In the first place, I am definitely not what most women my age have seen themselves as. I never hated my mother, never broke free from her and tried to forget her, never saw her as any kind of enemy. Funny, but that is almost always the first impression I have gotten from the writings of most feminists and that was never me.
I am a child of the 40's, a teen from the '50's, and my childhood was nearly perfect. Although I always think of my mother as a working mother, she did not work during the years when I was between 5-13. She was an RN and she worked when I was quite young and began to work again when I entered high school. I always saw her as a very successful woman who even during the years when she didn't work was always in demand in our little town for her skills, not only for her nursing skills, but when our church had a visiting minister, she was the hostess. She was the room mother who made the most interesting goodies for us and the Bible teacher who made Scripture come alive in the minds of her students.
Besides that, she was a very good role model for me as she was a very involved woman in town, organizing the first PTA in our school system and serving as its president, organizing the women's group at the church and serving as that president as well as being very active in the Sunday School of the church, teaching teens and organizing the classes for that age.
It seemed that mother could do everything: she sewed, making all of our clothing; she crocheted, she painted china, she baked delicious goodies for everyone; she made handcrafted centerpieces, even making a wonderful abstract Christmas tree for our wall one year. I cannot think of anything that was ever written about in a woman's magazine that she was not quite successful at doing. One year she shaped and painted marzipan fruit and vegetables just to see if she could do it. They were so very lifelike and far better than any I have ever seen done since then.
And yet, uppermost in my mind is the fact that she was a working mother long before that was a common thing. She began working at the local hospital when I was first in high school and two years later, she was a floor supervisor in that hospital. By the time I was in college, she was the nursing supervisor at night for the entire hospital and those who worked with her and for her seemed to admire her as much as I did.
I wanted to be just like her. She was everything I wanted to be: a good wife, a wonderful mother, a great cook, a delightful hostess, an excellent teacher, and such a beautiful person. My husband loved her and all of his friends enjoyed going to her house for coffee and her fruit cake during the holidays. She was a very complete woman who brought me up to know that I would and could be the very same.
There was never any other thought in my mind than that I would attend college and have a profession, this is those days when supposedly, all women were learning that all they needed to do was to get married. You know, that was never a part of my education. My mother taught me from the days when I could first understand that I had to be able to take care of myself, that I did not need to depend on anyone else ever. Seems that I was brought up to be a feminist.
And yet, when feminism became the rage, what those women were saying was NOT what I wanted to say. They did NOT define me. I suppose that I have always been my own woman and I always will be.
