50 Years of Peter, Paul & Mary

I got home from the Airline History Museum and turned on the TV and discovered a show on Peter, P.aul and Mary.  Peter, Paul and Mary always makes me nostalgic. First off, Peter, Paul and Mary were the music of my childhood. One of my earliest memories was lying on my Mom and Dad's bed with the evening light reflecting on the wall through the curtains listening to Leavin' On A Jet Plane and then Puff the Magic Dragon. The record player was a gray stereo my Mom had since the time she was a teenager. Lying on that bed I felt the power of music and the sound of working for Justice.  In my childhood I thought my destiny was to grow up to be a Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.  Certainly, my entire life I have always been aware of the work for social justice.

Tonight I sit in my parent's living room with the family Christmas tree lighted with Mike's 400 LED's and on the tree are over forty years of family memories made tangible through the collection of ornaments. So many of those ornaments represent my dear angel mother and I feel her spirit wrapped around the tree and I feel the poignancy of the memories of my mother. My mother was the true social justice worker in our family. She believed in social justice through education.  She is the person that created me into a critical educator and a disciple of Paulo Friere whose Pedogogy of the Oppressed has changed so many of us.  As teachers we really are head learners because by our students we are taught. Education is about hope and cultural capital to provide a way out of poverty and oppression.  My mother taught me that we must respect the differences in people and celebrate diversity.  My mother whose influence is in hundreds of classrooms did more with her life I feel then most politicians because she taught teachers how to teach all children. She taught students to teach for change and a better world.  God I love that woman and she was my mother.

And then, after remembering I wonder what my role will be in the work for social justice because aren't I part of the change in the world?  I am my mother's daughter, after all. People only knew her locally but my mom was a great woman and I am her daughter.  She could be a hard mother to be a daughter of but she made me strong and beautiful.  I like the person she helped to mold into the woman I am today.  I hope she is in heaven sitting with Mary Travers and Pete Seeger singing all the old songs of social justice. I'd have it no other way.  Love you, Mom!