Opinion | My mother’s passport might be empty, but her journeys are remarkable

She’s proud of and exhausted by the life I live. In her mind, I am constantly on the move, and she is not. But I have a different perspective on what it means to be well-traveled.

At 56, I have been around the United States and many points abroad. I’ve celebrated Easter in Santorini, Greece, Christmas in Vatican City, New Year’s in Paris, spring break in Mexico and a birthday in Puglia, Italy. I have been to the opera in Berlin and safaried in Kenya.

My mom by age 56 had flown only a handful of times and had never left the country. She has spent her entire life in the D.C. area, navigating its culture, values, politics and roads, traveling different, difficult journeys to get important work done.

Doris Jean Cammack was born in D.C. on Feb. 27, 1940. As a young girl, she traveled by trolley from her Black neighborhood in Northeast through all-White neighborhoods in Northwest to attend church with her family. Looking out the window at how differently White people lived and listening to how disrespectfully White people spoke to her mother, my mom learned that she was Black and that being Black was something she enjoyed in her bones, something White people seemed not to understand — or appreciate.

In 1954, she traveled by bus with eight Black girls who walked a gantlet of angry and hostile White parents and students to integrate Anacostia High School. For days, my grandfather skipped work and stood outside the school to make sure nothing happened to his daughter. He didn’t see it when a White boy slapped her face so hard that it left a mark, but he made sure the entire Black community in D.C. knew about it. My mom had extra protection until she graduated in 1957.

After high school, my mom journeyed up the ladder of government service, starting out in the cafeteria of the Transportation Department and eventually retiring with senior executive status. During her career, she broke one barrier after another, often finding herself the only — and first — Black woman in rooms filled with White men. Her time at Anacostia High School had taught her to hold her head high as she entered any room.

My mom started graduate school when I was in middle school, studying evenings and weekends in secret. My brother and I learned she was pursuing a master’s in public administration at American University when she invited us to attend her graduation. Watching her walk across the big stage at Constitution Hall, I wondered how she’d done it — and everything else — without missing a beat at home. The miracle of it redefined — blew wide open — what was possible for me.

My mom, I’ve come to realize, has spent her entire life on the move. She marched the big avenues in our nation’s capital for equal rights, crisscrossed the D.C. area campaigning for her favorite Democrats and joined a class-action suit against the federal government that challenged its discriminatory practices. She voted and drove older Black citizens to the polls so their voices could be heard, too. At 83, my mom is an engaged, influential community activist who on any given day will take a phone call from a member of Congress and make a house call to a neighbor in need.

Talking to my mom last month, I realized that she sees a traveler in me but doesn’t recognize the traveler in herself. She doesn’t count the barriers she crossed, the miles she drove, the glass ceilings she shattered and the bridges she built as journeys, but they most definitely are. My mom has traveled through thick walls of racism, violence, gender discrimination and class bias to find herself and her family well, diverse, happy and thriving. Her physical passport might be empty, but her personal passport is abundantly full.

So I called my mom when I returned from my trip. I asked her what she’d been up to over the past week. As expected, her answers included trips around the Beltway to take care of things and people in need. My mom is remarkably consistent at 83. I listened and laughed with her. Then, before she got a chance to say it to me, I said to her, “Whoa, Mom, you’re always on the move!”