Eulogy for my mother
Thank you for coming today to remember my mother. I know how pleased she would be that you are here—friends, family, loving caregivers.
In preparing for today, I thought a lot about my mother’s life. And I realized that she was different people at different times, and in each phase of her life she acquired a new name. So I thought I’d tell you about those names.
The name she was given at birth was Millicent. Wikipedia says that means “brave strength.” Millicent showed her brave strength by always going for the win. She played hard, she used her elbows, and she broke the rules.
As a child, she was known for refusing to do as she was told. A cousin told me that if Millicent’s mother told her not to step in a mud puddle, the next thing she would do was step in the puddle.
My mother herself wrote an email to my daughter about a similar act of rebellion: One night when she was 5 or 6, Millicent’s grandfather was going to babysit her. Before he arrived, Millicent’s mother gave her an odd instruction: “Do not make any marks on your grandfather's hat.”
You know how this ends. Here’s what she wrote to my daughter: “I wondered what that might be like. Somehow, before the evening was over, I had written my grandfather's name--Max--on his hat. Very small print. But of course, everyone began shouting and telling me how bad I was.”
Perhaps it was that defiant spirit and sense of curiosity that drove Millicent to skip grades and graduate from high school at just 16.
By the time she entered college in the early 1940s, she had acquired a new name: Billy. It was clear she felt constrained by the expectations for young women. I think taking a boy’s name was her way of claiming the power that seemed to be men’s birthright but not women’s. She once told me that she wished she’d been a man.
After college and her marriage to my father in 1945, she cut her curly red hair and took another boys’ name: Mike. It was as Mike that my brothers and I knew her. When my own children were born, she insisted that they call her Mike too—and not Grandma. At first she spelled it M-I-K-E. But my son misspelled it M-I-E-K. And she liked that. So M-I-E-K it was. She loved correcting people who pronounced it meek. “I am NOT meek!”
Predictably, she was restless as a stay-at-home mother. She did errands in a hot-pink Rambler station wagon, and brought a wicked sense of humor to parenting. My older brother loved potatoes but hated green vegetables, so she tried to convince him that peas were little green packages of mashed potatoes. She dressed him for Halloween as a bag of frozen spinach—even though he hated vegetables. For me, she made a batch of ceramic cookies, wrapped them up in waxed paper, and put them in my lunch bag. Imagine my surprise! And so on. But after my younger brother started school, she finally got out of the house and focused that wit on getting a teaching credential.
As a humanities teacher at Lynbrook High School in the ’60s and ’70s, she was called Mrs. Rutherford. The name was conventional, but she quickly gained a reputation as an eccentric, an Auntie Mame. She wore wild clothing and jewelry in the shapes of bees and spiders and lizards and sea anemones. To hold her students’ attention, she wore stockings of different tints. Students were riveted to her as they tried to figure out whether her legs did or didn’t match. But that clearly wasn’t her only secret. She traveled throughout Africa, Europe and Asia to gather materials for her class. Whatever her secret, her students would visit our house in Los Altos Hills and tell me how lucky I was to be Mrs. Rutherford’s daughter. She was so “cool.” Even decades later, they sent her notes saying she was the best teacher they ever had.
But she was ambitious and soon she was hungry for a new challenge, so she left the classroom and went on to earn a PhD in education from Stanford at a time when it was rare for a woman—particularly a woman in her 50s—to get a graduate degree. My father took to calling her Dr. Rutherford. It was kind of a joke—but they were both really proud of that doctorate. And she got a job as vice principal at Santa Maria High, in Southern California. That meant she and my father had to commute on weekends to see each other.
Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t find a job as a principal in the Bay Area. And she wasn’t going to settle for less—not with that PhD. So she took on the world of business and became an account rep at MetLife in Marin. And according to one of her colleagues, she was a star there too. She acquired a new name too, one that reflected her sales talent. Milli means “thousand” in French, and cent means “hundred,” so Millicent means One thousand one hundred. Her colleagues called her Eleven Hundred.
After her retirement about 20 years ago, my mother had a stroke that affected her speech. As she became frailer and we began helping her with paperwork, I noticed that my father and my brothers and I had stopped referring to her as Mike and begun calling her Millicent. It was the name we put on medical forms and applications for handicapped stickers.
She had come full circle, back to the name she was given as a baby. When I look back, I can see that my mother showed a new kind of “brave strength” in her final years. She got back on her feet, literally, after every fall, and dealt with her new situation with stoicism. I never saw her cry—then or ever.
So that’s how my mother became Millicent, Billy, Mike, Mrs. Rutherford, Dr. Rutherford, Eleven Hundred, and Millicent again.
My mother may have changed jobs and names over the years, but she was consistent in one respect. She was unwavering in her fight for equality and civil rights. She was passionate about the ACLU, the Unitarian Church, and the Democratic Party. And she put her money where her mouth was.
I’m proud of my mother. She was ahead of her time, she was never dull, and she stood up for what she wanted and what she believed in. On a good day, I have a little of the brave strength that Millicent embodied, and I’m grateful for that. I’m also grateful to both her and my father for modeling the social values that continue to guide my own life.
