Mother’s Day USA
I’ve already written of my dia de mama mia last Thursday.
We do not intend to repeat our parenting tribute. It is the “mother as a woman” that interests
us now, having touted in my own “political” journey the role of the women’s
revolution among the seven that accompanies my lifetime.
(For the curious, the other six are: ethnic minorities,
awakened youth, unified academé, 3rd world assertiveness, business glocalization,
and gray panthers.)
I encourage the Chinese students in my class to talk of the
subject they already know about without reading a book – themselves. As individuals and members of various societies
under the nebulous but imaginally homogenous China, one of the statistical
items they live with is that “for every 45 Chinese females, there are 55 males”. Attributed as a consequence of the one-child
family policy of China and the preference for boys, where girls are either
aborted or murdered, it reveals the depth of patriarchal malady embedded in the
culture.
However, a surprise came this week when one of the oral
English students identified himself in his introduction as Dong Linlin. The surname, he said, was from his father,
but the given name was after his mother.
My attention was properly perked up.
(I quietly sighed: here is hope for the five-millennia male-dominated qipao/cheongsam wearers after all.)
The normal pattern in China is for a child to be given the
father’s surname, in reference to the identity of “place” of origin as family
names are derived from geographical places.
The given name usually describes the pleasant physical features of the
child, or the parents’ hopes and dreams for their offspring, often influenced
by the time of birth of the child, or any other incidence of chance or good
fortune, e.g., the year of the dragon. But, never that of the mother!
I mention in class when I do my intro that the practice of
naming a child by the father and mother’s names together is the case in
Hispanic-influenced countries. Northern
Europe is where the English and the Americans derive their practice where only
the patriarch’s name applies. I was Señor
Ravelo en España (also in Venezuela, Guatemala, Chile and Peru) in the
early 80s, particularly when I was greeted at the Madrid airport after our
African pedagogical trek was shortened by malaria in Nigeria. Finding myself recuperating on the plaza del
Prado in Madrid after Air Iberia misplaced my luggage, I discovered how
singularly important my mother’s name was in the culture.
Traditional mothers in the Marianas cling to their
preeminence in the transmittal of real estate ownership. One of my teacher acquaintances in Saipan
birthed three boys with her husband who she refused to marry in order to cling
to the prerogative of determining the disposal of her properties. Oh, they were a functioning family all right,
but sans the blessings del Padre nor the legal strictures of da Judge. The children carried their mother’s name.
My children are legally registered with their mother’s name
as their middle name. Thus, it came as a
delight to read Clay McCollough-Stearns’ hyphenated name in a report of his athletic
prowess on the sports’ page of the Tribune
last week. I am sure, no one is calling him Clay McCollough
at Eye Ess, in the same way I am referred to in some places as Señor Ravelo, but the published
hyphenated mom-dad-name mirrors a family already ahead of its time when I made
their acquaintance a decade ago.
Janet McCollough, PhD, and Tony Stearns, MD, champion Hobie
sailing duo, were guests at my ecumenical Saipan wedding. Janet always went by her name; she is known in my
Church that engaged her psychological “counseling” services. UMC ecclesiastical colleagues determined that
my personal behavior was ill suited to the Saipan parish requirements, so I
voluntarily “defrock” myself of ordination.
Dr. Stearns, in my experience, remained a gentle and ever
health-conscious physician who was never in a hurry to prescribe highly
marketed pharma remedies, nor casually resort to the overrated healing
intervention of the scalpel.
However, the now strapping Clay in the papers was (along
with his sister) but a stripling twig in my memory.
In the late sixties, grandma of my four grandsons Mary Lou saw
with me Fiddler on the Roof on stage
in Chicago. She lived then in what was
still lily-white suburban Glen Ellyn, close to an hour’s train ride away. An awakened product of protected Illini existence,
not unlike that of Hillary Rodham (almost her age), when I walked Mary Lou back
to the train station, a wino on Madison Avenue came from one of the alleys,
grabbed my arm, and with an inebriated glare, asked: “What are you doing with
the white girl, boy?”
For two decades, the “white girl” and I, and a slew of colleagues,
staffed the trenches of the seven revolutions of my time, including that of her
gender. She has since turn pro in geriatric
care!
Today is Mother’s Day USA in a-day-behind America. My macho nod leans heavily toward hailing
the likes of Lin Lin, Janet, and Mary Lou.
May they continue to lead sisters in getting their offspring carry their
mother’s names!