Mom and Higher Education

I've been dreaming a lot about Mom. And Dad too. Right now, I don't think I can draw any greater significance out of these dreams. They all seem to be rather abstract and pointless. But this is only what I can remember.

There has yet to be a day that passes that I don't think about Mom. Not a one. I don't cry all the time; usually the reaction to my thoughts is to well up, but it gets suppressed due to external circumstances. Can't exactly start crying randomly in a room full of people. That would just be weird.

But I talk about her a lot. I refuse to not speak of the "dead". Mom may not be living, but she is a living part of us. I often find myself wondering or knowing how she would react to certain things that are happening. How would Mom feel about a potential Obama presidency? Despite her cynicism towards official politics, I think she would be ecstatic about it. She predicted early in 2007 that he would win. How would she react to our foundering economy and the subsequent "bailout" of Wall Street? She'd be absolutely livid! I can just hear Mom in my head; "Those bastards!" she'd say.

I wonder what she'd think about our dog, Marley, whom she didn't know of. She wouldn't like the fact that she is a pit bull, but once she saw how sweet she was, she'd love her.

It's funny. I think too about how she'd perceive my return to college. lol. On the one hand, she'd be proud that I'm doing pretty well and supportive of the political work we're doing on campus. On the other hand, Mom was NEVER the kind of middle class parent that encouraged her children to go to college. That was never a part of her own family culture. After high school, you go make a living. But that doesn't mean that this precluded following your own artistic pursuits. She was always supportive of Reese's music and his goal to be a professional songwriter which he became quite successful at. But I think Mom always kind of had a working class prejudice towards college. She wouldn't discourage going to college, but I think because of her own blue collar sensibilities and probably the fact that she spent the last seven years of her working life at a law school, she developed a distaste for academia.

I really respect that. There is a real problem with the functions that the university serves in that it merely acts to train a future generation of rulers and its pandering intelligentsia. But working people mainly go to college to provide a better living for themselves, even if degrees are losing their real value.

Around 1990, Mom decided that she would go to college for the first time and try to find a happier existence as a registered nurse. She was inspired by an article she read about a woman in her 80s who went to college and attained two masters degrees very late in life. Mom had just divorced my Dad and was determined to no longer live in subservience to such a mundane existence as a secretary, taking care of men at work just as she did at home. That's when she decided to attend OSU Tech in Oklahoma City.

Well, an RN, as it turned out, wasn't the wisest choice of profession since Mom gets dizzy at the slightest hint of blood. lol. So she switched to sign language. She knew a deaf woman at the State Health Department in Oklahoma where she worked for around ten years, more or less. They developed a relationship and Mom really enjoyed signing. But Mom's own impatience and inconsistency pushed her to study art. Eventually, however, she was forced to face reality and return to work. Not because she didn't take school seriously or make decent grades, but because of economic pressure and because she was trying to raise me simultaneously (which is economic too). Plus, I was not the easiest child to rear.

Mom's favorite subject was the Humanities. I remember going with her to a sociology class when I was like nine or ten, a class she really enjoyed. I was really proud of her, but also respected her reasons for quitting, even if I didn't want her to.

Still to this day, no one in our family has ever graduated with even an Associates degree. While I'm in school now and while I plan to go all the way (Ph. D. perhaps), part of me is like, "Fuck yeah." I'm proud to be working class. This is not a celebration of "ignorance", but an ethos that places value in the activity of ordinary folks. What we do is important, whether we are secretaries, garbage collectors, civil servants, or cashiers. MLK said, "There is dignity in all labor." It is we who make this society function and it is we who are the only ones with the interest and the capacity to make a different one.

Mom was very much committed to this vision, even if she had her own contradictions. And I think this is something we should celebrate.