Usually when we pick Magoo up from kindergarten we can park right in front of the doors. There are only a handful of kids who go half day, so there is plenty of parking. It’s convenient because a lot of times Magoo can just run to the car from the door, and I don’t have to unpack the little girls on the very cold or snowy days.
Today, however, there was a packed parking lot. There was a picnic at the school and some other events, so we actually had to park relatively far away. We had gotten there early, so I got both of the little girls out, and we headed for the side walk. Mae had her big girl shoes on because we had gone to a touch a truck event, so I let her walk on her own to the door. Luckily we were there quite early, so we had time.
And time we needed because for every two steps forward Mae would take, she would plop down on her bottom or turn around and start to run the other way. Goosie on the other hand spent all of her time picking “sunflowers” (known to the rest of us as dandelions.) She would collect a couple and then run up to me and say, “I have a surprise for you!” and then she would whip them out from her back and scream “Sunflowers!”
I don’t really know how long it took us to walk the few dozen feet from the sidewalk to the door, but it was a significant amount of time. And during this time, all I could think about was how unbelievably lucky I am.
Half a century ago what I do would have been the norm. Daddies go to work and mommies stay home with the babies. It was how it was and how it had to be. I can imagine it was a bit stifling… the not having any control over one’s own future. Of being required to be financially dependent upon somebody else. Of having any talents and skills and education one earned be wiped away by a world that refused to see women as equal and capable and competent.
I am so eternally grateful for all of those women who walked before me who gave me options. The option to earn an education. The option to work in the professional world. The option to attempt and achieve anything regardless of my gender. And the option to opt out of it all and stay at home in my little cocoon, nurturing my babies during this ever so brief moment of their early youth.
I remember in college the word “domestic” felt like a bad word. You could call someone the “b” word or you could call them a jerk, or you could call them “domestic.” I would have preferred either of the former two to the latter. To be domestic. I didn’t really know any females my age who cooked. Even if I had known how, I would never have considered sewing a button onto an article of clothing. Knitting — absolutely no way ever. I feared those skills.
Now I look back on that attitude and it makes me sad. It reminds me that for the longest time, I bought into the very modern notion that to be accomplished, to be effective, to be worthy, to be good enough, one had to produce, and one had to produce at a very high level.
All those things are good. They are so very good. I am grateful every day that my daughters can look out into their world and see women they love and respect making their way in business and education and healthcare and any number of fields. I am glad that they know, personally, women doctors and women executives and women lawyers. I’m grateful that they have these women to look up to and to aspire after if that is the route they should choose.
But I’m also glad my attitude has changed. I am grateful that during the overwhelming metamorphosis that occurs during childbirth and those first few months as a mom that I was able to appreciate my own role and my own values as much as all of those other ones that directed me in my early years.
I am grateful that my girls get to see that a woman can stay home and still be intelligent. That a woman can knit and still be accomplished. That a woman can devote her time and energy to her family and still be worth every single bit as much as the woman who is making half a million treating patients.
I read an article recently that argued against the feminist school that claims the only equality that should exist is the one that ignores any difference in the genders. That’s the school I bought into for years.
But now I see things differently. I see that true equality can only exist once we recognize differences both in genders and in personal lives as well as similarities. When all people are given the right to choose that which will fulfill them.
Today, when I saw Mae ambling up the sidewalk, I felt my heart bursting with gratitude. I was grateful for all those who came before me who gave me this choice. I was grateful for TJ for working so hard and sacrificing so much to give me this choice. I was grateful for the role models who went before me who taught me the dignity and importance of such domestic work, and I was grateful for these little people who came into my life and helped me find the meaning in it.
It’s not lost on me that I am a lucky person, that I have choices that unfortunately not all women and not all families have. And it’s not an easy path. It’s not restful or calm or easy going. It’s not the only path, and it’s not the best path for all people. But it is mine. And I hope I find the insight each and every day to cherish it and to honor it and to live it fully. Because like all blessings in life it is as fleeting as it is precious.