In preparing for today, I thought a lot about my mother’s life. And I realized that she was different people at different times, and in each phase of her life she acquired a new name. So I thought I’d tell you about those names.
The name she was given at birth was Millicent. Wikipedia says that means “brave strength.” Millicent showed her brave strength by always going for the win. She played hard, she used her elbows, and she broke the rules.
As a child, she was known for refusing to do as she was told. A cousin told me that if Millicent’s mother told her not to step in a mud puddle, the next thing she would do was step in the puddle.
My mother herself wrote an email to my daughter about a similar act of rebellion: One night when she was 5 or 6, Millicent’s grandfather was going to babysit her. Before he arrived, Millicent’s mother gave her an odd instruction: “Do not make any marks on your grandfather's hat.”
You know how this ends. Here’s what she wrote to my daughter: “I wondered what that might be like. Somehow, before the evening was over, I had written my grandfather's name--Max--on his hat. Very small print. But of course, everyone began shouting and telling me how bad I was.”
Perhaps it was that defiant spirit and sense of curiosity that drove Millicent to skip grades and graduate from high school at just 16.
By the time she entered college in the early 1940s, she had acquired a new name: Billy. It was clear she felt constrained by the expectations for young women. I think taking a boy’s name was her way of claiming the power that seemed to be men’s birthright but not women’s. She once told me that she wished she’d been a man.
After college and her marriage to my father in 1945, she cut her curly red hair and took another boys’ name: Mike. It was as Mike that my brothers and I knew her. When my own children were born, she insisted that they call her Mike too—and not Grandma. At first she spelled it M-I-K-E. But my son misspelled it M-I-E-K. And she liked that. So M-I-E-K it was. She loved correcting people who pronounced it meek. “I am NOT meek!”
Predictably, she was restless as a stay-at-home mother. She did errands in a hot-pink Rambler station wagon, and brought a wicked sense of humor to parenting. My older brother loved potatoes but hated green vegetables, so she tried to convince him that peas were little green packages of mashed potatoes. She dressed him for Halloween as a bag of frozen spinach—even though he hated vegetables. For me, she made a batch of ceramic cookies, wrapped them up in waxed paper, and put them in my lunch bag. Imagine my surprise! And so on. But after my younger brother started school, she finally got out of the house and focused that wit on getting a teaching credential.
As a humanities teacher at Lynbrook High School in the ’60s and ’70s, she was called Mrs. Rutherford. The name was conventional, but she quickly gained a reputation as an eccentric, an Auntie Mame. She wore wild clothing and jewelry in the shapes of bees and spiders and lizards and sea anemones. To hold her students’ attention, she wore stockings of different tints. Students were riveted to her as they tried to figure out whether her legs did or didn’t match. But that clearly wasn’t her only secret. She traveled throughout Africa, Europe and Asia to gather materials for her class. Whatever her secret, her students would visit our house in Los Altos Hills and tell me how lucky I was to be Mrs. Rutherford’s daughter. She was so “cool.” Even decades later, they sent her notes saying she was the best teacher they ever had.
But she was ambitious and soon she was hungry for a new challenge, so she left the classroom and went on to earn a PhD in education from Stanford at a time when it was rare for a woman—particularly a woman in her 50s—to get a graduate degree. My father took to calling her Dr. Rutherford. It was kind of a joke—but they were both really proud of that doctorate. And she got a job as vice principal at Santa Maria High, in Southern California. That meant she and my father had to commute on weekends to see each other.
Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t find a job as a principal in the Bay Area. And she wasn’t going to settle for less—not with that PhD. So she took on the world of business and became an account rep at MetLife in Marin. And according to one of her colleagues, she was a star there too. She acquired a new name too, one that reflected her sales talent. Milli means “thousand” in French, and cent means “hundred,” so Millicent means One thousand one hundred. Her colleagues called her Eleven Hundred.
After her retirement about 20 years ago, my mother had a stroke that affected her speech. As she became frailer and we began helping her with paperwork, I noticed that my father and my brothers and I had stopped referring to her as Mike and begun calling her Millicent. It was the name we put on medical forms and applications for handicapped stickers.
She had come full circle, back to the name she was given as a baby. When I look back, I can see that my mother showed a new kind of “brave strength” in her final years. She got back on her feet, literally, after every fall, and dealt with her new situation with stoicism. I never saw her cry—then or ever.
So that’s how my mother became Millicent, Billy, Mike, Mrs. Rutherford, Dr. Rutherford, Eleven Hundred, and Millicent again.
My mother may have changed jobs and names over the years, but she was consistent in one respect. She was unwavering in her fight for equality and civil rights. She was passionate about the ACLU, the Unitarian Church, and the Democratic Party. And she put her money where her mouth was.
I’m proud of my mother. She was ahead of her time, she was never dull, and she stood up for what she wanted and what she believed in. On a good day, I have a little of the brave strength that Millicent embodied, and I’m grateful for that. I’m also grateful to both her and my father for modeling the social values that continue to guide my own life.
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