Momorial Day

Five years ago, on Memorial Day

My mom passed away

Sort of fitting in a way

As she was greatly fascinated with WWII

She adored the Greatest Generation

And was immensely proud of her father’s

Bronze Medal and Purple Heart

Even so my mom was a schoolteacher

And an artist, not a soldier

Though I suspect she secretly wished

She could have fought the Nazis

Recently I found a birthday note she’d written me

She reminisced about how surprised she was

To have a baby girl

(Apparently the ultrasound had suggested a boy

The doctors suspected twins, in fact

So I was twice a surprise, arriving as Venus, solo)

She wrote, “I thought, what am I going to do with a girl?”

She and her sisters had all been

Pumping out boysboysboys

In this letter, she listed the promises she made to me,

Based on her best ideas on how to parent a female:

*I will never insist you be a girly girl

*I will let you pick out your own clothes

*I will never make you wear pink

*I will never make you wear dresses

*I will never say you should grow up and get married

*I will never grill your boyfriends like my father did to us

*I will never say you don’t need a college degree because you are a girl

That’s quite a list, Mom

Much appreciated

Certainly surprising

After all, she was raised Catholic

Traditional Midwest conservative values

The great love of her life was

Her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

(She wasn’t dogmatic but did believefiercely)

Anyway, this stuff was pretty radical for her

And for her time

Mom would never have identified as a feminist

But she never liked others telling her what to do

I suspect she was more fierce and wildon the inside

Than she was allowed to be on the outside

Hard to say, sometimes

How much of the repression

Came from her own fears

And how much came from

The surrounding society

The one that squished her tomboy-ery

The one that suggested she didn’t need an education

(And by the way, Mom DID get a degree

When I was a kid, she went back to school

And later told me that being a college graduate

Was the only dream in her life that came true)

The one that expected her to serve her father

And then her husband

I’m guessing serving her country

Was never much of an option

Perhaps this is why she felt so strongly

About those who did

Of course, for me, Memorial Day

Will now always be about remembering her

Thank you, Mom

For never making me wear a pink dress

(Which is honestly my nightmare)

For never suggesting I should trade in

My pixie cut and Doc Martens

For skirts and long hair

For never prodding me to attract the boys

Instead of hanging out with them

For letting me become

Whatever kind of girl I was

Most especially one who realizes

There are infinite ways to be brave