VICE Pays Tribute to Our Badass Moms

In honor of the women who've known both the distinct pleasures and displeasures of raising us, VICE reflects back on some of our mom's most badass moments. Happy Mother's Day, moms and mom figures of the world.

My mother's motto is "I get what I fucking want." One time something happened at my school. I don't remember which one of my siblings was in trouble or who had been bullied; we are Catholic, and my mom was pretty much preggers for 20 years straight. There were many trips to principal's offices. Anyway, the principal refused to meet with my mom, so she got a wheelchair and oxygen machine and paid our nanny to wheel her into the principal's office. When she got there, the secretary said the principal couldn't speak to her. In between breaths of oxygen, my mother told her she would sit in his office until he saw her. She sat for two hours, in a wheelchair, and he eventually sees her. She always gets what she fucking wants. —Mitchell

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My mother Barbara, a brilliant and beautiful woman, is the chief breadwinner for our family. Despite having to tolerate three narcissistic, oft-depressed men in my brother, father, and me—and being a professional psychologist to boot—she's somehow fun to be around. It's not easy to tease out one moment that defines her general predilection to asskickery, but my mind tends to settle on something that happened before I was even born, when she dove headlong into student activism as a student at Barnard College in New York. Students were protesting military recruitment and other Vietnam War-related activity on Columbia University's campus (back then, Barnard was Columbia's women's college as the latter did not admit women). Mom clashed with her father, a rather buttoned-down Republican who worked on the business side at the New York Times. She found the paper's coverage of the activism to be profoundly biased, and was radicalized further by it, before eventually bringing him over to her side.

I like to think I have some small dose of her courage and fire in my own heart. —Matt

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In the summer of '91, or '92, or maybe '93, my parents had a purple Westfalia camper van and we all drove it down from Oregon to camp in Death Valley, California. This was before my parents split up and moved into houses next door to one another. Back when they were still together.

The plan was to camp and relax for a week in the desert. But right when we arrived, my mom began having reoccurring dreams about a baby. The baby was cute but rambunctious and wanted to play all night. She would wake up feeling less rested than when she passed out. It was a problem. After three nights of this, my father being my father said the only solution was to ask the baby what it wanted and give it that. So my mother fell asleep, the baby came, she asked.

The baby said, "I never got to have a life. I want you to bring me into the world and be my mom." She asked the baby's name and he said, "Larkin." She said, "OK, Larkin," and the dreams stopped.

At the end of the week, my dad was driving the purple van back home towards Oregon. Death Valley is full of these old, circuitous pioneer roads through the desert, up and down mountains. We were working our way up a hill when I started screaming and crying uncontrollably. I was one, two, maybe three years old, so it wasn't a big surprise, but my parents were startled at the abruptness and force of my tears.

My dad pulled the van to the side of our tiny dirt road. My mom climbed into the back seat to get me. She opened the Westfalia's sliding door and right there, at her feet, was a handmade cross stuck in the ground. It was a grave marker from the 1800s. On it, someone had carved a birthdate and, only a month later, a date of death. There was also the name: "Larkin." I stopped crying.

My mom shut the sliding door. My dad kept driving home. Seven years later my mother remarried, and she and her new husband had a son. Larkin will be 16 in June. —River

***

I called my mother to interview her for Mother's Day.

"Well, don't say the bad thing right now," she started off. "Say: 'When Mommy was young, she have lots of good memory.' See, when I was in junior high, I was number one to graduate from junior high. And my writing was even selected to be in the national publication. Isn't it good? I did not even know until I go to high school. My friend tell me, 'I saw your writing in the Youth Council.' The question was Why do we need education? So I say, "With education, we can understand the world around us. With knowledge, you can do lots of things to help people and improve our lives."

"And you won."

"What did I win?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing! You just get publication. I did not even know I won. And my teacher didn't tell me he submit my writing. It was just regular composition in the class. I did not even know until my friend tell me. I always like to read the poems. And Mommy read lots of books. Mommy love the good quotations. All my life, Mommy read lots of novels. Both American novels and the French and Russian. I read War and Peace, Anna Karenina. I read all the translations. I read lots of books when I was young. Start when I was junior high, I went to library borrow book. I see the librarian sit there and read. I say, 'That is my profession. I can read and get paid.' All my life, I still read. I really like to read and I like to study. I like good information. Good column I read every day. Isn't that funny? Your mommy is a funny person. I always read, and talk to myself. That's the way I can survive."

"What is something good that you did as a mother?"

"Well, Mommy always let you have a tape. And Mommy always play alphabet game. How many words can we say with A? Like, 'apple'… That is how we play. Always buy tape for you. And we read all those children book. Those help. So, before you go to nursery, you and your sister can read and can write alphabet and count to 100. You and your sister teacher always say, 'Those two are so smart.' And you really happy. And teacher say, 'You two have very good start.' And that is Mommy contribution." —James

***

My mom is a tiger. She's the fiercest woman I know, but at her core there's this pure gentleness and love. When she was 11, she immigrated from the Philippines with her three younger siblings. Their parents were already in Chicago, so my mom played the maternal role, comforting her siblings while they flew away from a home none of them would see again for decades.

In the US, my mom skipped two grades because she was brilliant, but she was teased for her accent and her lanky limbs and her Snoopy lunchbox. Immigrant kids don't have it easy now, and they didn't have it easy then. But my mom is a fighter. She smoothed out her accent—she now speaks way better English than my Chicago-born dad—and ended up a pom-pom girl and a beauty queen and a total heartthrob. One guy was so lovesick over my mom that he carved her name into his forearm and showed her.

After she graduated at the top of her class, her dad—who was more traditional—thought she should get married and settle down. But my mom wanted a career in medicine, so she worked two jobs and put herself through nursing school. She ended up saving enough money to buy her own penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan, when she was 23. (I turn 23 next month and I rent a room in Bed-Stuy.)

My mom has done a bunch of badass things since. As a nurse, she worked in the ICU with premature babies the size of her fist and saved dozens of lives. At the age of 53, in spite of some health complications, she still runs half-marathons and looks like she could be my sister. But the most badass thing of all has been the love and patience she's shown towards me. I was a fat and happy baby, but a moody and confusing teenager. Through difficult times my mom has not only put up with me, but supported me, my insane choice of career and city, and my ridiculous artist dreams. She always says she just wants me to be better than her: Go further, do more for the world, live more freely. To me, that's the truest mark of a great mom. Little does she realize how lucky I'll be, if I even manage a fraction of what she's done. —Jennifer

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I don't know if my mom would qualify as a "badass" per se, but I'm not sure if a mother could love her son more than my mother loves me. Growing up, my mom drove me 45 minutes to school every single day, while also serving as our family's primary breadwinner while my dad was switching careers in his mid-30s. I never realized how hard she worked to make sure our family stayed afloat when I was younger (How could I? I was five!), but in later years, I came to fully appreciate all that she did for me. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW INSANELY DIFFICULT THAT IS???

It's one thing to drag yourself out of bed to go to a lifeforce-leeching job day in and day out, let alone ferry your kid to and from school, but to work hard enough to support your entire family while doing it, AND always be there for your five-year-old kid, teaching them about the world you physically brought them into? That's some Wonder Woman-level stuff. Looking back, I don't know how my mom could have possibly had a moment to herself. But she never complained, never asked for anything in return, and remained positive so that I might turn into a happy, well-adjusted human. That's not a moment of badassness. It's an ultra-marathon of sacrifice. —Drew

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