Today is my 46th birthday. I was working on a list of birthday wishes but decided to write about my mom, instead. The picture above was her high school graduation pic, and probably one of my favorites.

There are many reasons for my admiration for my mom, but one of the biggest is grounded in what might just be a bit of family mythology. She never talked a whole lot about her early life--in fact I was a teenager before I even found out that my father was, in fact, her second husband. My mom was literally the first person I ever met who had been married more than once. When she told me I was completely shocked and forced to look at her with new eyes--the murky area of her private life and possible sexuality was not one that I was eager to contemplate. About this time she also told me about a man who tried to rape her when she was young. According to her she thwarted the rape by biting off the tip of his nose. Oh boy.

But, my mom made me what I am today. She was a feminist before the word existed. She raised me to unthinkingly accept that I was just as good as any man. It didn't come from a intellectual place for her, but from a part of her being, that solidified when she did the things she had to do to raise her kids, without apology.

She had five kids with a man who beat her, and the kids, without mercy. She left him in a dramatic, awe-inspiring way, and proceeded to get on with her life, without looking back. The family mythology is that she was pregnant with me (true), and that one day when my father went into town she called a cab, took my four siblings, and hid in the cornfield til the cab showed up (maybe mythology).

She got out. She never remarried--twice was obviously enough for her. And she made enormous sacrifices to keep us fed and clothed and in a house, all together. She went on welfare, without apology. She fed us with a combination of welfare, food stamps, and community charity (much of which was given grumblingly). She kept her head up, at all times, at least in front of us.

For those of you who are perhaps younger, a divorced woman in the early 60s, in a small Midwestern town, was decidedly uncommon. Assumptions were made about her, and about us. When I was in grade school I was the only person I knew whose parents were divorced. Every year, on the first day of school, the teacher would ask us what our fathers did for a living; I was the only one who had no father.

And no father was no exaggeration. No father was also no child support, no visitation, nothing but my mom left to struggle alone.

She could "squeeze a penny til it squeaked." She could, and would, take a shotgun, go out into the countryside, and shoot a squirrel or a rabbit to feed us. She could take a chicken by the neck and with a deft twist kill it swiftly and painlessly, then miraculously serve that chicken for dinner. To me, as a small child, she was a towering figure of common sense, strength, and capability. Even when I became a teenager and realized that my strong, determined mom was simply a short, round woman who gave up much of her life for us, she remained untouchably emblematic.

She stayed at home, on welfare, until I was six years old and in school full-time. Then she went out and, in typical fashion, got a job as the first female post office employee in the entire state of Iowa. She went on, in later years, to become the first female Iowa Postal Workers Union president. She read obsessively, restlessly, and with enormous enthusiasm. She passed that love of books onto all of us, without reservation. I remember dinner times when all of us, mom and five kids, would have books propped up in front of us at the kitchen table, reading while we ate. My friends thought that was odd, but I thought it was odder still to eat without a book. I still have to have a book at mealtimes.

When women's lib came around she was an enthusiastic believer, as if finally somebody was putting into words what she had been living. She subscribed to Ms from the very first issue, at a time when just the word "Ms" was an act of radicalism. I think that feminism, for her, was simply logical; not an ideological point-of-view, but the way she lived her life.

When she finally finished the full-time job of raising us, her own life began. She joined MENSA and began to travel. She dated, tentatively. She visited my brother and sister in college and loved the intellectual give-and-take that was a part of college life.

And then, in the midst of all this mid-life growth, she got sick. She died, too young, only four years older than I am now. And left five children to celebrate her accomplishments and struggle with her loss.

These are some of the many things my mother gave me: strength, books, music, an unflinching honesty, a painful sense of my possibilities and shortcomings. She left me too young, before I knew exactly what her life had meant. She made me what I am today.

And now I, a daughter and a mother myself, have a clearer vision of what exactly being a woman in this world means. And if she was here I guess we'd have a smoke and a beer, and laugh and cry about it together.

*crossposted at Super Babymama