My mom wore Tweety socks. She thought they were hilarious. She’d sit in her chair and raise her feet in the air, wiggling them at the world. Giggling.
Made me laugh, too.
Annoyed my brother. In fact, he was offended and objected to her wearing Tweety socks. They weren’t age appropriate.
Really? What is age appropriate? Braids? Beards? Hats in church? Cleavage? Shorts?
What’s traditional?
I asked my brother why he was so irate about the socks. Mom was a grandmother, too old for Tweety socks.
My mom was 68.
She had a collection of strange socks. She also had red hair (acquired when she was six months pregnant with me and bored) and expensive tastes, running to Ferragamo shoes, fast cars, and … Tweety socks.
When she died, at 68, I wanted certain things to remember her by, that had sentimental value, that made me smile. I took her socks. Even though I’ve since cleaned out many of the things I got from her, I kept her Tweety socks.
I found them in my drawer last week. They made me smile.
Truth is, my mom and I didn’t always get along. It wasn’t just the normal mother-daughter thing.
It was cultural.
My mom was adamant that women were inferior to men. She’d shake her finger in my face and yell it at me. Her insistence that neither of us were as good as a man because we were women still shocks me.
It wasn’t intellect. Or job. Or honesty or responsibility or respectability. It was being female. God and society told her so. That made it true.
I rebelled against that from Day 1. They slapped me in uniforms in Catholic school, and I stuck gaudy jewelry on them and hiked the skirts up. They insisted on hats in church and I wore a used handkerchief. I was a brat when I wasn’t giving in. I rebelled.
And I’m still rebelling. But that’s a topic for another day, the one that goes on about things like young women who claim they’re not feminists and take their husbands’ name when they get married. Excuse me: call yourselves whatever you want, except by your husbands’ name: culturally, intellectually, emotionally, that means you accept that you are inferior. So do men, other women, and society. Our children.
Until that changes, nothing changes, and society, and culture, remain stifled. If you act inferior, you will be. Just like my mother said.
But back to the Tweety socks.
One day years ago I was walking through Nordstrom’s when I spotted a sweatshirt sequined with a winning poker hand. Not only was my mom a poker player (a regular winner at the local tavern), but she loved those sequined sweatshirts. I always thought they were gaudy, but she liked them, and that’s still how I remember her, wearing those gaudy sweatshirts. That day at Nordstrom’s I bought the sequined horror. The excited clerk giftwrapped it and prepared it for shipping while I tucked in a note that said, “I love you, mom.”
Mom was shocked when she got it. I guess she thought I was prepping her for something horrible, like a disease or a new husband. I’m not one for giving spontaneous presents, and especially not expensive ones. But every once in awhile you get to tell your mom that you love her as weirdly as you can. That was all.
I saw her wear it once. For me. She was clearly uncomfortable. I had to chuckle at that: I never liked the clothes she bought me, either. She’d buy things that were way not me and pink: the only pink in my house is a laundry accident (well, okay, I have two cross-dressing flamingos).
My mom was smart enough to buy things just to annoy me, but only one thing ever did (for long): her hatred of equality.
I don’t live in an unequal world, because inequality isn’t the way it really is. I know. I talk with things: with animals, with our businesses and homes, with land and weather systems. I talk with them as equals, and they talk back as equals. There are masculine and feminine presences, and none of them are worth more than the others.
Think about that. A world where everything is alive and we are all equal. Think of what we could create! Think of what our children could be.
Last week when I found mom’s Tweety socks again, I thought about her, how the socks outraged my brother, and made me and our mom laugh.
I thought about her beliefs.
And her attitude.
My mother was a product of her times. She did what they told her, believed what they insisted, never achieved what she could have, not just in a career but in her life. She was always sad.
She also sold the house out from under my dad one day when he was working.
She played poker at night at a local tavern.
And she wore whatever she wanted. Right down to her Tweety socks.
Honestly, my mom was a rebel, in her own way. Not brave enough to stand up for the big things, but aware of the differences. I like to think her ugly duckling daughter’s rebellious spirit rubbed off on her.
Or I inherited hers, and am just running with it.
I wonder if rebelling is what mom was doing with the Tweety socks. Why she refused to get rid of them. I wonder if that’s part of the reason why I kept them.
Protest with humor.
Nevertheless, no one ever saw her Tweety socks except the family. They were covered up in public.
Her socks were in the closet.
No one, and nothing, should be. Not even our Tweety socks.
That’s why I kept them. That’s why I care.
Here’s to mom. And equality.
© 2011 Robyn M Fritz