Rambling post-Father's Day Musings

All the Father's Day diaries with all their wonderful reminiscences of great dads got me to thinking about my own father, whom I don't remember at all.  I wish I had the inspirational experiences and bonds with my father that others have reported here today.  I might be a very different person today if I had.

Sunday is Fathers’ Day. I know, I know, it might be a cooked-up holiday and all (or maybe not), but I still buy into it, a little. So yes, I still have the construction-paper necktie that my older daughter made when she was 5 (the one with her photo in the middle of it and the string from which you hang it on your neck), and the little origami "box" with the goodies inside made by my younger daughter a few years later (now minus the goodies, of course), and all the cards, homemade and store-bought before and since.

And it’s not just my relationship with my own children that chokes me up on Fathers’ Day – I also get a lump in my throat when I think about my late father.

My mom died today. She was 83 and frail. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer around Thanksgiving last year and underwent surgery in December to remove the tumor. She never really recovered and spent the last six months in and out of hospitals and nursing homes. I am not really looking for sympathy--I am just sitting here 8 hours after hearing the news feeling empty and indulging myself by putting this out in what has become a community of sorts for me.

On Sunday across the nation we will honor our mothers. Perhaps we should also take the time to think about what a mother wants in a candidate.

[yes, I know I am a day early, but I won't be online much tomorrow because I will be spending the day with my mom and grandmother]

A big happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

With Mother's Day coming up, I've been thinking a lot about my mom, and how lucky I have been to have such a wonderful relationship her. I've known so many people who have had really bad relationships with their parents, so I feel extremely blessed that my mother has always been there for me.

I've also been thinking about the wonderful moms I have met here on Daily Kos.

A story my mom told me about her childhood, about her mother, my Grandmother, that relates to racial problems. Both are gone, now, but still well loved, but what mom had to say was very powerful.

This diary started out as a comment in a wonderful diary by wu ming, and I decided to expand my thoughts a bit.  I was unsure about posting this as a diary, but I have something to say and I hear the daily orange can be a good place to share thoughts with like-minded people, so here it is.  

Also, Obama doesn’t surface until the end of the diary, but he is sort of the impetus for the diary.  That being said, this is a diary for all Kossacks and not just Obamaniacs.  For the record, I would be very happy with a President Clinton; however, the Obama stuff in my diary is true and I find it deeply moving personally, which is why I want to share it.

One further note: I have noticed at times in the past with personal diaries that readers will demand or expect more information or proof from a diarist that personal information is true or accurate.  I am willing to assure you that these things are true, but I am not willing to "prove" them by revealing a great deal more about myself.  If that makes you uncomfortable, please feel free to skip this diary or to treat it as fiction.  Thanks.

There is a you tube video below the fold of this article I write. It is about OUR troops. It is about our nation supporting them. It is about our obligation to help them with the multitude of problems they face.

Remember them. Remember they are not a number or a statistic. Remember they are not bad people. Remember they are not in Iraq because they support George Bush's policies. Remember they raised their right hand and swore an oath to God, our nation, to me and to you. Remember that oath was most of all to themselves.

"Let us put our minds together and see what we life we can make for our children."

– Sitting Bull

As the people who call in to radio talk shows say, first time, long time, but the Diary Tools seem pretty straightforward, so I'll give this a shot.

We get a lot of death notices on DKos, it seems, both for informative purposes and so people can share their pain with those they know share their values. This is how it ought to be. But I lost my Mom the middle of last week, and she was pretty old, had been very sick, and it was just her time, I believe. For all the intellectual knowledge of the impending death of a beloved parent, there's just no way to be fully prepared for an event whose impact you can't comprehend until it occurs.

I have wondered, for the last few months, if I should write this diary.  But today, I felt that my flip, short comments on dailykos were too much of a contradiction to what is happening in my heart.

I've written a few semi-autobiographical diaries here, but this one is very personal and I have hestitated to share it.  It's not because I fear ya'll won't honor it, but perhaps it's because it seems so very personal to me and I am a little surprised at how much I need others' support right now.

My mother is dying.  So more than anything...I think I want to just write about her, if I might.

continued...

