My mom passed away fifteen years ago yesterday. I guess it is a testament to the passage of time that the anniversary came and went without my remembering it.
Mom was a woman of her time, so powerful and yet the structures were not in place for a woman to express that power. In about 1950, she had a job at ABC radio, and when the "powers-that-be" heard her distinctive and commanding voice, they wanted her "on-air." But when she announced this to her mother, her mother said, "No Way." In the 1960's she was active in the Junior League and our church, and she wanted to be on the church's governing body. But the rector, towering over her also said, in effect, "No Way." (At the time, all clergy, major choirs, vestry, acolytes, etc. were male.) She helped to found a women's group that met, initially, to play bridge, but then morphed quickly into a discussion of challenging issues of the day: politics, the nuclear threat (this was the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis), education and religion. Talk of recipes and diapers was not allowed. In someone's suburban living room, these women were powerful.
Mom eventually would play significant leadership roles in several churches and community groups, but by the time that she might have been able to really take this to a new level, her health was starting to fail from a lifelong smoking habit. It's so interesting, in the last few weeks of her life, Mom made two pronouncements that surprised me. The first was when she said, "I'm sure you know, Elizabeth, that I have never approved of women having careers." My jaw dropped. I understood in a split second why this discomfort had been under my own surface for so long. We had an amazing conversation, in which she admitted that she had begun to change her perspective based on the caring professionalism of the two hospice nurses that had been working with her for about two years. Quite literally, it took competent women coming into her home and shining like medical stars for her to see the possibilities.
Then, perhaps emboldened by this discussion, maybe a week later, she admitted to me that at one point she had contemplated becoming an Episcopal priest! At the time, she was the head of the vestry and lay reader at a small church, and it sounds like, once again, her commanding voice and presence had drawn some attention in church circles. Yet she "only" had an associate's degree, and the amount of expensive education that would have been necessary coupled with this underlying belief about women's roles prevented her from pursuing the idea. I asked her where she would have pictured herself, and she said she would have liked to be the canon of a major cathedral! This was the very early 1980's, and I believe it must have taken another decade for women to reach those positions. Only now do I appreciate the courage of that sliver of a dream, and its parallel with mine!
Mom and I weren't always close, oddly enough; we were so different in most superficial respects. And sometimes she drove me crazy, apologizing every time she said something important (as I have done until recently) and saying "we need to do X" when in fact she wanted me to do it! But I treasure that last eighteen months or so of her life, particularly when we would meet over the "Today" show and discuss the news. In those months before her death, I finally began to understand the depth of her intelligence and the parallels in our lives. It's an appreciation that only continues to grow, even if my memory for dates does not! Thank you, Mom!
