Word to Your Mother

My mom taught me to be a feminist years before I knew the word existed and even more years before I cared what it meant. Years before I highlighted Friedan and Faludi, years before I rejected chauvinistic boys and years before I graduated from women’s college.

She is equally amazing at being a lawyer and being a mother, but I’m not sure she knows it.

My mother is not just any lawyer. She works for a legal non-profit that gives free legal help to people who can’t afford it. She specializes in helping women who are the victims of domestic violence and has become an authority on the topic. It took me years to realize how cool this is and that not all moms did that. While she was busy raising my brother Josh and me (not simple children), she was also helping hundreds of women who were just trying to raise their kids, too.

She’s not just any mother either. She forced me to go hiking and tide-pooling in the rain until I admitted the Oregon outdoors were pretty awesome. She’s good at getting pedicures and gets a bingo in almost every Scrabble game. She taught me how to form the possessive and made us homemade pizza on Sunday nights. She praised me when I succeeded and gave me a dose of tough-love when I messed up. When I got my wisdom teeth out at age 24, she held the gauze in my bloody mouth and made sure I took my Vicoden. Apparently, mothering keeps on going.

In the Limited T00—where Tweens shopped in the nineties—my mom refused to buy me clothes that were too tight or too short on my half-formed body. There was yelling and there were tears, yet in the Banana Republic dressing room last weekend, I heard her voice saying, “I think you’d really better go a size up” and, of course, I listened. Because she is my mother, and I trust her—even her imagined, semi-judgmental voice in my head.

My mom will always be the first phone call.

She’s barely five feet tall, but she packs a punch. She is the perfect combination of adorable and fierce. So, today, even though I somehow ended up many miles away from my mother and I didn’t even send a card, I’m a pretty lucky daughter.

Happy Mothers' Day!