Colleen,
In the early 1970s when I was a little girl, your uncle Bruce and I would start the school year already anxiously awaiting the Sears Christmas catalog. We would pore over that sucker looking for all the crap we wanted to ask for for Christmas. We’d sit side by side on Grandma’s scratchy couch and take turns circling items we hoped would magically appear under our Christmas tree on the 25th of December. As he was a boy and I a girl, there was never any confusion as to which circled toys were for me, which for him.
When I was about 8 years old, I desperately wanted a pink nurse’s kit I saw in the catalog. It was so pink so girly. But that Christmas I didn’t get the pink nurse’s kit. I got a black doctor’s kit instead that had a lot more stuff in it and said “DOCTOR” on it. My mother told me that I could be a doctor if I wanted. Women could be doctors as well as nurses and just because it was pink didn’t mean it was the only option for girls. I could choose. I had already abandoned my desire to be a “stewardest” by this point. My mother, a feminist, wasn’t trying then (nor ever in the future) to push me into a male-dominated career or something like that; she really just wanted me to know that I could do whatever I wanted as long as it was important work, and it shouldn’t be limited by gender. She also may have been concerned that my other career aspiration to this point was a “check out girl at Red Owl” grocery store.
My mother left her career and stayed home with us when we were growing up. She baked, she cooked meals and kept the house, schlepped us to dance class and little league practices but also fed her intellectual life with books, politics, great friends and lively conversation. And when we were mostly grown up, she went back to teaching. She chose to do that and students at Wayne High for 20 years were the better for it.
When I reached my career goal of check out person at TWO different grocery stores by the time I was out of high school, I had to rethink my career path 😏and it turned out I didn’t want to be a nurse, doctor or “stewardest.” What I wanted was to be a teacher--like my mother was, like her mother was, like you are now.
I’m so proud of the strong woman you are and the career choice you have made. You can powerfully impact the world with your strength, grace, and compassion. There’s not much more important than what we do every day. It’s going to be hard. There’s no phoning it in, and there will be tough times and failures and self-doubt, but there will also be small and tremendous successes and joy and wonderment and fun. You are going to be an excellent teacher, and a 4th generation Jacques-Hodges-Schafer-McGrath one at that.
Welcome to the fold Ms. McGrath and God bless you, my Dream Come True; now go show them what you’ve got!
Mom
