For Mom

As I stay awake in downright terror, anticipating the US election results, I keep thinking about my mother.

Although, as a species we are incredibly good at technological and scientific types of advances. Flying to Mars, building AI’s and cloning ourselves seems to be a piece of cake, changing our psychology and fact blind stereotypical beliefs seems to take 100's of years.

That is what the US elections and events like Brexit made crystal clear this year. If anybody though for a moment that we live in a time that’s less sexist than the 1890’s and less racist than the 1860’s, now our eyes are wide open.

We might have our citizenship, the right to vote, equal opportunity legislations and laws to protect our “equality”. But beneath the surface and all these formalities, the people have not changed. Not just that the ism’s are still there, they are here in 56–44% proportions.

My mother is a 50 year old dyslexic neuroscientist, with three kids and an incredible career in front of her and behind her.

Whilst school is never easy for a dyslexic, with the help of her uncle (a witty priest) in an attempt to live up to his beliefs in her, she got her doctors degree. Not even an unplanned child at 24 (me) deterred her from graduating on schedule.

I was way too young at the time to understand what my mother was going through, but seeing her through grown eyes now, remembering her face, most days, it was a struggle.

Although, Croatia does have a female president today, our stereotypes on what’s expected from a women run deep.

For my mother, abandoning her career was not an option. She found herself in her work, she loved what she did. Damn if kids will get in the way of it. But juggling raising three kids, while both parents are working full-time, long hours, without a nanny (we couldn’t afford one) and no grandparents in town to help out… Seems like climbing Everest would have been easier.

My mother was the first one to start her career and get a paycheque, while my fathers scholarship paid for my diapers (he was 5 years younger). I still don’t understand why they had three kids in the hardest period of their life (apparently, all three of us were pretty much accidents by two incredibly intelligent scientists).

They had a feeding agreement in place for us, every other day one of them was due to leave work early to go home and make dinner for the kids. One day, they got their schedules mixed up, one of them forgot, and my father got home to discover the three of us alone. He asked if we’ve eaten? We said yes, we founds some nuts and dry soy schnitzels in the cupboards. We seemed quite content with that but my dad was not impressed.

Soon after, opposing to my mothers wishes, he decided to move the family two hours away from the capital to a small town where his mother and father lived. He kept his university job in the capital and took a part time job in the small town so he can be with us some of the days. My mother took a full time teacher role at the local university.

Today I understand why this move was more painful for my mom than I realised at the time. To her it signified failure. She was not a good mother, she failed us, she failed my father. That’s what it must have felt like.

Grandma was put in charge. Grandma quit her teaching job straight away to dedicate her full attention to us.

Grandma was traditional. Traditionally, once a women has children her place is in the home. A women’s career was a “hobby”, something to fill the space between kids and retirement.

She was quick to judge my mother for focusing on her career and working long hours, leaving us to learn how to take care of ourselves.

She made it her duty to pamper us with food, enforced lunch times, to write our homework when we were too lazy.

As I was already 12 or 13-teen at the time, and was use to taking care of myself, grandma patrol did not work well for me. Her care felt more like torture and I missed my independence. I couldn’t wait to get away from it.

Today although, I am very grateful to grandma for helping me tackle my dyslexia and slowly get ahead of my grades in school.

Stereotypes are a lot more dangerous than what we make them out to be. In fact, they are so dangerous, that at times we’ll even catch ourselves believing in our own stereotype. Questioning our reality. Questioning facts. Buying into stories and narratives that were put in place to limit us.

Like that big elephant standing next to the circus tent with a rope around his foot, staked to the ground.

A rope and a wooden stake can’t hold down an elephant. But the poor animal stands there believing it can only move within the space the rope limits it to.

The rope around my mothers foot took many forms. Most of which I am only just beginning to understand.

She said that when her uncle lost his battle with cancer (before he got to see her graduate). She felt like she lost her confidence in herself. As if all of her belief in herself, depended on his belief in her. As if he was the only one that believed in her.

To this day I hear family members call out my mother for her career. Downplay her achievements. Deem all her hard work pointless.

How does she, with all that overtime invested in her work, not get to enjoy the same pay and success as my father? Although they are equally intelligent.

It must be that something is wrong with her. After all even members of her own gender deem her ways wrong.

My grandmother was quick to point out to us every smaller “misstep” my mother ever did. And when my grandmother said my mother was not a good mother. I believed her.

I almost didn’t noticed that my fathers career and absence from home was treated completely different. He was not judged, he was praised for his career. Overtime, absence and unavailability were necessary parts of it, and came with everybody’s deep understanding. He was never pointed out as a bad father for it.

The more I grew, the less sense it made.

My parents raised an Independant, capable, hardworking daughter that knew how to take care of herself and survive and thrived in whatever new environment she was thrown in.

Maybe we did not have our lunches packed, our homework checked and dinner every night. We learned to survive on whatever food is in the house (which is a skill I harness to date), and fend for ourselves.

What we had was two incredible examples of the types of individuals we can grow up to be. We got to see, firsthand, what self-made success looks like.

I never need to wonder, if I’ll be able to have a successful career and a family. I know I would, by example. I need not limit myself to one.

Parent’s teachings mean nothing without a real life example.

Not just that my mother was an awesome example, she was a brilliant mother to us.

I don’t remember ever missing my mother in my life (I do remember missing my father at times). But in fact, most of the time I had too much of my mother in my life. She kept walking in on my house parties, eavesdropping on my phone conversation, busting my phone when I was out with the “cool crowd”. Once, she even parked outside and camped in front of a nightclub, when I wanted to trial out cage dancing, she refused to leave until I came down, embarrassing me in front of everybody (more than I’ve embarrassed myself), ending my club dancing career on the first day. I never showed my face there again.

As rebellious teens we never made it easy for our mother. We made sure each of us continued the legacy as well.

So when it was my youngest brothers turn to hit puberty. And he trailed the old sneak out once she’s asleep, which he picked up from him brother and sister. My mom, that was a single mother at the time, caught him out, took her mattress from the bedroom, planted it in front of the front door, and slept there, deeming his endeavours to fail.

In fact, bringing in grandma proved how much better my mother’s “make your own damn sandwich or starve” teachings worked, than pampering.

My two younger brothers that took full pleasure in grandma’s pampering. Grew up to be much “lazier” then I am, and less able to take care of themselves. All they did is replace grandma with a girlfriend at one point.

Seems that tough love is a much better recipe.

We seems to learn things the hard way. Just like this election will teach us how dangerous it was to judge ones capabilities on gender.

It seems that even when we are overly qualified for the role, the white guy gets the job.

We’ll learn that not sticking together and believing in our own, comes at a great cost for us all. Women voted for a downright sexist when made to choose.

I blame us. We complain about inequalities, yet we are the ones raising the next generation and teaching them how to be. Giving them examples of what’s a women's place. How she should behave at home. The importance of her own career, and not just her independence but her success, and her equal right for it. We’re the ones that are not giving ourselves everything we’ve entitled the other side of the gender spectrum to.

We can close the gap by choosing the types of men we want to see our sons grow up to be. The men that will respect our daughters. The fathers that will raise our daughters to the full capacity of their minds and capabilities, not dolls and daddy’s girls.

We are the ones in charge of educating our youngest about equality and equal opportunity.

And how we can surely understand sexism, we should extend our understanding to all the other ism’s and stereotypes that pull humanity backwards.

My mother embedded my values in me by example. I am just as proud to be my mothers daughter as I am my fathers.

And when my mother tells me; don’t be sad, be unbeatably successful!

That is exactly what I do, damn if some Trump type of cock is going to stand in my way.