As part of the Rocket City Bloggers group we “carnival” each month on a set topic. This month the topic is education. It is fitting that one of my favorite local education bloggers, Russ Winn of Geek Palaver, is hosting the carnival for this topic. When I think about the word education, my mother runs through my mind. Here is that story.

One of the things I remember plainly as a child was the night in 6^th grade when my mom said she wanted to go back to school. She sat down, talked to me and my sister and explained that she got married at a very young age, started having children, and never got to do what she always wanted to do and that was go to college. She explained that she would be gone for a few hours a night, a few times a week. Because she worked a 40 hour a week job she would be going to school at night after work. She knew we were old enough to help our dad take care of us and look after our homework and chores. We knew it was important to her and our home so we all supported her with open hearts and minds. This was easy to do because she had always made education a top priority in our home. School ALWAYS came first. Bad grades where frowned upon but also gotten to the bottom of, and bad behavior at school never tolerated. Teachers were admired and respected, and books treated like treasures. Education was the way to get anything you wanted out of life.

By the end of junior high school we were celebrating mom’s undergraduate degree. In 9^th grade the talk came again, mom had a passion for the law and asked us all to support her in an effort to go to law school at night. This time it would be different, the closest night school to get a juris doctorate was almost 100 miles away. She would be gone, and gone a lot. By this time we had grown used to the concept and had no problem supporting her on this endeavor too.

Let me stop here and address what I know everyone reading this will think about. Yes, my sister and I were left alone sometimes, yes we ate quite a few pizzas, and yes this put a strain on my parent’s relationship. It was hard. Some days it was so hard I didn’t think we would make it. Tears were shed often and by many. Sacrifices were made by everyone. What I don’t think everyone understands was that the biggest sacrifice was being made by my mother, not the kids or the spouse. She sacrificed extra money to tuition that could have bought us a nicer car, a bigger house, or a vacation. She sacrificed time with her children in order to better herself and thereby bettering her children’s lives. She sacrificed sleep to study; she sacrificed a quiet family meal for a sandwich on the road to a better life. Sadly she sacrificed her youth by staying in a bad marriage far too long.

A few weeks after I enrolled in college my mom, my sister, and I traveled to the state capital and watched as my mother was sworn in as an officer of the court. It may have been the most proud a child has ever been of a parent. All we had endured for the sake of education had ended and a new chapter begun. Mom is now a very prominent lawyer in her field. She has been practicing for close to 20 years now. All the things we sacrificed we now have because of her and her vehement pursuit of an education.

When I get the chance to tell this story I always do and some see it as an awful story about a mother’s hardship. I don’t see it that way at all! I see it as a success story that I am proud and honored to tell. It’s a story of a woman who thought so much of her family that she sacrificed almost everything to make their lives better. The story also has an added bonus: my sister and I learned so much from my mother by her actions, her discipline, her honor, her courage, and her strength, things you cannot learn from a book…. a mother’s education.