One woman’s history month

In March—Women’s History Month—of 2005, I applied to Columbia. As I filled in the blanks, I felt change descend upon my family and myself.

My mother was born in poverty. For her, high school was an opportunity to be with friends—it was a social event, an escape from the nightmare of a home life filled with domestic violence at worst and neglect at best. She was eight years old before she learned that she had a “birthday.” She and her cousin were born on the same day, and at a party to celebrate her cousin’s birthday, someone said, “Today is Doris’s birthday, too!” It had not occurred to her that she might have a birthday.

My mother grew up in the portrait of poverty, composed of dirty faces, worn-out clothes, and holey shoes. As she reached her teens, the pressure to contribute financially to the family increased. She received a daily barrage of commands to drop out of school and go to work—girls do not need to go to school to learn to clean, cook, and make babies. For my mother, school was salvation, and she could not bear to leave prematurely. So she went to work but refused to drop out. Her parents expected her to turn over her entire pay, but she “stole” from her paycheck to save for a dress that she saw in a shop window.

My mother did graduate, but this bold determination was met with the fatigue of a lifetime of struggle. Shortly afterward, she discovered she was pregnant. Despite being in love with someone else, she married my father, a high school dropout who had joined the military. Within six years, at the age of 25, she was a mother of five, and hopes for a different life were lost. She wanted her children to go to college, but she had no idea how to make that desire a reality.

I was born to working-class parents who lived paycheck-to-paycheck to make ends meet. I was their seventh child—my mother had just gotten her youngest son into school and had a short taste of freedom when she discovered her pregnancy. For the rest of the family, a baby girl was a welcome addition to a home dominated by boys. My birthday celebrations were always memorable, especially because I was born on the 12th birthday of one of my brothers. These shared birthday celebrations (combined with another brother whose birthday is the week before) were important annual events. And though there was not a lot of money, my clothes were lovingly handmade by my mother, as sewing was a skill that she learned from her high school job. I married and had a child shortly after high school. Years later, I made the wrenching decision to leave my life behind and become the first woman in our family’s history to go to college.

It was my mother who stood on the walkway, blocking my reentry to our house, shaking her head “no” to me as I attempted, for the umpteenth time, to delay my departure to New York to begin this Ivy League journey. Each day at Columbia, as I silently pass the throngs of people in the stairwells, I can confidently place my feet in the footprints of the amazing women that came before me and paved my way by studying or teaching here: Margaret Mead, Madeleine Albright, Bella Abzug, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Martha Stewart, to name a few. Today, we are blessed to be taught by some of the most amazing women of our time: Liz Abzug, Jill Shapiro, Elizabeth Povinelli, Dorothy Ko, Lila Abu-Lughod, and so many others whose names I should be ashamed for omitting. Sitting beside us or across the table are the women who will continue to forge a brighter future for women—and for men.

As for my own family, my daughter, whose idea of a birthday party includes clowns and private pony rides, was born into a middle-class life. She takes her weekly clothes shopping for granted. She assumes college is the natural progression after high school and that graduate school is a given. She has never known corporal punishment, and the most annoying things her parents say to her are the constant streams of encouraging words and support.

Women’s History Month is not merely about Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, or Rosa Parks. It is about every single woman and man living every single day and doing the work that it takes to make equality and transparency more than just ideas but fundamental realities for us all. It’s about my mother and countless ordinary women who do the big and little things to ensure that their daughters will be better off. It’s about my daughter who will proudly carry this tradition forward. And it’s about you.

The author is a senior at List College and the School of General Studies majoring in women’s and gender studies.