Birthday Girl

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday. The first since she passed last August, and I doubt another July 18th will ever go by now that I forget it. This picture was taken of her at her college graduation, when she was 17 years old.
My mother was a real character, funny, intelligent, and severely wounded by her life. They certainly don't come much smarter than my mother, as she spent most of her life as a clinical microbiologist. In many situations she was the "go to" gal for clinical research, and for many years worked in cancer research at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Later in her career she worked closely with the CDC in Atlanta during Aids research outreach. Most gay folks heard the story about the "gay cancer" just about the time my mom actually expressed her concern to me privately about the sketchy findings that were starting to flow through the medical community. She was that kind of mom.
All this generally didn't leave much time for baking cookies, and in some ways she lived a strange double life. Ever the iconoclast, she raised six children by herself. She did the best she could in this regard, but never really "fit" the P.T.A. Mom profile most of her children would have chosen if allowed to pick. I say most, as I always thought it was really cool to have a mom that could describe working on a frozen body for samples as being "just like defrosting a turkey" over the Thanksgiving dinner table.
The wounding of my mother started early and gradually. Finishing college so young, she was accepted into medical school immediately. My grandfather told me once the only thing he really regretted in life was denying her this. But there were younger brothers to educate, and they were prized as more important. She knew the plate glass ceiling women faced in the 50's intimately. She was deeply wounded by her parents inability to acknowledge and foster her amazing gifts because she was female. My mother became, in her later years, almost reclusive, having a difficult time relating to other people and demanding her children be constant company. This is perhaps the reason I have so much compassion for intelligence that has difficulty relating in life to this day.

So tomorrow is her birthday, and today I am thinking about my mother. How the best and brightest things people love about me are on direct loan from her, and how even though I miss her I still feel her near to me. When I find something funny and new in life I always think about what her reaction would be. I talk to her out loud sometimes, generally to thank, bitch, or apologize to her. But one thing gives me great comfort. My mother the scientist has reached the other side, and I know she studied it with great interest throughout the process and would dearly love to share her findings. Working away in the great laboratory in the sky. (LOL) Love you Mom.