I just finished a wonderful book called Divas, Dames and Dolls: A Celebration of the Female Spirit by Kathleen Fitzgerald. It includes the most beautiful black and white pictures of older, aging women with “snippets” of their thoughts on life, love, family, career, and a host of other topics. I’ve recently come to appreciate the wisdom of older women, and thought I’d share one of my favorites from the book. Meet Helen Nelson:
“As a youngster, I was shy, and that was often unfortunately misunderstood as being aloof.”
“The most important thing a person can do is get to know themselves. Sit down and talk to yourself, and then pay attention to what you have to say.”
“Getting married is wonderful if it adds to who you are. Having two separate identities makes a good marriage.”
“Women are problem fixers. Whenever there is a real mess, a woman is brought in. Years ago, a woman with an education didn’t get a chance to use it. I do think society is heading in a wonderful direction. Men are becoming more involved with their children and women have choices.”
“Beating an addiction is a wonderful thing. I stopped smoking after twenty years. And I’m still proud of it. Doing anything hard and succeeding is a gift to your self esteem.”
“When people look at an old woman, they don’t think of her as having had a passionate, forbidden love affair that can sustain her all the nights of her life.”
“At the end of the day, I either read or listen to rap music, which I believe is the poetry of the day.”
Quiet, thoughtful, and modest about her accomplishments, Helen was a consumer advocate for both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. With a master’s degree in economics, she married and divorced early, leaving what she calls a mediocre marriage for the love of her life and marriage of 30 years. Unable to have children due to an early hysterectomy, she created her life in a different way than she had forseen. Helen made an award-winning documentary film about consumer rights in her eighties. Now widowed, she lives in her own home in San Fransisco and enjoys entertaining, good wine, and lively dinner conversation. She is eight nine years old.
Note: Helen passed away in March 2005 shortly after this book was published. What a character! We can learn so much from the women pioneers who forged the road before us.
John is my partner at work. He’s about my age, married, with twins who are turning three this month. A few weeks ago, his wife took off for a girls’ weekend in Chicago, which left him with the sole responsibility of caring for the twins for an entire three days (two, if you count the Friday they spent at Grandma’s while John was at work).
Girls, do you find anything…ummm…unusual about this? Neither do I.
Which is why I am still stunned by the exorbitant amount of sympathy he garnered around the office. Going into the weekend, all of our coworkers wished him well and patted him on the back and said, “Good luck, man. Hope you’re still alive on Monday.” And when he did show up on Monday, everyone asked him how things went and listened with actual interest to his stories of toddler meltdowns and the excursion to the cider mill.
I would just like to state for the record that my spouse was gone over the same three-day period, leaving me to fend for myself with our (count them) three kids. Nobody patted me on the back or asked how I managed to survive the weekend.
I first noticed this alarming trend when my husband related a story to me about a month ago. He has Fridays off and spends the day hanging out with the kids (actually, our nanny comes for half of the day so he can mow the lawn or do the bills or whatever household tasks might need doing). On this particular Friday, he decided to take the kids to the mall for lunch and let them run off some energy in the play area. He struck up a conversation with a woman who, according to Rick, was completely in awe of the fact that he ventured out by himself with three small children in tow. She said he should get a “Father of the Year” award.
For what? For doing once a month what I did daily with my eyes closed? I suppose, then, that would make me…let’s say, Mother of the Millenium?
For some reason people forget that Dads are supposed to be just as invested in their kids as Moms. So when they actually do what they’re supposed to do—which is love and care for their offspring—our hearts melt and we think, Awww. That’s so sweet. Or Wow. What a devoted father.
And while I’m all for praising dads up and down for any attempts to connect relationally with their children, I’m also for praising all the moms who integrate caring for their children seamlessly into their lives…to the point that no one even notices.
So here’s a pat on the back for all the moms who spend their days wrangling toddlers and mastering school schedules in relative anonymity.
Happy Friday!
