Shout Out! What Makes Your Mom Unique?

My mother is everything you would expect from a New Yorker child of the sixties: she's smart, sarcastic and relentlessly brave.

Not that I always realized it. During my childhood I realized she was a little different than all the other mothers at my school - encouraging me to start petitions advocating for more female roles in the school play, drawing up posters for my Earthday protest and hating bake-sales with a vile fury.

The youngest daughter of Eastern European immigrants, she was equal parts dutiful and rebellious. During college, when the medical degree her parents hoped for didn't work out (she just could not dissect a dog, a requirement at the time) she changed gears to study Russian - yes, during the height of the Cold War, my mother studied Russian.

The CIA came a-courting during school, but she turned them down for a sexier position translating for Russian musicians for a New York-based Artist Agency. After several years of late-nights, trips through Russia and what I'm sure were too many vodka shots on the beach, my mom quit - in search of a career with more civic responsibility.

By now, it was the early 70s, and she ended up teaching 2nd grade in a public school on New York's Upper West Side, during the height of education reform. She loved it, and her students loved her. But, the district's budget failings meant massive layoffs, my mom didn't panic - she dusted herself off and found a series of programs to fund her way through law school.

Possibly because of her own indirect, halting path through her career and youth, my mom has always been exceptionally understanding of me and my sister's own lives.  I wouldn't be the person I am today if I'd had a mother who baked for bake sales, encouraged me to mind the status quo and didn't teach me to follow my own passions from a young age.

So, thanks mom. I wouldn't trade you for any other parent.