I've had a lot of trouble with the word "feminist" over the years. I have at some points embraced it and at others completely rejected it. I think perhaps because I've always had trouble with the academic and theoretical feminists but always loved the women (and men) who I like to call Accidental Feminists.

      For instance, my mother. I don't think my mother set out in her life to make some statement about women or to further women's rights. She just decided to do what she wanted to do and did it. What that meant was a southern gal dropping out of Ole Miss in the early 60's, moving to Nashville, getting a job and living her life. Later she was a single-mother working her ass off to raise 2 kids and then, deciding she wanted to be ordained, moved those kids across the country to a seminary, got her Masters in Theology and got herself ordained in the Episcopal Church. She also loves action flicks and has never met a Sy Fy channel movie she couldn't love. She let us watch Aliens when we were little. More importantly, she let us watch Elenor Ripley kick ass and take names. We also watched a lot of Designing Women, Golden Girls, Miami Vice, Die Hard, and Terminator. But on road trips she liked to listen to Joan Baez and Linda Rondstat. And while my mother might roll her eyes at romantic comedies we could never go to the mall without a trip to Liz Claiborne.

     Last night on the phone with my mother she told me about her experience with Pete Seeger a few weeks ago, celebrating his 91st birthday at some conference thing. He was talking about the civil rights movement and the music they created during that time and what it meant and my mother said to me "I was never really involved in the civil rights movement. I was busy working." And I heard it, but she didn't seem to. I didn't interrupt her, but what I wanted to say was "Well Mom you were busy living the women's rights movement, that's why."

      When I was a little girl, I saw my mother as such a free spirit. I envied her because, even as a kid, I was riddled with anxiety. She didn't wear a lot of makeup but she loved Estee Lauder. She drove barefoot while wearing long skirts that she would pull up to her knees because it was hot and she'd rather have the windows open than turn on the AC.  She never had fancy hair styles but it always looked perfectly tousled or perfectly blown straight. She always had a slight undertone of tan as if she'd always just come in from a day outside. She would declare "mental health days" where she wouldn't go to work and we wouldn't go to school because, well, sometimes you need to say screw it and stay in bed. When money was tight and we were down to our last dollars we'd blow it on a good meal or something else equally fun. She would go to the grocery store and come back 4 hours later with hot dog buns and no hot dogs. She made decisions quickly and with little drama and if we whined or pitched a fit about something she'd tell us she'd sure love to have the luxury of time to lose it.

      When my sister and I got into our teens and early 20's we turned into the weird kids. My sister's hair color was different every few weeks. Green, purple, blue, orange, pink. We had piercings, tattoos. We argued with mom a lot because generally my sister and I just did what we wanted and tried to make decisions about our lives quickly and with little drama. Like when my sister came home one day and matter of factly stated that she'd signed up for the G.E.D program and gotten a job because mom had said "If you're going to cut class and not go to school well then you'd better get a job." (Calling bluffs doesn't seem to work well with the women in my family. Apparently, we just don't bluff.) One day, and I don't remember what prompted this, probably an odd outfit or new hair color, my mother turned around and said "I just don't understand how you girls turned out so weird." My mother, the priest, who liked Aliens, and was, at that moment, wearing a giant wooden necklace carved as Noah's ark and the animals on it, wanted to know why her daughters were weird.

      My mother would come home from school and teach me what she'd learned in class about ethics and sexual politics. She would read her papers and sermons to me as a double check before school. I learned a lot and didn't even know it. When I was 14 and writing papers on women's issues I got to use her professors as a source. Her professors were among the first women ordained in 1974 and who were spat on walking up the steps to their ordination ceremony. We saw the first woman bishop consecrated in 1989 in Boston while mom was still in seminary. (Not only was she a woman, but she was black as well! It was a two-fer. I enjoy two-fers in civil rights movements.) My mom wore a stole in church with the names of women from the bible on it. She explained to me that when Jesus was dying on the cross, it was the women in his life who stayed with him.  And that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute but possibly his wife. And while I may not be religious today, the stories of these powerful (and silenced) women stayed with me.

    My mother, to me, was never anything more or less than what she wanted to be. And anyone else's idea of what she should or shouldn't be was nothing to be bothered with. And I've realized as of late, that while I certainly never set out to be any sort of particular woman, or feminist or push forward any issues, I became an accidental feminist. And that everything I learned about being strong, independent, free and at times, southern crazy, I learned from the strongest, most independent, free and at times southern crazy, greatest feminist icon I could ever have had...my mom.