Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom's birthday was yesterday but tonight we'll get together for cake and some cards to celebrate her 93rd birthday! 93 years! My mom has been the strongest woman role model I've had in my life and I can honestly say that I have learned all of life's best lessons.

My mom was a teacher. She taught 2nd grade at a parochial school for almost 30 years and other than a maternity break here and there she never took a day off or called in sick.

My mom was a volunteer. Up until a year ago my mom volunteered her time at our local soup kitchen, making sandwiches and offering smiles to the local homeless people here.

My mom is very spiritual and WHOLLY Catholic. To this day, she goes to church every day. Until last year she also kept a vigil on Saturday's at a chapel in a local nursing home. She volunteered her time to help the church count the weekly donations and make deposits. She was on the church council and was a reader at the Masses on Sunday. My mom's religion is very important to her.

My mom wore the pants in our family and still does. My dad was a pacifist who hated when there was a ruckus or argument. His solution was to try not to make waves. My mom on the other hand could stop any foolishness with just "the look" which let us know we were perilously close to some kind of doom. We never let it get beyond "the look" so I have no idea what doom that may have been! To this day, all of us grown, know that there are things we do that will bring that "look" and, even as adults, we try to avoid it at all costs.

I haven't always done what I know my mom would have me do. For example, I am not religious at all. I don't happen to believe in a god though I've had 12 years of Catholic school. I know that disappoints her and, because of what she believes, makes her afraid for my afterlife. I know that some choices I've made in life haven't always been what she would have chosen for me. For example, she really wanted me to be a teacher but I chose another course of study at college and an entirely different career path.

But I also know that what my mom wants for me, and for all my siblings, is that we are happy and healthy and loved. And I know that deep down she is proud of me.

My best image of my mother is this -
Back when she was a mere 75 years old, I went over to her house to see her. I walked in and heard some god-awful pounding and the "blam blam" of something being knocked with a large object. I went upstairs and found her in her room knocking out a wall with a sledge hammer. When my parents bought her house, there was only a master bedroom and one small bedroom. They turned the master into two smaller bedroom to accommodate us kids. At 75, with her kids moved out and her husband gone, my mom decided she wanted her master bedroom back and rather than hire someone to do it for her she borrowed a sledge hammer and went at it herself. Then, she finished off the dry wall and painted it too. Yup, that's my mom. A pillar of strength and boat load of tenacity.

At 93, she still lives in her own home on her own. Still drive a car too albeit only to a nearby grocery store and to church once a day. Her mind is sharp as a tack and she lives to play cards with her children twice each week.

She's a helluva a strong woman and I hope that I have some of that when I grow up!

Working with women...

I work in an agency largely populated by women. I supervise 17 people in my unit and only three of them are men. There are three supervisors here - all women. It's the nature of the job I know. Social work notoriously pays low so men, whose traditional role is still that of family bread winner, just can't make enough here to support a family. But that's not really the point of this blog entry. My point is this...

I find women to be completely baffling sometimes and, remember, I'm one of them! We go a long way to seek power and to be seen as competent and equal. We will fiercely defend one another in this as long as we're defending each other against a male counterpart. But it is also true that if we're in a position to compete against one another we can become the snarkiest, backstabbers on the planet. In one conversation we can go from praising someones accomplishments to making denigrating comments about her make up. We can hold the world together with our ability to multi-task, birth and raise kids, balance budgets and present a good front. We can also take it down with just a glance. Trust me, my mom has that look - the one that could always make me cry without her saying a single word! More often than not though we turn that look towards one another which is something I never really understood. Why is it that we seek to raise each other up only to cut each other down each chance we get? Are we afraid that shining a positive light on anyone else makes the light dim a little on us? Or is this some kind of conditioned response we've learned?

I've known a lot of strong women. I was raised by one in a family teeming with them. I grew up with many and befriended a few. Personally, I've never felt threatened by them nor have I ever felt the need to turn on them. I have a hard time understanding those who do.

Stong like bull!

I came home today to an absolutely sweltering apartment and two cats who probably would have murdered me if only the humidity hadn't sucked the will to live right out of them! We've had three days of some horribly humid summer weather. Great for swimming! Not so great for living in an apartment with no central AC. I was putting off putting in the window unit because 1. this is Wisconsin and the likelihood of the weather staying like this is slim to none and 2. I have to pay for electric here and, frankly, it's expensive to run and 3. the damn thing weighs a ton and I have a problem lifting it! But I reached my saturation point...literally...and, finally, had to do it. I suppose I could have called someone to come over and do it for me but that would have meant I would have had to sit here and be sociable and the heat sucked that out of me earlier today. When I am hot, I am cranky and when I am cranky, I don't want to make nice.

So I did what any red blooded Polish girl would do. I hauled ass and put the behemoth in the window myself. I swore a blue streak, broke down once, yelled a few F bombs now and then but I did it. It's in, it's cooling down, the cats are starting to like me again and I am almost feeling human! Yay for me!