Origin story

Not a superhero

My parents are quite a pair. My Dad was an old-school Young Republican. When I met him he was already a math professor. But he grew up on a farm in Indiana, went to IU (easily the biggest Hoosier fan ever). His Dad wanted to be a diplomat, and his Mom had a college degree and taught math. When the depression hit, they pretended not to be married so she could keep teaching (married women of course not needing jobs when there were men to hire). The competence theme started long before I was born. 

My Dad’s side is conservative. In the sense of “independent, strong, fiscally responsible, protective of strong government institutions, and seriously bullheaded.” All of them are bullheaded. All seriously educated, getting degrees is kind-of a hobby in this family. People with the kind of industriousness American mythology loves. They’re the real deal.

My Dad was an only child too. Was working on his Ph.D. at an impressive institution when he was home for a holiday and was introduced to my Mom on a blind date. She was an art student, it was the 60’s. Her side of the family are avid readers, smart, kind, hilarious, and union-member blue collar awesome. Grandma and Grandpa married in the depression when they were essentially children, and had a family of their own. They made things work out, and their lives were never easy. But I never realized that when I spent time with them, because they had a loving big family who cared for each other, and were just genuinely good and happy people. The kind of competence it takes to keep things working out over decades of marriage and never extra money to spare is a totally different kind than my Dad’s parents had, with lessons to learn from both.

My Mom was the first in her family to graduate from High School. She really wanted to be an architect, but girls didn’t do that then, at least not ones from my Mom’s background, so she went to the Heron Art Institute. Always a gifted artist. While there, some mutual friends introduced my parents (a blind date) and the rest is history.

Apparently my logical parents didn’t want a chaperone for Expo ‘67 in Montreal, so it was easier to get married. They talk about life in Providence when my Dad worked on his degree and my Mom did secretarial work. She learned to drive in a giant 1960’s behemoth on the steep old narrow streets there. Before they married, my Dad lived in a house owned by Mrs. Howard, who had a lot of pets, and invented a leash/seat-belt so they could ride safely in a car. Mrs. Howard sent me a high school graduation gift, though I never met her. A watch on a chain. Something every efficient woman of the time would have.

After grad school, my Dad could have taken his math degree to industry, but instead chose to be a Professor. His offer came from a two-year college up in the North woods of Wisconsin. He wanted a family life. Something that a job in the nascent military-industrial complex wouldn’t have given. So even though both sides of the family were in Indiana, they moved to a forested icy wonderland. Made good friends with some other new young professors there, all starting families, and had a good time hiking, cross-country skiing, canoeing, camping, and starting the first Planned Parenthood chapter up there.

I told you a lot about my Dad, because that’s how the world works, right. He’s got impressive credentials, he drove the story in my parents’ marriage. He’s smart, industrious, and a heck of a person in his own right. He worked hard, supported his family, and is a Dad I’m proud of. But now let’s flip the script. I’d like to tell you more about my Mom.

Moms rarely get enough credit. The occasional Oscar speech mention, but let’s look a little harder. Mine, like many others, was the glue that held our family together. Mine is smart, capable, and most of all “Competent.” When things needed to be figured out, she figured them. She built furniture, she handled the finances, she got tired of secretarial jobs and went back for a two year degree and became a mainframe programmer. Quickly hired as a Data Processing Manager (the top of the IT food chain at the time). She ran our family life and did the same for a small company that made “forming fabrics” for the paper industry.

They say that married men live longer, and people like my Mom are why. Could my Dad have been a bachelor, sure, he’d have managed. But a wife like my Mom is why he’s had a comfortable and happy life. Why I grew up knowing I could do anything. She has always been the safety net. I bet many folks have Moms like that, that this is resonating. If you think about someone in your life who made certain your lunch existed at the moment you needed it, your clothes existed and were available, your school logistics were handled, your youthful shenanigans didn’t result in any permanent problems for you…more often than not that’s been a Mom. Not always, and this isn’t about gender roles, lots of Dads these days are the competent one in the house. I just grew up in a time where that was less the case. If I wanted to talk philosophy and science, it was Dad. If I needed something figured out and handled, it’s always been Mom. I’m pushing half a century now, and that’s still true. Mom is the go-to.

Some of what I’d like to talk about is how Competence is built. My Mom talks about her Grandma Brown. (Great) Grandma Brown built her own house, and outlived a few husbands. She was one of my Mom’s early inspirations; her own Mom too. Grandma was one of the kindest people I’ve known (I know, Grandmas are notoriously kind people, but she really set a standard). She had a big family, and took care of people. She always saw the good in people and assumed the best.

So my Mom comes by all of that honestly. Her Dad was no slouch either. Grandpa had a heart attack at a young age, and while laid up recovering and not able to return to his union job with Chrysler, he taught himself television repair from books. That kind of resilience and ingenuity is a component of Competence, and my Mom has always had that in spades. If you need to fit more things into a car than could possibly go, she’s the one to do it. Need to find a route from Peoria to Albuquerque avoiding toll roads and passing by a specific truck stop in Kansas, using maps (not Google) she’ll get you there with an atlas and a flashlight in the middle of the 1970’s.

I’m no superhero. My Mom might be.This origin story is a shout-out to my Mom specifically, as the quiet “supporting character” who was really a main character, because that support was more important than what I or my Dad did with it. That’s my thesis that you’ll read as a thread in these essays. We focus on results, on the shiny front people, the guys with the Ph.D.s who have successful careers. The only child who grew up to be a CIO. I think we miss the good stuff. The pennies scrimped, the meals prepared, the emotional havens, the monumental planning and effort to make the tip of the iceberg poke up above the ocean. I invite you to look underneath the water line at your Mom or your Dad or your supporting characters at work and see how much more they put in to your success (if you are successful). Or to look at what you do, if you are the bulk of someone else’s iceberg. Or to consider what you want to do if you are neither yet.

My Mom never had the sorts of ambitions she easily could have realized. She’s smart and capable and could have done the IT industry thing longer in a time where paths to high places existed. But her family mattered more to her, her quiet life. She worked that career until she was done by her own measure and then she stopped. We say that women make less because they don’t choose to do what many men do. I see it a different way. We have fewer competent people running things because the competent ones have other priorities and we don’t make it worth their while to stay or to do the flashy jobs. Our loss, not theirs. So my Mom’s efforts are known to me and my family, while my Dad is an Emeritus Professor and letter-to-the-editor-writing gadfly known to the world, and the origins of my successful life stem from a childhood where things were handled competently.

P.S. If you know my Mom, pretend you didn’t read this, she’s allergic to being told how great she is. ;-)