Mama’s Unconquerable Soul

Have you ever been in the presence of a Revolutionary? A person who stood up to the strongest government on earth, marched and sang protest songs in the streets, spoke truth to power and risked it all to change the course of history?

I have.

I call her “Mom”. 

This piece is a long time coming. I haven’t known exactly what to write, how or when to share the story, but I feel it must be recorded for the sake of my own sense of history – and to honor the woman who raised me.

Only a select few have known that my mother is currently in her last days due to a terminal illness. Please know that she fully welcomes this final transition, as she knows she will soon be at peace. I write this for her, for me, for her loved ones and friends, and for any soul who would hear the tale of young woman who dared to make a difference in the world.

So, lean in with me. Let me tell you about my mama: a human who has lived a life of strength and courage, with a flair for grand gestures, selfless generosity, and an unwavering commitment for justice.

The year was 1967 when an 18-year-old girl from the Midwest showed up in New Jersey to serve with the newly created VISTA Program, the domestic version of the U.S. Peace Corps. 

With the words of JFK still echoing in her heart, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” my mother spent nearly two years with anti-poverty programs, serving with community organizations on the streets in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the region.

It was the time of MLK and the Poor People’s Campaign. She found hope and inspiration in the words of Senator Bobby Kennedy. She met new friends and folk singers, hippies and radical idealists. The times… they were a’changing.

Watching thousands of young people drafted to fight in Vietnam, she joined anti-war demonstrations, marched on Washington, and even attempted to levitate the Pentagon. The physical Pentagon may not have budged an inch that day, but a major shift was clearly happening in the country. The counter-culture movement was in the air, and this fiery redhead from St. Louis was in the middle of it. She had found her people. 

As for me growing up in the late 70’s and 80’s, I remember seeing her books on our shelves: “Revolution for the Hell of It” and “Steal This Book” by Abbie Hoffman. I didn’t know she had marched with him. They sat next to the “Anthology of Edgar Allen Poe”, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Allen Ginsberg , Kerouac, “Soul on Ice”, a smattering of feminist literature, some poetry, some MLK, Monet, Matisse, Degas, “The Godfather” by Puzo, and numerous other items too long to list… including a copy of the Communist Manifesto. This woman had it all.

Looking back, these volumes help explain who she was, where she came from, and why she always carried around some sort of “soul force” whenever matters of racism, sexism, free speech, equal rights, and economic justice were invoked. She had seen things. Settling down for a bougie suburban life was never an option. She was a political activist in her core. To me, she was just “Mom”.

Back in 1968, she found herself in the midst of a nation on fire. With the horrifying assassinations of both Kennedy and King, race riots erupting across America, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the prospect of voting in her first presidential election between Nixon or Humphrey (or the overtly racist Gov. George Wallace), she chose as to cast her first vote as an adult for….yes, you guessed it: Eldridge Cleaver, one of the foremost leaders of the Black Panther Party.

As a child, I remember my mom telling me stories of the Chicago Seven, Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, MLK. She played me Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Stones, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Frank Zappa, Santana. I thought these were normal lullabies, but these songs were a catechism for me… and apparently much of it was straight from Woodstock 1969. And yes, she was there for a day, as well.

After moving around a bit, she ended up back in St. Louis at 7-Up Bottle Company, met a young guy in the design department, and they ended up moving to California in 1970. A few years later with the Watergate Trials on TV, they had their first and only child: a little baby boy they named Derek. And you guessed it, they named me after the rock band “Derek & the Dominos”. Oh, yeah… did I mention my parents were hippies? 

Although it didn’t work out between my mom and dad, I knew we all loved each other. We just wouldn’t live together. It would just be me and my mom facing life together. She would be a young single mother, somehow trying to figure out how to raise a squirmy baby boy all by herself.

I don’t know how she did it, honestly. I know we moved across the country a couple times, as well as from apartment to apartment. She had various jobs, and we were even on welfare and food stamps for a little while at one point… but I didn’t know the difference. Most of my friends were from “broken homes”, so we all just took care of each other like some multi-ethnic tribe of single moms and kids. Block parties were a blast.

