I went to work at the age of fifteen, mostly in an effort to ensure that my wardrobe reflected my tastes, and of course current trends, instead of what was on sale at Sears/Roebuck. As I flipped through the racks at Lerner’s, Gloria Steinem turned the world on its ear.
I remember wondering why she had chosen to thread the earpieces of her large, tinted, aviator glasses over her hair, instead of hiding them underneath, as the rest of us did. She had to be close to my mother’s age, but instead of going every six weeks to the beauty shop for a style and set, Gloria grew her hair long, allowing the strands to drape her painted face along the line of a stylish center part. She wore short skirts and knee-high boots instead of the polyester pull-on pants and knit tops my mother favored. And she spoke, in measured, succinct tones, of the oppression of women, and their unheralded strength and value. I had discovered a hero.
The birth of my first child ignited in me, a breed of love I have never experienced before, or since. When my daughter was six weeks old, I reentered the job market, as promised, and worked for two weeks in a local department store. Coming home to two miserable females convinced my husband that our financial obligations could be met by one salary. Nine months later, I was pregnant, again. The prohibitive cost of daycare for two babies made me a stay-at-home Mom, who contributed to the family finances by caring for three unrelated children during the day.
Following a pattern set by my mother, I developed an interest in soap operas, timing my morning chores around the television schedule. As theme music began to play over the final act, I reached for the telephone, beginning a daily marathon of conversation with another mother, that ended precisely one hour before the sound of rubber crunching gravel announced my husband’s arrival home. Dinner rolls browned as he showered, and if I timed it just right, they both emerged at the same time.
Gloria, and others like her, referred to me as a “couch potato”. Soap operas and well-timed dinners had brought with them my mother’s wardrobe, and as Gloria stylishly stomped across the stage to shake Mike Douglas’ hand, I looked down at my widening, polyester draped hips. She flipped her hair back, and I self-consciously fingered the clip that tamed my un-coiffed mane. She spoke words that used to come from my lips, before my vocabulary consisted of the single syllables of my children’s picture books. And, with those words, she urged me to own my life, to shake off oppression, to look my husband in the eye and demand my right to make my mark.
Within weeks, I was dropping my youngest son at a local church daycare before the sun’s warmth had dried the dew from the grass we used to play in. My two older children were in school, and my presence, when the school bus pulled up in front of our house every afternoon, assured me that I was living “the life”, “having it all”. And, I’ve never looked back. My path has followed the course Gloria promised. I’ve risen in the ranks, I’ve padded my pocketbook, and I’ve got the big-screen TV, late-model automobile and designer handbags to prove it.
Last week, as I urged my shiny, red car down rain-slick streets in an effort to be home in time for my son’s basketball game, the radio dial came to rest on one of hundreds of satellite enhanced offerings. A young woman bemoaned the travails of working-motherhood; the pressed schedules, the unreasonable demands, feelings of inadequacy. The measured tones of a well-known, conservative talk show host filled my car, and Gloria urged my well-manicured index finger towards the dial, but before I could reach, I heard.
“Did you ever think that the reason you don’t enjoy being a stay-at-home Mom is because YOU don’t appreciate your own worth; YOU don’t think what you do is valuable? Did you ever think you may have been sold a bill of goods?”
My eyes strayed, again, to the clock in my dash; thirty minutes to game-time. I thought of my daughter, draped in polyester, passing her days in manufactured housing twenty-five minutes from the closest grocery store, standing at the bus-stop with an umbrella in one hand, and a dog’s leash in the other.
Her lack of drive has always bothered me. The decision to enroll her in classes for the gifted was not an easy one. I worried about the pressure, and possible ostracism from those who were tracked for mediocrity. I placed her, and she excelled until an older boy from the “wrong side of the tracks” bounced his seemingly permanently affixed cigarette in her direction.
Despite every intervention offered in every psycho-babble book I’d ever read, and a few I came up with on my own, she was lost to me, until an inevitable stint in state prison interrupted their courtship, as my nemesis traded his Camels for a neon-orange pant-suit.
His departure from her life took with it nearly thirty pounds. Fit and lithe, she marketed herself, again. Eric fancied himself a guitarist the likes of Jimmy Page. His black, leather jacket was expensive. His vocabulary included words like “please”, and “thank you”. His eyes sparkled over a Greek menu he was more than willing to try, and I was sold.
Six months later, when my daughter called with the news of her pregnancy I asked her in measured tones, “Are you prepared to raise this child alone?”.
“But I won’t, Mama”, was her answer.
And she hasn’t. Christopher, her husband, is a kind, calm, wise, loving father who went to work, everyday, at five-thirty in the morning. When he came home, around four, he liked to play video games until supper was ready, which he followed with a shower, and bed. Two weeks ago, the air conditioning plant in which he worked succumbed, as have so many, to financial crisis. On the day she got the news, my daughter called to tell me she would be going full-time at her former weekend job.
As I sat in my car, with eyes darting between dashboard clock and traffic light, I finally appreciated her sacrifice. I arrived home amidst a flurry of game-time preparations, and as my son went in search of yet another missing sock, withdrew my check book from my bag. Wrapping the check in a scribbled note, I handed the envelope to my over-anxious basketball star directing him to drop it in the box while I locked up.
Two days later, just as I had expected, the telephone rang and I answered to the sound of my daughter’s appreciative voice.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know I didn’t. You didn’t ask for it. But I wanted you to have it, and I want you to know why.” I plopped into my office chair, rolling to the spot offering the best view through the bank of windows that comprise the opposite wall.
“You and I don’t always see eye to eye. I know I’ve pushed you to do more, be more. Today, I realized that what you have been doing is very important, and while forces outside of your control have dictated that you change your priorities, I hope that change will be temporary. That money is between me and you. I expect you to use it to meet needs left unmet by your income. But, I also expect you to support Christopher by encouraging him to get out there and find another job, so that one day soon, you can go back to being…just a Mommy. This is my way of letting you know, I get it.”
She was silent for a few moments before saying simply, and quietly, “Thank you, Mom.”
© Copyright 2007-2009 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved
Are We There Yet? 