They call themselves "permanently pregnant."  They've been pregnant now for thirty long years.

It's not what the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo imagined for themselves in 1977.  Back then, they were just a small group of frightened housewives, wanting nothing more than to know where their children were.  Most of them knew little about politics.  Many of them had never before even ventured out of  their tradition-bound, working class neighborhoods.  But now, here they were, trembling in front of the Government House in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina, demanding that the military dictators tell them where. their children were.

I first met the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo twenty years ago, during a four month stay in Buenos Aires, and my involvment with them then remains one of my most powerful experiences.  Back then, in 1987, they'd come a long way since those frightened first meetings ten years earlier.  In the twenty years since, they've traveled a remarkable political journey.

Please join me below the fold for a look at this remarkable group of women, and for some thoughts on motherhood and politics...

Dear Ms. Sheehan:

We have neither met nor spoken to each other before.  I wish that weren't so.  you are someone whom I'd like to meet.  I have watched you grieve, question, challenge the status quo, all in the name of your son.  I understand, somewhat, your pain.  You see, I am a mother myself, although I am not a mother who has lost a son to a war perpetrated by men who lack the courage to serve themselves.

I am a mother of two sons, both of whom are quite young.  Both of whom may yet suffer the consequences of this godforesaken war in Iraq.

The Day after Mother's Day, 2007, the USA Government and Military blocked our sons, daughters, brothers, husbands and wives on base access to:

Myspace, Youtube, MTV, Blackplanet , photobucket, live365, hi5.com, pandora.com, 1.fm, and others, claiming "SECURITY" and denying FREEDOM of SPEECH.

Our sons, daughters, brothers, husbands and wives, have ALL put their ass on the line for Big Brother and Corporate Interests as they guard Iraqi oil bases and are NOT allowed off-base for months at a time.

And Big Brother rewarded our sons, daughters, brothers, husbands and wives, the day after Mother's Day 2007, by denying them access to FREEDOM OF SPEECH!

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."- Article 19 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Recently, at my uncle’s wake in Queens, my Dad, my husband and I stood talking to a friend of the family.  He was a talker...no one could get a word in edgewise...going on and on about the old days. My dad held a bible with a picture of Jesus on the cover, given to him by the union representative.  As we stood talking – or barely listening, nodding politely, out of the blue this man turns to my husband and asks, "Are you a racist?".  Hubby, stunned, says "no".  Man says, "Well, I am.  I hate the bastards."  Dad laughs uncomfortably.  I point out – gesturing to bible - that brown skinned Jesus would not be amused.  Later, hubby and I shake our heads over the audacity of it.  And regret that we didn’t deal with it more forcefully.  

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. There are so many faces whose stories aren't being told by words alone to give them the chance of a better life. For all those who live within the confines of poverty or racism or sexism or the bigotry of not being understood, these are the faces of your stories.

Crossposted at VBDems and Raising Kaine

This has got to be the ultimate case of conservative hypocrisy I have ever seen.  The National Review is so intent on going after old enemies, so intent on continuing to push the politically dead plan of privatizing social security, that they end up sticking it to a group of mothers the "traditional family values" party is supposed to love:  Moms who choose to stay home.

The longer I’m more actively involved in politics, the more certain I am that the best preparation I ever had for participation was not the political science major I undertook in college, nor the journalism experience I had as a young professional, nor even the advisory role I filled in a (failed) Congressional primary campaign back in the 1980’s.

No, the most practical experience was provided by parenting.

From the moment a child is born, you are forced to put your own needs (primarily sleep, in the beginning) on hold. You immediately begin the task of balancing long-term and short-term goals, weighing, for example, the need to bring income in for the growing family against the commitment to spend time with your child, or your own requirement down the road a bit for rehabilitative solitude against the constant chatter of a toddler just discovering language. You learn to gauge your limits of self-sacrifice, the places where diminishing returns set in, where you’re being a plain old mean person because you’ve embraced the role of persecuted-by-sippy-cup-wielding-beings martyr. You learn to give more of yourself than you ever imagined yourself capable of giving, but if you want to bring your child to adulthood without you doing a stint or two in an asylum, you also learn to say, "No." Quite often, in fact.