My mother always had a little eccentric streak to her. Whether it was blasting Al Green while lifting weights in our tiny apartment complex, or spontaneously taking me out of class in the middle of a school day to go see the new movie E.T., or showing up dressed in a crazy outfit to see how people would react, or perhaps just blurting out some non sequitur absurdist phrase in public just to mix things up for fun… she was always keeping people guessing what was going to happen next. 

I remember her having me lie down in the middle of the living room floor, carefully placing two large cabinet speakers on either side of my head and then put on albums by Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Ravi Shankar, Stravinsky, Pink Floyd, or select audio stories by Edgar Allen Poe.

She took me to museums and zoos, flea markets, old cemeteries, theaters, ornate cathedrals, railroad tracks, gritty downtown stores, libraries, and oh… so many animal shelters. Sometimes we found a cat, or a dog, and sometimes they just found us. At some point in my childhood we also cared for mice, hamsters, fish, lizards, a snake, a bunny, and even a 4.5-foot-long iguana. There may have been other species, maybe a guinea pig… but I digress.

When I turned eight, she bought me my first baseball glove and pair of cleats, signed me up for Little League, came to every game, served as Team Mom, and eventually even became Secretary of the South Natomas Little League… that was until she threw out all the coaches from our little home because they started yelling and fighting over the draft of 11 year old kids. She was a force to be reckoned with, for sure. Mama don’t take no mess.

For several years, she was known as a “Media Queen” in the city of Sacramento. What does your mom do for a living? “Oh, she buys and sells time and space.” I would usually just leave my answer at that and walk away to let them ponder. In practice, my mother had learned to sit down at power lunches with a number of clients and media people in radio, TV, and print to broker deals in the cutthroat industry of advertising. As one of the few women in a male-dominated industry at the time, she had to deal with sexism in its most ridiculous forms. It was the 1980’s, and she was a tall attractive redhead with a kid at home. She would find a way to survive.

One perk of her working in advertising were the occasional free tickets to see the Sacramento Kings or WWF Professional Wrestling at Arco Arena. I will always remember schmoozing with Nikolai Volkoff, The Iron Sheik, Jimmy the Dragon Steamboat, and the British Bulldogs. Good times. Thanks, Ma!

She loved art. She adored the voices of Maria Callas and Édith Piaf, the paintings of Monet and Chagall, Degas and Eng Tay, movies and books and poetry. And she taught me to notice the small things of beauty often overlooked in everyday life: the 1940’s-era clutch purse and gloves of an elderly woman, light filtering through the California tule fog, an ancient chrome hood ornament, a boy holding hands with his father on a sidewalk. She could be funny and loud, and she could be quiet and pensive and thoughtful. 

Once when I was very little, I remember we got in a spat about something. I was probably about 5-years-old. I felt like she did something unfair in her frustration toward me and I told her as much. I remember her say to me in exasperation and resignation, “Look, kid, I’m making this up as I go, okay? It’s not like you came with a manual. Let’s just figure this out together.”

And so, we did. 

It was messy, erratic at times, always adventurous and sometimes a bit scary, but we did it. She somehow led us through the tenuous years of my childhood, through at least a dozen address changes over the first 18 years of my life, through the ups and downs of an America experienced during the end of the Cold War era. My mother somehow found a way to make it work and figure life out.

Many who know my mother have experienced her uncommon generosity. She delights in giving unique and personalized gifts to her loved ones. Never a simple store-bought card; it’s often a strange little trinket from a thrift store, or a storybook made from news clippings and magazine cutouts, or a weird hat, or those flimsy “fortune telling fish” made of thin red plastic film that are supposed to curl up in your palms… remember those? Once she sent my boys a rubber chicken head mask. “Why did she send a rubber chicken mask?”, asked Isaac. “Because she’s Grammy,” replied Josh. “That’s just what she does.”

