Our granddaughter Hannah loves to hear about how I was married at the stage she is now: 21 and a graduating college senior.
“Tell me again why you and grandpa got married,” she’ll ask now and then, simply not understanding that the world I knew and hers are so vastly different.
“Were your parents upset?” she has wondered aloud, assuming that after their daughter went through the rigors of four years of college, she would immediately turn around and get married.
“Upset?”
They were thrilled that I had met a man who would — ahem — take care of me, a man who had a bright future.
As to my future, that would take care of itself,
I would teach, using the degree in secondary education I’d earned, and then I would — ahem — settle down and have kids.
Yes, I tell Hannah, that was the script back then. I tell her that three of my closest friends were married before we graduated. I also tell her that all three ended up divorced.
This comes to mind because it’s March — and that means it’s National Women’s History Month.
I want our granddaughters, and yes, our grandsons, to know that in some ways, this designation delights me. I like the idea of a high beam of light shining on women.
But I also feel a certain disappointment that here we are again, reviewing the challenges that still lurk year after year.
The weary clarion call for equal pay for equal work.
The frustration of exhausted women working those infamous two jobs: the paying one, and the one that greets them when they come home to the “second shift.”
Both are such old songs now, and both are so frustrating. Hannah has every reason to expect such a different scenario. She goes to Barnard, a women’s college — and one of the few left. She expects a world that will consider her credentials, not her gender, when she goes out to meet it.
She has plans for making a difference in the world, not as woman but as a person. And yes, she says she wants marriage and children down the road. And I hope for her sake that she fulfills that wish. But Hannah has gained a strong sense of herself. She doesn’t apologize for wanting what men want. She doesn’t shrink into the background when men are present.
How well I remember ending up in a class at Penn where I was one of only two “coeds,” as we were known, and felt totally intimidated about speaking up.
The professor had made that even more difficult by seeming to ignore us when our female hands dared to go up. An older gentleman, I think he actually resented our presence because word was that he had a ribald sense of humor, and we coeds ruined all that fun for the boys - — and him.
So yes, I’m grateful for the giant strides women have made. I’m grateful that Carly, our youngest granddaughter, had no idea that men could be doctors and dentists, because in her universe those spaces were occupied for women.
I want so much that as Carly, who is 11, grows into adulthood, she will keep her pride as an athlete. I dream that granddaughter Emily will continue to debate and question and argue her way through life because she is already deeply committed to principles.
And I want grandsons Sam, Jonah, Danny and Zay to recognize women as equals, to treat them with honor, and if and when they marry, to consider home and family as their domain just as surely as it is for their wives.
So Women’s History Month?
It’s good news — and not so good news.
And maybe someday we’ll all figure that out, and just celebrate as … humans! ••
