My Mom

In psychoanalytic parlance, it’s taken as a matter of fact that we are defined by everything our parents are – and everything they are not.

It’s been wonderful, in the months since my mom died, to realize I can think of SO many more things she was than she wasn’t.

Despite pictorial evidence to the contrary, she wasn't a cook, a homemaker or a cozy, cuddly, SAHM in the 50’s stereotype, she was a hard working mom during my entire childhood.

In many ways, she was a pioneer – ahead of her time.
She was one of the first Lamaze teachers in the country – our living room, with curtains drawn, was regularly transformed by flip charts of women’s anatomy and babies descending the birth canal and a chorus of women‘hee’heeing’ and practicing their breathing.

I can still hear my mom exhorting these women "to be birth warriors and fight against the men who would put them to sleep, having them miss the birth of their own children!"

She stood up for the Rector of our congregation in the Diocese of Newark when many parishioners wanted to fire him for supporting the fight for racial equality during the 60's and going to march/ride with the “Freedom Fighters’.

She called out the housing developer who thought the only way to fill his pretty new shoebox houses in the suburbs was to lie about the racial background of families buying homes in his pretty little subdivision. He foolishly tried to convince my parents that Tsien and Butsakaris were names devoid of any ‘ethnicity’ beyond WASP.

She loved her profession of nursing and earned her bachelors degree during WW2 from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York and her Masters of Nursing in Gerontology from Webster University when she was in her 50’s.

She loved being of service – whether working for the Red Cross and Visiting Nurses or volunteering at the USO, the Science Center or the National Park System.

She was also a contradiction.

She was opinionated, humorless and resistant to any change yet loved to take on new things through travel and achieved her goal of seeing every state in the US and every continent in the world.

She loved her husband and children, yet the intricate ‘how’ of relationships was the hardest of all for her to grasp.

 She was different and, while not a cookie cutter wife or mother, she was always her own unique character.

She loved the Jersey shore and the constancy and beauty of the Atlantic Ocean.

Her 'transplant' to the Midwest 40 years ago was never successful.
While she 'lived' there, her roots never went deep.
She longed to 'come home'.

It was right that she 'join' her parents and grandparents back in NJ - in a manner totally fitting for her - and for us.

There's a peace in honoring her last request.

For all that Alzheimers took away during her last decade and all she didn't know how to give in the decades prior to that, I've been surprised by how much I miss her.

It helps to know she's right where she wanted to be and that we made it happen.