My Mom, a true Wonder Woman

My birthday falls on International Women’s Day every year, March 8. I had the best gift ever this year, the opportunity to come together with the intelligent, progressive women of the Slow Flowers movement on the live monthly meet-up with Debra Prinzing, author of the Slow Flowers book and host of the podcast, among many other related endeavors. We gathered to speak about the use of native flora in floral design, the increasing demand for local and native flowers and foliage from eco-conscious consumers, the hurdles of growing and designing with native flowers, and the many benefits to farms and Mother Nature. It is a topic near and dear to my heart! You can read more about some of the highlights in my short read “A Cat in Water” on my website.

For Women’s History Month, I am honoring some of the women in my life, and what better time to honor my mom than around my birthday! My mother, Mary, grew up in Denora, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. Like many immigrant families, her father and grandfather worked in the infamous Pennsylvania steel mills. Her mother and father were both the first-generation born immigrants from the Slovakia and Polish regions of Eastern Europe. Her mother’s mother (my great-grandmother) came to the U.S. on a boat at the age of 16 years old, alone, not speaking English, with the promise to work as a maid. The Pittsburgh area had large concentrations of immigrants from the Slovakia region, and there was a rich culture from their homeland. 

My mother grew up in a tight-knit family of strong women, including her mother’s sisters Anna and Mary, hearing them speak Slovak to their mother. She always said Aunt Mary was like Phyllis Diller, such a comedian, always making them laugh and laugh. The men were less prominent in the stories, absent much of the time, working, or drinking…., and often ending in shorter life spans than the women. The women held each other up, supported each other, and raised their families in this “village”. The older I get, the more I sort of long for that family model, three generations, all helping each other, often living in the same house, or nearby. We have isolated ourselves so much in our modern culture.

My mother’s parents were divorced when she was a child, a consequence of her father’s drinking and subsequent abusive behaviors. This was an era when divorce was much less common, and her mother struggled to support her and her sister without financial help from her father. My mother learned her strong work ethic, faith, and unconditional love from her mother. Grandma Betty was a wonderful cook and would sell ethnic breads and pastries for extra money, as well as doing laundry and mending on the side. She laid tile in bathrooms for prefab homes at one point and then later became an LPN, a licensed practical nurse. They lived in a tiny brick home in the city in a part of town that included other types of minorities and immigrants, which shaped her worldview as well, passing on to us a love for all God’s children, no matter race, gender, language, beliefs, etc. 

My mom didn’t have many worldly comforts growing up but was rich in her family’s blessings. When she graduated high school, she moved to Washington, D.C., to become a secretary as a civilian in the Naval Department. This was the 1960s, and secretary was one of the main career choices afforded to women. She met my father, a soldier in the army stationed in D.C. after a stent in Korea. 

They remained in D.C. for ten years enjoying life without children! What an interesting time to be in D.C. during the 1960’s! My father left the army and worked in construction, often on and within capital buildings, and my mom continued as a secretary for the naval department. They witnessed the civil rights movement and remember the day Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. My dad was in the Old Guard and met Jackie Kennedy and little Caroline on her pony one day. Mom and Dad witnessed the turmoil around the Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King assassination, the Black Panthers, the women’s rights movement, etc., from our country’s capital. Speaking of women’s rights, Mom tells the story of being hit on and chased around a conference table by one of the officers she worked for at the naval department. Sexual harassment in the workplace was just a part of the job for women everywhere. 

After 10 years of marriage, my parents decided it was time to start a family. While my mother was pregnant with me, unfortunately, her mother developed ovarian cancer. Medical research historically was heavily biased towards diseases that affected men, and even how the treatments and pharmaceuticals of common diseases affected men, white men specifically. Many advances have been made in women’s medicine and how gender and ethnicity can affect the presentation and treatment of disease. Unfortunately, there is still not a great screening tool for ovarian cancer, but we do have pills to prolong men’s erections. My grandmother passed away at age 54, leaving a large hole in my mother’s heart. As I write this at age 51, I am preparing to have my ovaries removed preventively, as my mother did years ago. Maybe when my niece is 50, there will be a better way.

My parents did not want to raise a family in Maryland and Washington D.C., so they moved back to Minnesota to the farm with my father’s parents after I was born. What a dramatic change of scenery for my mom! She never specifically said as much, but I suspect the locals were maybe not super welcoming to an outsider from the East Coast. However, my loving, hard-working mom set to the task of parenting and helping out on the farm, preparing meals for the hired hands, helping in the garden, canning, etc. After a couple of years, she went back to work as a medical secretary at the Mayo Clinic. 

The 1980s brought recession and layoffs for my father. For a while, he traveled long distances around the state and country to find work and eventually took a job doing construction work at a U.S. base in Antarctica. My mother was left alone with two young children in Minnesota, living on the farm and working in the city. She was a Wonder Woman! 

A positive role model in every way, she went to night classes at the Community College, even though my father wasn’t supportive of her doing so. It was the second wave of the women’s movement, and I remember watching Murphy Brown on TV and seeing my mother work full-time, go to school part-time, cook dinner, and pack my father’s lunch. Even as we came out of recession, and my sister and I were teenagers, she worked second jobs with us at Mister Donut and Baker’s Square, working hard to pay off their house and build a small nest egg for their retirement. 

She retired from her career at Mayo Clinic after 32 years, where, in addition to being a medical secretary, she was also the education coordinator for the Mayo School of Medicine in Microbiology and later transfusion medicine. She often went in early and stayed late, completely buying into the Mayo Clinic’s work ethic and culture. She made many suggestions on ways to improve various processes within her department and the clinic at large. 

I have many memories of going to her office after seeing the orthodontist, for instance, and waiting in the break room for her to finish her shift. She got some of the doctors and techs to show me around the microbiology labs and all the weird and gross things preserved in jars around the lab. She constantly talked about the great work being done by the doctors in her department. She got one of them to help me with a science project once and one of the female graduate students to speak to me about college and medical school and the difficulties balancing education and family. My mother always emphasized the role of education in building a better life. She wanted me to have options she didn’t have. Some of you reading this may not know, I am an endodontist and founded my own practice years ago. Now I have two wonderful partners, which has allowed me to cut back to three days a week in practice and have more time to play in my flower fields and establish a new business, Iron Butterfly Flower Farm!

Unfortunately, my mother’s health has declined after retirement, and she is not able to travel and get out as much as she would like. Thankfully, my father is now repaying her for all the years she cared for him and us, by caring for her. We are fortunate to have them practically next door to us now, and I try to shower her with flowers every week in the growing season, and dried flowers in the winter. Mom, thank you for always being a source of unconditional love to me and to your grandson, Klaus. We love you!