Not about the Photo, but the Person

Today is Mom's birthday. She was born in 1926 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. She would be 83 today.

I think every family has some heroes. Joseph Campbell, master of mythology, was once asked, "How come the heroes in all the ancient tales are men?" His splendid reply was that most women are not out fighting dragons because their heroic path lies in child-bearing and child-raising. My friend Dr. Maribeth Ekey insightfully quipped that as women possibly "we love our dragons rather than fighting them." As she spoke that thought, I considered my mom and the dragons she had tamed and I knew what I had known for years, my mom is a hero.

After WWII, Mom married a paratrooper from California and moved to downtown Los Angeles. It must have felt like moving to Mars. When I entered my mother's life, she and Dad already had a daughter. As her second daughter, I doubled her job. Soon afterwards my parents moved to the suburbs. Mom and Dad were working-class, white, protestant, young-marrieds who were soon to be divorced. Our family of four became three. So as a young mother she sent her two daughters to a full-time babysitter so she could spend long hours at work. She kept doing all her duties as a mom, kept on loving us and never gave-up. My mom is a hero.

Mom eventually married again, had my little brother, and coped with the dysfunction of a blended-family in the late 1950s. About the time that her life started moving along smoothly, her daughters became teenagers. I can't speak for my older sister (well, I could but I won't), however I know that I was awful to live with. The door to my room could have been labeled: "She-Dragon Resides Here -- Enter with Caution."

Mom didn't have to go looking for dragons; they resided in her home. Mom loved me when I was terribly unlovable--when I was obnoxious, rebellious, and obstinate. When I was an ugly raging dragon, Mom loved me. And when I was a fifteen-year-old who was failing life with a capital F, she loved me. She didn't fight her dragons. Mom loved them. She had a strength she never recognized. I'll always be thankful that she loved me in spite of how I behaved. She is my hero.

Mom was honest enough and lived long enough to say that she did have regrets, and even though she had lived with much of life stacked against her, she still knew how to be kind. She cared about people. Maybe it was from the history of her younger life that she advised me when I was a fifteen-year-old bride after just marrying Mr. Fun, to put my eye on the future and that it would be so much easier to do life right, than to do it wrong.

I'm thankful that she lived long enough that my children knew and loved her. I think my mom was amazing. If she could hear me say that, she would laugh. Mom wasn't perfect. That's another reason she's my hero.

My mom didn't have a college degree; she never held a high-powered job; she was never elected to a public office; she never won a beauty contest; she didn't travel internationally; she was never publicly awarded, decorated, or honored. She did something, though, that is uniquely "Mom-like." She loved me until I was no longer a dragon but a woman. When I was thirty-three, my life was changed irrevocably as I watched cancer take Mom's life. She died in August of her 57th year.

Since that August of 1983, I've missed Mom every single day. Mom never knew it, but she is one of the most influential people in my life. She is my hero.

The heroes of antiquity killed their dragons. Moms love them. I'll be forever grateful that mine loved me. Any transformed dragons out there? Thank a hero.


Rosie, aka Carol

P.S. This photo is Mom with my older sister and me celebrating Easter in 1952. Sis was 3 1/2 and I was 1 1/2.