Belated Mother’s Day gift of Annika’s Moment

Golf is a little game in which the white ball of what is wrong with the world occasionally gets set up on a tee and smacked into oblivion with the driver of human progress. Tiger Woods did it when he won the Masters at what was once the white-boys-only Augusta Country Club. Last Thursday golf phenom Annika Sorenstam did it when she became the first woman in 58 years to compete in a tournament in what has traditionally been the men’s Professional Golf Association. For mothers and daughters everywhere it was a belated Mother’s Day gift to be cherished forever as Annika’s Moment.

Such moments are women’s gifts to one another. A mother can pass them on to a daughter in the form of better opportunities; a daughter can pass them back as opportunities taken, or new opportunities made for the next generation. A woman does not have to be a professional golfer with a swing that would make most men weak in the knees to have Annika Moments, however.

Life presents every woman with such moments, short and long shots waiting to be taken, some easy and some hard, some from the fairway and some from the rough, all chances to advance the game for the next woman to play. Here are some other Annika Moments for daughters everywhere to give to their mothers:

. when you realize the greatest Mother’s Day gift of all is giving her

a reason to be proud of her children;

. when, after driving hard to the basket for two points, you remember that your mother’s generation made it possible for you to grow up expecting to be able to participate in good school sports programs. They made it possible for female athletes to get equal time on the court, equal funding, and an equal chance to succeed in sports. Her generation often played to laughter and scorn, with cast-off equipment and little support, sticking to it in part so that you and Annika could play not just in a different league, but in a different world;

. when you stay home to take care of your children because it is your choice, not because it is someone’s expectation;

. when you realize that failing to vote is surrendering the power of what got women where they are today;

. when you raise your daughters

to be confident women;

. when you refuse to be abused, and walk away from the abuser;

. when you pause on Memorial Day to remember U.S. Army Private Lori Piestewa, who this March at the age of 22 in the far-off land of Iraq, became the first female U.S. soldier ever to be killed in combat. Women have been getting killed in wars for eons, but they finally have the ability to shoot back;

. when you teach your sons that a man who does not treat women well

is not much of a man;

. when you enjoy the fact that Annika Sorenstam’s golf game could beat the Hush Puppies off most of the members of the Augusta Country Club – home of the Masters – which does not allow women to be members;

. when you realize that a woman with a push-up bra and little pride has little of real value to offer the world;

. when you realize a man who would choose you with a push-up bra over you with pride has little to offer you;

. when you take advantage of the greater opportunity your mother earned for you and use it to pass on greater opportunity yet to your daughter;

. when you realize that to be a woman in this world is to be part of a social plow slowly pushing aside the barriers of bias, and do your part of the plowing. To be a free woman is to always struggle for greater freedom and respect, for you and all other women. One hundred fifty-four years ago the first woman graduated from an American medical school, and when no hospital would allow her in the door to practice she started her own hospital; today the hand that rocks the cradle can be a cardiac surgeon’s holding another human’s beating heart. Eighty-three years ago women got the right to vote; today two of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate are Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from Maine, and if one of them said she wanted to be president of the United States no one would drop a stitch;

. when you come to love Tom and Ray Magliozzi, of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk.” OK, maybe that is not an Annika Moment, but it should be;

. when you realize that indignity, deprivation and mistreatment of women anywhere diminish the dignity and status of women everywhere. You cannot be a free woman and ignore the subjugation of women somewhere else.

Whether she wanted to or not, Annika Sorenstam played for the right of women everywhere to walk any fairway, any road, any career path, anywhere they want, with pride and confidence. That was the real gift of Annika’s Moment.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Erik Steele, D.O. is a physician in Bangor, an administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.