The girls are playing around in my bathroom. Lauren is in the tub. Kelly is, apparently, providing tub-side entertainment. I’m on my bed, laying on my belly, watching PBS’s Makers: Women Who Make America and growing prouder of my gender by the minute.
Sadly uninformed (though, really, is it any surprise I knew nothing about women’s history…it’s sure not taught), I had spent the last decade hating the feminists who got me into this mess. A full-time job outside the home and another facing me when I got home. Thanks a lot, ladies. What was so wrong with staying home, leading a nice, quiet, kept-wife life anyway?
Only now I see. Because PBS is teaching me what I never learned in high school or college. I had it all wrong. I felt put out. Overwhelmed. Burdened with the responsibility for home, family AND half the household income.
That’s never what they intended.
The host asks Gloria Steinem about the current controversy over whether women can really have it all. She says, “Well, no, women can’t have it all as long as we still have to do it all.”
I wish she’d run for president.
The girls get out of the tub just in time to see the spot I wanted them to see — Kathryn Switzer, the first woman to run a marathon.
Like me, they become transfixed and soon, they’re next to me and all three of us are lying in a row on our bellies, learning about the women who gave us the freedoms we have today.
I have no idea why Lauren is wearing my scarf on her head like a babushka (but I do love to say “ba-boosh-ka”) or why she’s laying on a doily (another fun word to say).
It’s past their bedtime, but I let them watch because this is important. They should learn what I never did.
“Watch and learn, girls,” I say. “These are the women who gave us the lives we have today. They fought hard to get rights for women.”
Soon though, the topic turns to the sexual revolution and the women on the screen are talking about faking orgasms.
Dan and I laugh, of course.
“What’s a faking orgasm?” Kelly asks, wondering what we find so funny.
“Ah, er,…well, you know….I will be happy to explain that you…in four or five years. But, right now, it’s bedtime. Let’s go, girls!”
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About Just Write
“What ends up revealing itself when free writing is that everything has meaning. That is a magnificent gift of writing. If we write from a free heart-gut place, our souls start speaking.”
Loved this! I have two grown daughters and one young son, and I’m being published for the first time in the upcoming book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics. I feel the need to teach all three of my children about women’s history. I wish Gloria would run for president, too, but I fear the persisting stigma attached with her and others like her (Jane Fonda, for instance), would make that one hideously ugly race. I will proudly settle for Hilary–when *they* won’t know what size Jimmy Choos hit them! It remains to be seen whether she will suffer the same kind of opposition a black president has, or whether it might be even worse. She will have my support, and surely that of powerhouses like Gloria & Jane.