Day 22

Here we are, approaching the end of the month. It sort of flew by and sort of crawled by, if that makes any sense. Things haven’t gotten much better for women as the month has inevitably crawled along. In fact, I am struggling to see the signs I normally see that anyone even notices it. Sometimes I feel like I am the last voice left, shouting myself hoarse in an effort to be heard. Oh, well, I intend to continue shouting as long as I have a voice.

Today I chose another essay. This one is related to the one I wrote yesterday, but it is more personal. I think sometimes the people who have never been famous and will never be famous should be honored for their accomplishments.. So I dedicate this to my role models.

INSPIRATION

Yesterday I wrote about some amazing women, women who made large contributions to knowledge and human well being, but no one knew their names. Today I want to continue the conversation. This time I want to talk about my own role models, women I have known who showed me a path toward accomplishing more than I could dream about. I will not address the women by name; they are not public figures, and I will respect their privacy, instead just giving them initials.

I’ve written before about my grandmother; she was an amazing woman in her own right, and was my first female role model. She was the first woman who believed in me…and she told me she did. She encouraged me to reach outside the home when all my training was pushing me toward domesticity. She was there for me when I needed someone to talk to, and she pinned her hopes on me, that I would one day do the things she had not been allowed to do. I wish she had lived to see me do those things.

My grandmother was soft-spoken and a calming present in a world that was too frequently chaotic. She spent most of her life teaching high school English, one of the fields a married woman could enter in her time. She waited later than usual to marry, and finished college first. She had her children in her late twenties, two of them, both sons. She worked long days, and then took responsibility for feeding the field hands, keeping the house spotless, and doing all the other work to keep her family together. She didn’t complain about it; that was what women did.

After her younger son got married, the grandchildren started to arrive. I was number three, and the second girl. My earliest memories of her include her telling me I was smart, I was able to do the things I wanted to do, and encouraging me to dream big. I did dream big…not of meeting a prince and becoming a Disney princess. To me, those were small dreams. I dreamt of being a lawyer, being a doctor, owning my own business, and finally, of being a writer. There were times when I dreamed of being a singer, but even I didn’t take that seriously. I always knew I couldn’t sing.

If my grandmother had her way, I would have lived with her. She had me over to spend weekends and even weeks with her as often as possible. She showed me a lot that I didn’t find anywhere else. She showed me a woman who was strong, capable, and talented. She tried to teach me to play piano, but I didn’t practice enough and quit. Sometimes I wish I had persevered, but I had other priorities. The one thing she didn’t show me was a woman who knew how to say no.

One of my strongest memories of my grandmother was a conversation we had one Christmas after dinner. My sisters were there, I think. I know it wasn’t just me. She gave us advice, but we didn’t realize it at the time. We thought she was just telling stories. Her final word on the stories she told was that she might have had a better marriage if she just bounced a chair off his head now and then. My grandmother, once married, chose the path of submission, even as she fought for the rights of women in other spheres. The choice cost her dearly in terms of happiness and feeling good about herself. She didn’t want us to make that choice.

I would also like to talk about a woman I have never said enough about. If someone asks me who my best boss was, this is the one I name. E was said to be difficult to work with; everyone told me when I applied to transfer to her unit that I was making a mistake. They said we would never get along. They were wrong.

E valued my work in a way no other boss ever had before or ever has since. She was the only woman in her position at that time – it was the early 1980s – and everyone let her know she was out of place. She wasn’t; she was at least as good at her job as the other managers, and she worked harder than any of them.

She took me under her wing; I became her personal project. I was not yet finished with college when I joined her team, and my part time journey through my last year was tedious and exhausting. Long days of work followed by long nights of school, and coming home to husband and child, took their toll. I was on the verge of giving up, throwing away the dream I had dreamt practically since birth, dropping the one thing I wanted more than anything.

The department I worked for had programs to assist employees who continued their education. I didn’t know about them. I was only twenty when I started with them, and had never worked a job with benefits before. No one gave me an orientation; they sat me at a desk, told me do this, and I did it. E filled in that gap. Thanks to her, I got assistance. They suspended the scholarship program the year I applied because of cuts in the Reagan budget. All I got was a special leave that allowed me to take classes during the day so I could get those last few classes I needed. I finished. I achieved my first dream…I was a college

I moved on, and had many other bosses as I moved up the professional ladder, but I have never had a boss quite like E. I don’t know where she is now, if she is even still alive, but I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate her, this amazing woman who touched my life, and who knows how many others. Thank you, E.

Finally, I would like to talk about G. Somewhat later in my life, post-divorce, suffering from major depression, hospitalized repeatedly, I was once again on the verge of giving up. I decided instead to go back to school. I completed the courses to get a B.S. in Biology; it was easier and quicker because I already had all the general education courses. G was one of my professors that final year. I had no idea how important she would become.

When I began my masters, I approached G about being my thesis advisor – my major professor. She already had graduate students, enough that she felt slightly overwhelmed, but she agreed, afraid that I would not continue if I couldn’t find a major professor. She guided me through the process of selecting my graduate committee and helped me draw up my plan for classes and research. So far, nothing special. Nothing unusual.

G was aware of my situation. She knew I was raising a teenager on my own, that I was working three jobs just to keep a roof over our head, and that I was struggling with a life-threatening illness. If I needed to talk, she was there. My first semester of my masters was a difficult one. I was carrying a heavy course load, and working those three jobs. I told her one day I thought I would drop out. I didn’t think I could handle it. She nodded her head, and sat down to talk to me. She suggested I drop one of my classes; it wasn’t required for my major, even though we both thought it would be a good class to have.

I have never figured out why I didn’t think of it. I’d dropped few classes in the past, but had on one occasion. I knew that option was available. I felt like dropping the class was as bad as failing. I didn’t want to be a failure. She helped me understand that dropping out would be a failure. Dropping a class would merely be an admission of my limits. It was good for me. Recognizing my limits has helped me since, though I am still not good at telling people no or turning down extra projects they lay on me. I still have that faint suspicion that will make me a failure. I frequently think of G when I start to feel like a fraud or a failure. She would never allow me to think that about myself.

While much of the guidance G gave me was probably pretty standard for a mentor, it helped me in ways only E and my grandmother had ever helped me. She stood in my eyes as an example of a woman who could do it, a woman who got a challenging doctorate as a single mother, even when it meant traveling to Japan. Without having to say or do anything special, she guided me along a path that was anything but smooth (I did my research in the gypsum hills; boy, was it rocky!). She spent time helping me sort and analyze my data. She was there at the very time I needed her.

There have been a handful of other women who passed through my life, women who gave me something, perhaps without realizing it. I couldn’t detail all of them here and do them justice, but I hope wherever they ended up, they know how special they are. I thank all of them. With few female role models in my family, I found them where I could. None of them were perfect; they all had flaws and weaknesses. Maybe that was the most important thing. Through their interactions with me, I learned that it was okay to have some imperfections. You could still be someone to admire even if you weren’t perfect.

My hope for every girl is that they will have the fortune to have good role models. Mine were few, and their roles in my life did not allow me to recognize my potential and live it early. They did their part, and I cherish every one of them. Their memories are burned in my mind.