When things were bad with my dad, she would tell me to remember the good times and that he loved us very much. She didn't excuse him and she didn't talk bad about him. She loved him with a fierceness that enabled her to stay by his side long enough for him to overcome his self-destructive life and they got to have so many more good times.

She wasn't the type of parent who praised us for everything we did right because that would just be silliness--but we knew she was proud of us and loved us. I remember that once, for Christmas, she gave me a pair of leather ski mittens that I had really wanted. They cost about $20 which was expensive, so she told me that I had to use them for a long time. I kept and used them for about 25 years. I can't say I always listened to her that diligently but she did have a certain no-nonsense attitude that reinforced her words.

My mom is a little over five feet tall, has white hair, wire rimmed glasses and the kind face of kind person. She doesn't look like Hollywood's version of a superhero but she's been mine for a long time now. Don't mess with her--she'll either walk away because you're not worth the trouble or she'll stay and win because you are worth it, like she did with us.