Under My Mother's Eye

resistance be the fruit

Blessed be, Secular FAM!

This month, Hulu released the first few episodes of the 6th and final season of the Hulu series, The Handmaid’s Tale. It is not for the faint of heart, and if you’re not all caught up yet, you might want to skip this Substack because there will be spoilers.

In this new season, the protagonist, June, finds herself on a refugee train with her rapist’s accomplice, Serena Joy. In the last season, June helped Serena Joy deliver her miracle son, Noah, in an abandoned barn. As you can imagine, June felt conflicted as she assisted her former abuser and captor, but this decision was made for the infant, Noah’s sake, not Serena Joy’s. Passengers eventually recognize Serena Joy, who ushered in the authoritarian theocracy known as “Gilead” in this dystopian series, and forced her off the train.

She eventually gets a sweet gig to head up “Gilead Lite” aka New Bethlehem, so we’ll see what the future holds for Serena Joy in the coming episodes. She truly believes that her narrow interpretation of scripture is the One, True Way. She’s self-righteous and smug about her faith, and uses it to wield power over anyone who gets in her way. She reminds me of countless school board members and other elected officials who want to jam their antiquated, patriarchal beliefs on everyone.

Right now in Arizona, a group of individuals, many of them conservative, have launched a recall campaign against several Arizona lawmakers who aim to gut funding for parents of children with developmental disabilities.

Peoria (PUSD) President, Heather Rooks, who proudly stood behind a 34-count convicted felon and adjudicated rapist has rushed to push his executive orders, including anti-DEI initiatives that could strip her own child of services. It makes no sense, but these “Serena Joys” have been conditioned their entire lives to uphold the patriarchy and white supremacy, and they’re willing accomplices, even when it harms their own best interests, or their children’s.

At the end of the first episode, June is reunited with her mother, Holly, who everyone presumed was dead. In earlier seasons, we see Holly in flashbacks. During the theocratic coup (also the thing that is happening right now in this country!!!), presumably sometime in the early 2000s, Holly was an outspoken critic of the broligarchs and theocrats. She did not back down to the christofascists, and her activism landed her in the “Colonies” where political dissidents and “undesirables” (LGBTQ, BIPOC, academics, immigrants, people with opinions, etc., sounding familiar, FAM?) are banished to hard labor cleaning up environmental disaster areas.

When June encounters her mother, it’s an incredibly emotional scene. It caught me off guard. Holly’s experience at the colonies didn’t result in death or capitulation, and she’s just as devoted to the rebellion as she was to the resistance.

I couldn’t help but think of my own mother. Growing up, my mom was the strongest woman I knew. Born before Title IX, my mom couldn’t play sports in school despite being a natural athlete. My mom followed her two older brothers everywhere, and by most accounts, she was a tomboy growing up.

There’s this great story my family tells about when my mom’s brother, my Uncle Bob, returned from Korea from his stint in the Marines. Some of his high school buddies were visiting him and he boasted about all of his newly acquired martial arts skills. He challenged them (including his younger sister, Mary) to try to take him down. My mother, Mary, stepped up to the challenge, and ended up flipping him onto his back, embarrassing him in front of his pals.

My mom didn’t participate in a resistance or revolution the same way Holly did, but my mom resisted and revolted every day against limitations placed on her by the powers that be. She wasn’t able to play sports the way she wanted to as a kid, so as an adult, she and my dad established a girls softball league that exists to this day.

She also worked as a United Auto Worker (UAW) making parts for GM. She worked alongside men, and advocated for employee rights as an officer for her UAW local. When my teeny-tiny school didn’t have enough girls to form a girls basketball team, my parents advocated at the school board level to ensure MY Title IX rights were honored, and I played on the boys team.

Take that, gender police!

Growing up, both my mother and father encouraged my sisters and me to follow our dreams; that we could do anything we set our mind to. She was too busy working full time, running a household, existing in an unhappy marriage, and raising my older sisters and me to march or burn her bras, but I always considered her a feminist.

So it hurts even more now that she’s drinking the orange Kool Aid.

I always imagined my mom would be more like Holly. Too old to actively participate in the revolution, but supporting the movement from the sidelines. Instead, she voted against her own best interests, against mine, against her grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren's.

The last few times we talked, she expressed anger at student loan forgiveness, and when I informed her that mine were forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, she told me that no one, including her own daughter and Title I public school teacher, deserves student loan debt relief.

Cool, cool.

I remember when I graduated with my bachelor’s degree from ASU in 2008. I was a single mom, working full time and going to school full time, and somewhere out there, there’s a video of when I crossed the stage. My mom, sisters, brother-in-law, children, and best friend were in the audience. In the video, when I cross the stage, everyone cheers, and my mom, wrapped up in taking pictures, belatedly bellowed, “WOOO-HOOO! Go, Jeanne!” and everyone starts laughing hysterically because she was a good three seconds behind.

It’s another one of those family stories that gets told again and again. That’s the memory of my mother I’ll hold close.

There was a time when she was proud of me. There was a time she rooted for me and believed in me.

It’s not that I need recognition, but I do struggle with imposter syndrome on the regular. Knowing that my own mother sees many of my accomplishments as trifling and misguided doesn’t help.

45/47 sure has destroyed a lot of families, but the silver lining is that now, just like RuPaul says regularly, “we get to make our own families.”

My chosen family lifts me up; they don’t tear me down. They celebrate my wins with me, and I with them. We are all anti-fascism, anti-broligarchy, and pro-democracy.

I really hope that my mother’s social security remains intact, and I hope her retirement is holding up and continues until she passes. I wish I could call her up and we could chat like we used to. I wish I could do the same with my sisters, but they’ve also made their choice in supporting a rapist and a felon, and I just can’t reconcile that.

I’m looking forward to the next episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.

We could all learn a lesson or two from Holly and June.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum