For Mom on International Women's Day

Mar 7

I honor my mom on #InternationalWomensDay2021. She worked full-time throughout my life--a time in Alabama when most friends’ moms didn’t work. She had a high pressure, healthcare career “saving lives and stamping out disease,” as my Dad would say.

Mom, aka Flo, once switched to night shift for a few years when I called the daycare woman “Momma.” Mom still talks about that daycare moment I innocently punched her in the working mother’s gut. She brought my brother and me to work on snow days since hospitals never close. We’d play with crayons in the corner of her office and ask questions about the bags of blood in the fridge. She detoured out of healthcare for a spell for more regular hours when she saw her teenagers needed more attention.

Mom cooked dinner while Dad did laundry. It was a family requirement to have dinner at the table with no TV playing. Favorites were taco night and fish fry from Dad’s fresh-caught, perfectly-fileted bass and bream. Mom turned us into eggplant lovers by cutting the veggie into strips and telling us they were french fries.

Flo sewed the dress I wore to the 4-H competition where I performed a cooking demonstration as the “Nutrition Magician.” She organized extravagant birthday party sleepovers with lime sherbet/ginger ale punch. She prepped my hair every night on pink sponge rollers I somehow managed to sleep in. She told me I was beautiful when I placed zero in the Little Miss Valley pageant and thought my life was over. She showed me how being smart and in charge was gorgeous.

On weekends, Mom’s only request was, “Don’t ask me to make any decisions on the weekend. I make decisions all day at work.” So we always got to pick the movie or the ice cream flavor or the outing, and she’d just go along with it.

Thank you, Mom, for modeling for your daughter what it can look and feel like to be a woman with a career and a family. I’ll choose going with the Flo every time.

A 2015 Harvard study found that daughters of working moms earn more money. The study also found the sons of working moms grow up to spend more time with their children and household chores. I want to see this study refreshed since much is evolving about working moms.

Happy International Women’s Day!