A few of my cousins and their kids have all received similar odd little gifts over the years. I think my mom enjoyed taking the role of “the crazy Auntie Cher who always keeps ‘em guessing”. They love her and adore her for being who she is.

Although my mother never had much money, she always has had that huge heart to give… and not just physical gifts and notes, but of herself. It is her love language in every way. When I was 15 years old, for example, she moved us all the way across town just so I could play baseball at a different high school. It was an act of love I will forever be grateful for. She always supported me in all I ever did or attempted to do. She was my mom, and I knew she was always there.

For those who know me (at least to some degree), you are probably aware of my own strange sense of humor, absurdist bent, and random perspective on life. I attribute most of this to my mother. There are only a select few people on this planet who “really get me” in this way: my son (Josh), a few friends that I’ve known for years, and of course… my mother. Thanks for this, too, Ma.  

When I left for college in 1991, my mom headed back to St. Louis to take care of her own aging mother. My mom worked, played, lived, loved, and eventually came to spend over 20 years with a wonderful man named Tim who became a stable rock and shelter for her. They loved each other well, cared for a couple of bulldogs, two cats, and spent much of their days looking out the window at passers-by, the colorful birds of Missouri, and the changing of the seasons. 

Tim and Cherie were an odd couple in a sense, very different in most ways: my mom was the wild liberal, while Tim was the calm, consistent conservative. My mom would get elevated about certain things, while Tim was more of a level-headed project manager kind of guy, taking care of things with temperance and skill. They both went through their respective health challenges, supported one another through the trials of life, and both shared a deep love for art. I think their shared appreciation of beautiful things helped smooth over the differences in personality and politics.

I was so thankful for Tim in my mother’s life, and I explicitly told him so, “Thank you for caring for my mom. I know she can be a handful, but I’m so thankful for you.” “Oh, D, it’s not that hard. Besides, not only do I love your mom… I need your mom. She brings excitement and energy into the house and into my own life. I think I’d become a grouchy old fart without her. It’s a good partnership.”

Much has happened since those years. Life and pain, deep personal loss, health challenges and eventually a move to a new state, all with an untold number of obstacles along the way. And yet, my mother has remained vigilant to keep her fiery activist demeaner as a central part of her personality.

Whether navigating assisted living facilities, hospital systems, doctor offices, insurance issues, even trips to Cracker Barrel or Walmart, my mother is ready to stand up and “Stick it to the Man”. She takes crap from no one, and she will make her voice heard. Once she almost incited a grassroots resistance movement at the local assisted living facility: “Cold cafeteria cheeseburger patties will not stand! We deserve better. Power to the People!” Thankfully the management did not unleash the firehoses or dogs on the crowd of octogenarians. 

It’s been a long and winding road, and my mother is nearing the end. She’s lived so much life, both the highs and lows and all in between. She’s faced so many difficult trials over the 75+ years she has been on this earth, and I’m proud of how she’s kept her fighting spirit. She taught me that some things are worth fighting for. Some things cannot be compromised. One must stand up for justice, with unwavering compassion and courage.

Just like that 18-year old so many years ago, she still cares for those who are oppressed or abandoned. She still gets feisty about political things. And she still loves her Classic Rock and Sergei Prokofiev and Marc Chegall. 

With the prospect her body most likely giving out in the days ahead, I see her fierceness as strong as ever. She knows she has lived a full life, and she does not fear what is ahead. She’s been through a lot, much more than I can imagine, and she is ready to enter into her rest. I am honored to have been her son for all these years.

She always loved this poem, and I think it appropriate for how she lived her life:

”Invictus” (William Ernest Henley)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.



And to quote a poem my mother has recited to me since I was a wee little one…

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
– Omar Khayyám

Sweet mama, thank you for being you, and thank you for helping me to become me. You have written your story upon the earth and upon so many lives you have touched. You have written upon my life and my heart these past five decades, and I am the better for it. I love you, and know that your people love you, too.

And now… good night, sweet one, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.