The Way We Were Wednesday

Just after WWII, my mother's family drove across the United States one winter.  My mother had finished High School, and not left home yet. They saved up gas ration coupons for a year, and pulled a trailer across country that winter and back.  Early "Tin-Can-Tourists." 

When I say she had not left home yet, really she ran away from home. She wanted to go onto school - maybe become a teacher or go to work and her father told her that education was a waste of time and money for a woman, and she should find a nice farm boy and start a family.  She wrote an aunt who lived in Detroit, who said come move in with us.  Her father refused to drive her to the train station, she talked an uncle into driving her to the train.  She worked in a bank, and then in the payroll department at Chrysler.  Leaving work when my oldest brother was born, returning to work when I was about 8 years old.  She was fiercely independent and not afraid to work.  

Hmm, where do I get my independence and stubbornness from?