Dear Cade, I am terribly, terribly sorry that you lost your mom. My father lost his mother when he was a little older than you are now, and though he almost never talks about it, I know that even now, when he is sixty, he still finds it painful. I am very sorry that you have this burden to carry, and I hope fervently that you have good friends and family around to help you carry it. I don't know what your mother was really like, not really; she wouldn't have known my name. But I did meet her once, and I admired her work and frequently praised it to other people. And I followed her career, sort of, from a distance. I didn't know her well as a person, but I did know her work, and I admired it--and her--a great deal.
I "knew" your mother mostly online, via hipmama, and we met twice in real life. Online, I always thought she had an enormous amount of integrity and honesty and was much better than a lot of people are online about keeping her cool and staying focused on her goal. She wasn't easily flustered, she was often the voice of reason, and she had a good head on her shoulders.
In person, she and I were both speakers on a workshop about student parenting. She was a student and a parent; I was a graduate student at the time, so I spoke both as a student parent and as a teacher, who had had student parents in my class. We talked about what students need, and I remember her suggesting that student moms should invoke the Equal Protection Act to argue that colleges should give more financial aid to student parents than they did to students without children, on the grounds that students with kids needed more support (obviously). I remember being struck by how creative and right her argument was, and I've since repeated it more than once after becoming a professor. Your mom and her work have really made a difference in my awareness and my advocacy for students, and I owe her that. More broadly, the work she did on girl mom, and the things she wrote and said, made a big difference to me and a lot of other women in a lot of ways. I was a feminist when I met her, but I would say that her work made me a much better one--and a better person. I also once saw her read "When I was Garbage"--I can't remember if you were there, although probably you must have been. What I do remember is how moving the story was. Even now years later whenever I read it it makes me cry.
We also had a silly, small, personal exchange; the conference needed nametags, but the ones that had been brought were really hard to read. So I asked your mom if I could run to the store and get some--funny, I remember being really kind of shy and awestruck about approaching her, because I had just been so impressed by her online. It was only one of those meaningless, nonsense conversations--nothing of substance--but I remember her voice, which was surprisingly soft, and her manner, which, even though she was rushed, seemed somehow sweet and grounded. I don't know if she was like that as a mom, or even if she was like that at all, but that's how she seemed to me the one time I met her.
I wrote about her on the blog I have now. Here is the link:
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/06/when-i-was-mama.htmlJust in case the link expires, and for the ease of keeping things all in one place, I'm also going to paste in what I wrote below, and the comments people left over there.
Take good care, Cade. I am one of a lot of people who will probably never get to meet you but who nonetheless wish you well.
B.
"When I was a mama"
Some of you may have seen me recommend Allison Crews's story, "When I was Garbage" as an excellent narrative about being a very young, single mom. Very few of you, however, know that I met Allison once, and worked with her a bit online on a now-defunct discussion board for Hipmama.com. I came to blogging through hipmama, which was my first real online community; I moderated there for I don't remember how long (a year? less?) and sadly, the boards ended up coming down because the community started falling apart over the problem of racism. I kind of miss it: though as an older, married mother with tons of formal education I wasn't exactly the target audience, I did find a real sense of community there and I learned a lot--a LOT--from those women whose lives were different than my own, and who were by and large incredibly fucking smart and, by virtue of their "marginal" status, really intelligent and provocative cultural critics. So, for instance, this statement by Allison:
'To radically accept and defend a woman's right to choose, we must acknowledge the multiple ways that women come to make reproductive choices. By marginalizing teenage mothers, even within the feminist community, we are failing to recognize the realities of countless women and their children.'
So I was horrified this morning to open up my work email to find a message from the Association for Research on Mothering saying that Allison had died, at the age of twenty-two. A little more information, including a description of the funeral, can be found over at Ariel Gore's site.
It's terribly sad. Allison was really young; her son, I guess, would be about seven now. And she was shockingly intelligent, yet (my impression) rather quiet and very sweet-natured in person. I ran a few errands for her at a hipmama conference, and she and I were together on a workshop/roundtable for student parents. You've probably never heard of her, but she made a big difference to a lot of women, including me; I met her briefly, many years ago, but never forgot about it and to this day "When I was Garbage" brings tears to my eyes. Apparently there's a livejournal site, Letters for Cade's Journal that's been set up for anyone who wants to post memories of her for her son to read later. I remember a few people saying that "When I was Garbage" had touched them too, and I thought that, even if you never met her, you might want to leave a note if that was the case.
Comments:
Thanks for sharing this. I had not read it before, though I am a big Hip Mama fan. What an incredible story.
nina | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 11:02 am | #
I'd heard of Allison via either Bust or Bitch magazines, and I was really taken by her sense of herself and her strong commitment to feminism. What a loss.
sarah | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 11:53 am | #
Thank you for writing this. I just wrote on it too. Ms. Crews is responsible for radicalizing my parenthood, as I found girlmom when E was a baby.
I always felt Allison was an ally, even if far away, and I hurt that she is gone. Deeply.
Lauren | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 11:56 am | #
Thank you for showing me this essay. Truly extraordinary.
Trope | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 12:26 pm | #
Thanks for sharing this. I wish I had had half of her fierceness and clarity of vision when I was that age.
jenofiniquity | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 1:15 pm | #
Lauren, I too am really very upset about it, even though I couldn't really say we were friends in any sense. I doubt she even would have remembered me.
bitchphd | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 1:52 pm | #
i never had any interaction with Alli, but felt I knew her, because I'd read so much of her writing online and in various anthologies. She was amazing, and her loss will echo for a long, long time.
jackie | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 2:05 pm | #
I miss the hipmama boards too. They were my first real online community, way before I even needed mom advice. She wrote such an extraordinary essary. It's so sad that she's gone, far too young.
emjaybee | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 2:54 pm | #
Thanks, B. I used to read Girlmom from time to time; I remember that it was linked to sometimes from the Ms. boards. Not being a mom myself, though, I didn't get involved in the community there. When you linked to it, I started reading around there, and I found Outside the Radar and A Mother's Fate, which you should read if you haven't.
I'm planning on attending the Minneapolis memorial. What a tragic loss.
Clancy | Email | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 4:33 pm
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dear_cade
