Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ron Pulcer of Rutland Town, who is a software developer, skier, guitar player and occasional blogger at SkiTheMiddleVT.wordpress.com.
Happy Mother’s Day to mothers and grandmothers everywhere! Mothers are the original “essential workers.” Motherhood is the most important of all unpaid jobs. In June we’ll recognize fathers and grandfathers, also essential.
I will celebrate Mother’s Day quietly. My mother, a cancer survivor several times, passed away 20 years ago. Unlike today where people talk more openly about cancer, my mother kept her health struggles mostly to herself. She confided with my father, her siblings and parents, but said little to her friends and neighbors. Although at times I suspected my mother had health issues, it was not something she brought up or discussed with her children.
When I was an infant, my mother became good friends with the woman next door, whose daughter was very close to my age. My mother’s friend died of cancer when her daughter was very young. In hindsight I think this affected my mother greatly when she was later diagnosed with cancer.
My mother was an immigrant at age 10. Her family moved to Detroit from Tuscany in 1946, having lived through World War II and the Mussolini regime. During this Covid-19 pandemic and during the Great Recession, we’ve often heard the word “resilience.” In times like these we can learn from immigrants’ stories of survival and resilience.
My mother seemed stricter than the other mothers in our neighborhood. We couldn’t go out and play on Saturday morning without first doing our chores, while we heard our friends playing outside. In hindsight, I see more clearly her sense of urgency in teaching us. She wanted us to be able to carry on without her, if need be.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom. She graduated from high school, but was not able to attend college. My mother was skilled at sewing. She was good with numbers and helped me with my math homework. She organized bus trips for the ladies at church. She could have been a good project manager or travel agent, or had a sideline making and selling clothes. But her first love and priority was being a mother.
I’d like to share some stories and lessons from my mother and her family.
In 1992, the Ms. Foundation started “Take Your Daughters To Work Day.” My mother participated in an earlier form of mother-daughter bonding at work in the early 1950s. My grandmother got a job cleaning a movie theater. Each morning before school my mother and her sisters joined my grandmother in picking up popcorn containers and cleaning the floor between the seats.
One thing I love about Vermont is the growing local food economy. My grandfather had a green thumb and my mother and grandmother were great cooks. My grandfather grew a garden during wartime in Tuscany. When he retired he turned his backyard into a “Garden of Eden.” He grew vegetables, berries, fruit trees and flowers. His bocce ball court was shaded by grapes, for making wine. Growing up I benefited from what we refer to today as “local food.” Local and healthy food will be critical for a more resilient and localized future.
My mother encouraged my brother and I to get a newspaper route. Then she took us to the bank to set up a savings account. She talked about how immigrants had a higher “savings rate” than the average American. She talked a lot about “saving for a rainy day”; I’m sure with the fear of cancer looming.
When I was in high school my mother looked me straight in the eye and said, “You are going to college, but you will have to figure out how to pay for it.” So I started with community college. I’m glad I did.
I grew up in Macomb County, Michigan, dubbed the home of the Reagan Democrats in 1980, and still an electoral swing county. While my mother’s siblings switched parties, my mother was an enigma as far as party affiliation. As an independent thinker, she taught us to consider both sides of an issue, to vote, and pay attention to the news and what politicians say and do.
As her family lived under an authoritarian regime in Italy, she was a bit skeptical even of politicians in America. “Live your life without regard to which political party or person is in office.” Like it or not, sometimes you have to vote for the “lesser of two evils.”
To summarize my mother’s lessons on “resilience”:
- Eat healthy food.
- Save for a rainy day.
- Learn basic financial literacy.
- Pay attention.
During the 2020 presidential primary, Andrew Yang focused on universal basic income. Yang’s wife stays at home to care for their children, one of whom has autism. As mothers are the original “essential workers,” perhaps we could start there. It might help us tackle the related challenges of school readiness, child care, education and downstream societal issues. Mothers should be paid a basic income for their important and essential work (also guardians and adoptive parents).
