9:56am July 16, 2013

➸ My Mom Was An Underground Railroad For Abused Women: What She Taught Me About Feminism And Fear

I write about my mother often, not because she’s a role model or mentor or even because she’s my mother, but because she is an interesting person.

My mother has a completely irrational fear of June bugs, which are flying beetles the size of a nickel. People often claim June bugs are “blind” because they bump into things like tiny, obnoxious drunks, and they’re notorious for getting caught in your hair.

They’re unpleasant, but I didn’t realize my mother’s terror of them until I was a teenager.

This was the same woman I’d seen kill a cockroach with her hand. (“You have to,” she explained as my 10-year-old self looked on in horror, “Because they’re fast and they multiply if you let them get away. No time for getting a shoe.”)

This was the same woman who, when I said I was afraid of the dark as a little girl, would take me out on the back porch at night with hot cocoa and explain all the things that were good about the nighttime.

“I never knew you were afraid of June bugs,” I said to her.

Her reply was a no-nonsense one: “Of course you didn’t. Fear is dangerous because it transfers. It’ll catch like a cold if you let it.”

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That wasn’t any real matter to her, the fact that she didn’t know the name for what she was doing; she just went right on doing it anyway.

When we talk about feminism, it’s easy to talk about institutional action, but harder to see the individual action still required, the practical applicability in our own lives. We lose sight of the basic materials: Equality. Kindness. Courage.

In a singular word: humanity.

“I still think you’re making too big a deal out of this,” says Mama. “I was just being a decent person. Just being human.”

“Exactly,” is my response.