Legacy of the She-Ox

"Da ist ein dumme ochen." [Grandma, whom I called Nanny]

-She had been a tiny, but quite stout old German American woman with all the trimmings of barking out orders and baking really good pastries. I was clumsy. She would refer to me this way ever time I bumped into our end table in the living room. Mom would glare, but when I asked what this meant, Mom told me not to worry, but to try not to act like such a "bull in a china shop" for her Mom to see.

-I started the calling her "Nanny" thing. I had read somewhere about as soon as I could read that little girls in England called their babysitters, whom they were not related to biologically, that word. Doing so made little me giggle, as if I already had a private joke over her head. Mom said that she made a much better grandmother than she had made a mother. This was difficult to fathom even naively.

"It's WHEN you go to college, Young Lady."[Mom]

-To my Mom and Dad this was a rule, not a given, no questions asked, no if ands or buts- my daughter will get educated (in order to love out the opportunities they each never had in life, period.) Mom's mantra was, "You are smart AND pretty. There better be a good report card.") My root to morphing into being "the smart one" began. I got help with homework. My Mom "didn't work" at an official job. I went to school with a bunch of rich jerks. I resented this. My Mom was so bossy. The house was her domain. I had to come straight home from school every day. I'd cry. I couldn't make friends and I was too clumsy for sports. I'd study with my Mom. I might be allowed to watch part of Oprah. When I wanted to go our for cheer leading once, she heavily tried to dissuade me. She implied they would laugh at me. She was right. That is exactly what happened. Mom was the only one there to pick up those pieces. Dad was at work and besides, this was a girl thing. Mom met this challenge by taking on more cleaning jobs and saving to buy me a pair of Guess jeans, the camouflage I needed for school.

**Too bad I never put these two quotes together, by Nanny and Mom, during my college days. If only I had known that "when I was away at school, that there would also be some stupid oxen." Instead, I feverishly studied Women's Studies as I continued to align myself in such a way as to have few friends. I mastered the value of women's lives, how to renounce the world run by men and how to read my own "positionality," and to renounce my unquestioned and assumed background of "privilege." It was not even like I had had to swallow my pride in my matriarchal family of origin, I had not even actualized it yet at this time. As I avowed to be a "career woman," I fought for equal pay for women's work and I did not call home to speak with Mom for over six months.**

"I was sixteen when I got married and that's when my life ended." [Nanny said on her deathbed as I attempted too late to write her life story.]

-She had been a poor daughter with five siblings, of a migrant farmer family. She had one dress to share among her sisters which contributed to why she missed so much school she made it just to fourth grade. She was smart as a whip too. She had been a avid gardener and baker. I purposefully had never learned those things.

"Tell me you are NOT letting her eat her spaghetti like that? That's what's wrong with your kid."[Nanny to Mom.]

-Little had I known how many other terrible things she had said to Mom. There had been a whole other lifetime of criticisms and badgering. Nanny hurt and verbally abused my Mom. Nanny could lash with her tongue. Mom had become the scapegoat- for getting out, for moving on, marrying, and for having just one girl. Mom had overcome quite a legacy of female dominance, yelling, and gass-lighting. I remember one of my first boyfriends asking me why I always spoke so loud and boldly just to be heard. I had hung my head, saddened. Twenty years later and I would reply: "Must be in my blood and I am not sorry."

"I played you Beethoven. I put my headphones on you in my womb." [Mom]

-My parents took me to my first concert with them when I was eleven, Chicago, their love is "the Inspiration.

"IF MOMMA AIN'T HAPPY, AIN'T NOBODY HAPPY."[My take on my Mom, like a bumper sticker.]

-My Mom showed-taught me stubbornness that I have taken to the point of assy, just to add my own flare. This Mom Boss mode for me has also been my greatest source-reserve of strength. My Mom is processor of the most huge heart I have ever had the honor of being exposed to, and yes, it was often wielded it upon me in overbearing ways, however; she's also the one who told me out loud, 'don't wear that thing on your sleeve, they will laugh at you." My Mom is also insanely smart. I am her only girl. I am The Princess. Make no mistake, the reason is because Mom is The Queen Bee.

-Her mother was a queen b. Nanny was actually mean in her soul. She'd never, ever resist a chance to show it. She'd rip people's heads off in public, she'd curse like a proverbial trucker in her car or in our house, and usually at my Mom about me. Nanny's A-Number-One complaint: I was (clearly) going to grow u to be a spoiled brat. My Mom, by allowing me choices as a child or to express myself at all, was clear evidence, fodder to Nanny. At college, I said I was a spoiled brat.

"I don't get you and this black clothes all the time thing. You are such a pretty girl. All I ever wanted to do at your age was to fit it at school." [Mom]

-Odd, because I always felt like Mom sat on me and tried to squelch the parts of me that were not good enough, aka, "weird" right out with her butt. It took me many years to figure out that her reasoning was sound.

"Do it your way, I love you. Forever, Mom." [She left a handwritten note for me at high school after an argument, exactly one poignant time.]

-I still have the note. I know exactly where the now-crumpled slip of paper is at all times. I draw no conclusions. I have chosen not to become a mother. As my Mom is aging, I will one day have to face not having her here constantly telling me what to do, whom to be. Yet, her voice is in my head. The strengths that she has given me are also unconquerable, untouchable. We are lovers and fighters. When I pierced my nose she called it, "mutilation." She doesn't know I have a tattoo of her initials.

"Because I am your mother, not one of your little friends..." [Mom]

-But now, we do use "BFF," when we text.