More than anything, you learn to explain yourself, especially about those "No’s." Over and over, in a dozen different ways, using scores of different metaphors to get your point across, you begin to blend your child into a family culture, and later that of society, by articulating and examining your own deep beliefs about how we all hang together as a unit. You are forced to explain very, very consciously for the first time responsibilities to self and others, about the common good of the family, about why it’s important that your 10-year-old forego a slumber party in order to visit a boring grandparent. Add another child to the mix and you’ve truly set up a parallel with the single-issue political groups on a painful personal level, when you find yourself explaining to your daughter that the family’s financial commitment to providing piano lessons for her brother precludes at this time the ability to pay for an expensive summer camp she wants to attend. Oy. Such conflicts are constant and recurring, and they make the shouldering and shoving at the Democratic interest table look like a friendly game of contract bridge. You learn to barter, broker power or die.

In my own case, I went more whole hog on the parent thing than most here, I suspect. I have four children–two boys and two girls–with a 14-year age spread between the oldest and the youngest. I made the decision to stop working altogether for a decade-and-a-half to stay at home, which pushed us into living under the poverty level for a family of four ... when we were a family of six (a decision, I realize, not for everyone but one I am forever grateful now that I made). The financially possible was extremely limited, and this forced us as a family unit to find creative ways to entertain ourselves (God bless you, public libraries) and to provide for necessities. Again, an invaluable, practical political lesson when transposed to the political sphere. I also found myself relying on the older kids to help out with the younger, and while I admit there was a bit of grumbling during those years, they were surprisingly willing to take something of a leadership role in the family, testing their own capabilities and sharing their interests, enjoying being looked up to by their younger siblings–much like people-powered peer politics today. (Today, all four of them are each others’ biggest fans and admirers despite quite different lifestyles and choices. Although the piano lesson issue, I confess, will not die.)

And of course, there’s the constant reminder as a parent that you’re ideally modeling sterling character in action. Children are heat-seeking missiles for hypocrisy; try lying on the phone to get out of a dreaded social engagement while an 8-year-old is looking you in the eye. These little people, they keep you as honest as you are capable of being, not a bad reminder for the rough-and-tumble of high stakes political commentary and action.

But the biggest boon to surviving parenthood are the habits fostered, of thinking communally, taking responsibility for shared space, for communicating values, for advising practical action. Here’s a truism from a parent who is in the process of launching at long last her youngest into the world: You continue the pattern of caring for something bigger than yourself long after your day-to-day involvement with your specific children is over. I suspect this is a large gift to the progressive movement overlooked and unrecognized, and you see it played out as more and more women who’ve raised a family either enter electoral politics or take to political activism (think Nancy Pelosi and Cindy Sheehan). There is more to this than just biological imperative about making the world a better place for your own genetic progeny. The pattern of thinking, cooperating and sacrificing becomes part of your identity, as does the fulfillment and satisfaction one receives from living it out. Mothers (and some fathers, of course, but mostly mothers as our society functions now) have found that the qualities they exercised for years in the context of family dynamics—struggles for fairness, equitable distribution of such limited resources as time and money, shifting of broad attention from long-term goals to immediate crises (a child’s serious health problem), the need to get the whole "coalition" that makes up a family on the same cooperative page—these are invaluable skills in a human being. Transferring them for use in a larger public sphere feels not only natural, but at some level imperative.

In light of all this, I’m going to do a reverse on Mother’s Day, and honor my children instead of expecting cards and calls and carnations from them. For all my failings (too numerous to recount), they have made me a vastly superior human being than I would have been otherwise, pulling strengths out of me I never knew I had and giving me a ride on one of life’s greatest and most wondrous adventures. And if Markos can put pictures of his adorable infant and toddler on the site, I’m hoping I can get away with calling out my beloved kids by name—Matthew, Faith, Jackson and Micaela—and saying: You four have made my entire life so much more than it would have been without you. You have made me alive and aware, reflective and political, less selfish, more patient and a far more responsible citizen of the world than I would have been without the examples of your unique lives unfolding in front of me day by day and hour by hour.

As always, you four, thank you for being born. And damn it, don’t you ever, ever forget to vote.