I am sixth-born, the youngest of five surviving children, and I owe my life to my mother; she brought me into this world, and then made sure that I had what it took to become a conscientious and moral human being. She provided me and my siblings with delicious and nutritious food, shelter, clothing, a sense of wonder about the world and universe, an appreciation of all forms of artistic endeavor. She taught us the value of humor in the face of adversity. Above all, she gave us love, and in demonstrating love, taught us how to love others.
My mother is a survivor, and given what is known today about the lasting effects of childhood trauma I have come to understand that it is nothing short of a miracle that she has been as incredible a parent as she has been. She suffered countless injustices at the hands of many adults as a child, first living as a ward of Los Angeles after her mother abandoned her in the hospital at birth, and then for the next 14 years in the Los Angeles foster-care system during the Great Depression. She had very little that she could call her own, save for a little rag doll she had made whose name was Miranda, and even Miranda was not a permanent fixture; her foster-mother took Miranda away from my mother because she felt that my mother had “an unhealthy” attachment to her.
When she was an adolescent, and her foster parents felt that she was too difficult to handle, they shipped her off to Denver to live with her “real” family—my mother’s people, sinners, like her. The train she rode on to Denver was mostly full of Japanese people being shipped to internment camps in Colorado, a fact that left a strong mark in my mother’s consciousness. For a few surreal years during the war, she lived with her biological mother, where she was thrown into the world of Denver society, after her austere childhood in LA. Her older half-sisters and their friends taught her how to smoke, drink, dress, and how to be part of the popular crowd at East High School. For the first time in her life she had friends, and people thought she was pretty.
After high school, she started as a freshman at the University of Denver. She was rushed by Pi Phi, a point of pride and jealousy from her half sisters. She met my father in one of her first college classes right after the war. They married somewhat quickly for the reasons that people did back in those days. She dropped out of college, and had babies. And then, she had more babies, and after that a couple more.
Although my parent’s marriage was relatively long-lasting, it was never good. My father, who had been through WWII as a strafing pilot in the Pacific Theater, in all likelihood, suffered from PTSD. He had a volatile temper, which he mostly exercised on my mother when he had too much to drink. In spite of this my mother stood by his side through undergraduate school, medical school, internship, and residencies. She might not have had she not been trapped by children, and a lack of her own means for making a living.
Because his education was paid for by the government through the GI Bill, he went back into the navy to repay his debt. He was stationed on a ship in the Mediterranean when I was born, returning from duty when I was 6 months old. My mother managed to muster the resources to leave him by the time I was 9 months old after a violent incident that made her fear for hers and her chidren’s safety, and so it was that I came to be raised by a single mother, at a time when that was not so common. I joke that I was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I often thank my mother for sticking it out in her sorrowful marriage for as long as she did; if she hadn’t, I would not have been born.
When I was two, my mother, at the age of 35, began as a freshman in college again. She woke each morning at 4 or 5 to do her homework, and was careful to schedule her classes so that she could be home with us for meals. She made sure we had a hot breakfast, whether we ate it or not. We lived in married student housing at first, and then in a series of other circumstances, some better than others, over the next several years. She finished her Ph.D. when I was 9, truly a remarkable feat given all of the barriers that she faced as a single mother in sixties.
She went on to become an English and Women’s Studies professor. All of us children benefitted from our mother’s education; she showed us what was possible through her example. There was never a time in my life when I didn’t know that I would go to college myself one day and become something, someone. That all five of us children went to good colleges of our own choosing, and that we each felt empowered to follow the paths that we chose is testament to our mother.
My mother is 90, soon to be 91. She has hated getting old, and more than anything, being dependent on others for her physical and emotional well-being. Like most parents, she has found it especially difficult being dependent upon her children. Earlier this year, she worried aloud that she had not done enough for us. She fretted about all of the parenting mistakes she imagines having made. I am sure she made a few mistakes, because what parent does not make mistakes? What she got right far outweighs her wrongs, and her children are proof of it.
Thank you, Mama, for giving me life, for helping me live it through some very difficult times, and for being with me every day. You are a wonderful and courageous human being. I am proud to be your daughter.
