Adventurous Mom

At the age of 4 I remem­ber wak­ing up in a hos­pi­tal room barely able to talk in an oxy­gen tent, and tap­ping on the tent to my mom.  I was scared, I didn’t under­stand what was going on, and I couldn’t talk.  It wasn’t until years later that I found out I had epigloti­tis, a rare but fatal child­hood viral con­di­tion that causes the flap that cov­ers your air­way to swell up until it occludes the airway. 

I only sur­vived because my mom heard the stri­dorous breath­ing in my bed­room and took me to the ER imme­di­ately. Per­haps this expe­ri­ence has shaped my life of need for con­stant adven­ture….  Per­haps it is the DNA that is ingrained in me. 

Let me back up a lit­tle bit more…This blog is about moms, let me intro­duce you to my mom. My mother was born poor in a small town in Mis­sis­sippi, a white girl on the wrong side of the tracks.  My mother’s father was a train oper­a­tor and engi­neer, a hard life of work, but that was just his day job, his pas­sion was with motor­cy­cles, fly­ing acro­batic air­craft and boot-legging alco­hol into the dry state of Mis­sis­sippi.  Nor­ton was known to do such dan­ger­ous motor­cy­cle tricks as head­stands on the seat while the motor­cy­cle was in motion.  He lived life on the edge, and raised my mother to do the same. 

At 14, he gave her a birth­day gift…her first motor­cy­cle.  She was arrested by the Merid­ian police because at 14, she didn’t know what a driver’s license WAS, much less pos­sess one.

So at the ten­der age of 18, my mother met a hand­some Navy man, mar­ried and fled the small town in Mis­sis­sippi, never to look back.  Kids were not in her sights, she wanted to live her adven­ture, out of the con­fines of the rigid south­ern tra­di­tions.  In fact, mar­ring a man like my dad was some­what taboo since he was  “Span­ish” and dark skinned.  (She con­fessed to me later in life that she knew he was Mexican/Filipino, but had to tell her dad he was Spanish).

A move to Cal­i­for­nia and over 7 years of mar­riage, my mom decided to try her hand at moth­er­ing.  She had never held a baby before my older sis­ter was born.  But why not go all the way?  Three daugh­ters under 5 years old, all within 18 months apart! My mom is the def­i­n­i­tion of adven­ture. My mom sur­vived the tor­tur­ous baby crazi­ness, and things got bet­ter for her when we were able to walk and talk. 

Adven­tures with my mom were com­mon­place.  I often tell sto­ries of my mom cre­at­ing cir­cuses in our back­yard, com­plete with uni­cy­cles, tightropes, and tram­po­lines.  We would blast music from the record player into the back­yard to prac­tice our cir­cus rou­tines.  Then there was the “urban farm” that wasn’t really a farm, but rather the crow­ing rooster.  I don’t know what obsessed her to get a rooster in our neigh­bor­hood, but need­less to say the neigh­bors weren’t pleased!

My mom wanted to raise us to be inde­pen­dent, strong, pur­pose­ful women.  She even says she  gave us strong “mas­cu­line” names: Casey, Maken­zie and Abbey (okay, well, Abbey skirted the mas­cu­line name, although her mid­dle name is Michael, after my dad since Abbey was really his last attempt for a boy.  Abbey hated it for years, but now I think she’s at peace with it.)

Even the sim­ple bike ride wasn’t nor­mal in our house.  Before we could ride bikes, my mom fig­ured out a way to load us all on her bicy­cle.  Abbey was strapped to her back in a back­pack, I was on the rear child bicy­cle seat, and Casey sat on a home-made seat across the mid­dle bar. (Note that in this pic­ture, Casey grad­u­ated to a reg­u­lar bicy­cle, so it was just me and Abbey on the bike.)  Imag­ine the looks my mom got!  Child bicy­cle trail­ers were not invented then, so she wasn’t let­ting hav­ing kids stop her from going on a bike ride!! 

As I learned how to ride, we fre­quently did 10 and 12 mile rides at the age of 9 down the muddy rocky shores of the San Fran­cisco Bay, with her scream­ing at us the whole way. We didn’t have a choice to quit, she wasn’t car­ry­ing us home! Not only did my mom instill the legacy of adven­ture into us, but she taught us that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!  She was unwill­ing to take no for an answer, and she didn’t stop her life because of kids…we were just extra par­tic­i­pants along for the adven­tur­ous ride!

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