International Women's Day Shout Out

Thursday, March 8 is International Women's Day. It got me to thinking about all of the strong women I know and all of the men who supported them.

Think of how much things have changed since we were young. How many professional women did you know growing up? How many women worked because they wanted to? I didn't know any female doctors, lawyers, or investment brokers. I did know female teachers, secretaries, tellers, and nurses, but that was it. Most of my friends' moms stayed home or had one of those "acceptable" professions. I think it speaks volumes about how far we've come that my children go to female pediatricians. My doctors are all women. One of my friends at church is the CFO of a major bank in town. Another is a high-powered attorney for a big law firm. Our first financial advisor was a woman.

When my daughter was in first grade, she came home with a worksheet on which she had gotten a problem wrong. I was checking it over to see what she had missed. They had had to put the first letter of the word that described a picture, and she had put "D" under a picture of a woman with a shot in her hand. I asked her to explain her answer, and she said, "That's a doctor, Mom. I don't know why I got it wrong." I sent her teacher a note explaining her confusion, but her teacher, being near retirement, still counted it wrong. "We're on Ns," she said. "That's a nurse." I thought then how cool it was that my thoughtful child would put a "D for doctor" under that picture and not automatically assume that a woman with a shot would be a nurse.

How the world has changed!

I think about my grandmother, whose potential was enormous but whose opportunities were limited. Her father, my great-grandpa Josep, was so forward thinking in 1908 that after he has sent her and her sister through secondary school in France, he sent them to every other possible schooling they could attend. THEN, he sent them to the Isle of Jersey to learn English. When they were adults, my aunt was supporting herself in Switzerland working as a designer in clothing manufacture, and my grandmother was a secretary at a champagne company in Reims. Once in America, my grandmother was able to get a job as a secretary at a tobacco company. She would take dictation from her English-speaking boss, translate it in her mind to French where she would write in in shorthand in French. Then she would translate it back into English and copy the dictated letter in English for him to sign and send on its way. Her father made sure that this brilliant mind did not go to waste! To think that Grandpa Joe was so open minded that he wanted everything for his daughters that they could possibly achieve boggles my brain. My heart swells with gratitude for his support of the women in his life.

Then I think of my Great-Grandma Jane, who left Ireland in 1886 to come to America to be a domestic servant. She took the only opportunity she had and ran with it. She and her sisters started a loan company so that the Irish immigrants could get money from somewhere because no bank would loan to the "papists." She became a wealthy woman. She purchased the apartment building in which she lived and had enough money that when my grandparents went to buy their house, she loaned them the money, not the bank.

These two women defied the odds that were stacked against them and were successful, but it would not have been so had they not had the support of their fathers and husbands. Grandma Jane's husband must have encouraged her, otherwise she would not have had the gumption to do what she did. When he had a stroke in his early 50s, she was able to keep the family afloat. Their son saw in his mother the value of a smart, powerful woman, so when he met my grandmother, his boss's secretary, he knew a good thing when he saw it.

Together, they raised five children and put both daughters through college when women during that time traditionally didn't attend school past 12th grade.

My father in turn raised three daughters to become whatever we wanted to be. It was never in doubt that had we wanted to be doctors or lawyers or financeers, we would have been encouraged and supported 100%. By choice, my sisters and I took the traditional routes. Two of us became teachers, and one became a nurse. But it was our choice to follow these calls. All of my dad's siblings were educators---two college professors, one librarian, and a high school teacher. My grandmother taught French in her home. My mother's grandmother was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in the Kentucky countryside. Education is in our blood, but had we wanted more, we would have been told to go for it.

I look at my daughters, and it is no longer impossible for them to become President of the United States if they so choose. Several very strong women have put that possibility within their reach. It is amazing when I watch movies set in the 1960s to see how far we've come within a couple of generations. I cannot imagine what we as a society have lost because so many brilliant minds have been stifled over the course of centuries, and I am thankful to those who have come before me, forging the path of choice for me, that I can choose to be a stay-at-home mom or I can choose to be a CFO of a major corporation.

We still have a LONG way to go. That we are still debating women's healthcare choices is crazy frustrating to me, but I know we will get past this and move on and be better for it. In the meantime, I send a shout out to Jane, Henriette, Anna, Josep, Maria, John, Joseph, John, Wanda and Kirk for their unwavering belief that women can do whatever they want.

What we leave behind

What struck me too was how little we leave."

God, how true this is. I saw it first hand when we whittled Uncle Bob down from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom efficiency to what we could haul away in our cars. Again with Dad. What is left? Some furniture? Some letters? Dishes? A class ring? Once the knowledge of who these things belonged to is lost, they cease to have meaning. I inherited things from both of these wonderful men that some would consider junk, but to me, these things are precious because they once belonged to men I loved. Through these things, Dad and Uncle Bob are still part of my life. Once their history is forgotten, what is left?

It is sad what we cling to.

I have a piece of paper that I found in my mother's purse. She had written my phone number on it and then later used it to blot her lipstick. I keep it to remind me that she. was. here. Sometimes I open it up and place it on my cheek as if she is giving me a kiss. But to anyone else, it's just a used up piece of paper.

And Jane. What of Jane? She was born in Ireland, in the middle part of the 19th century. One of twelve children, most of whom left Erie for greener pastures. The girls, all six, came to America. The boys went to Australia and America, save William that we know for sure who stayed in Thurles. And can you imagine their mother? Losing most of her children to the new worlds? Once they left, rarely did they return, most certainly they did not come back from Australia. I can only find where Jane went back once after Willie died. Her sisters pooled their money and sent Jane, John, and JWF back to Ireland to get her mind off things, as if a trip "home" only to leave again would help.

During a crossing to America, she was in steerage. She was traveling with her niece, as the story goes, and it was so rough, that they drank the holy water they had brought with them from Ireland so to preserve their souls should the boat sink.

She arrived in the US the same year the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. I wonder what she thought as she entered New York Harbor. She worked as a domestic for a time before marrying another Irish immigrant she had met here, a carpenter, from a town not fifty miles from her own. She had two sons and a daughter. Her husband had a stroke and had to give up his business and work for the New York Botanical Gardens. Her children were industrious. Her oldest child had his first job lighting the candles in the local Jewish Synagogue on Saturday nights.

She must have been smart and good with math. She and her sisters started their own loan company. Banks wouldn't lend money to Irish immigrants, so Jane and her sisters did. They charged interest and saved and loaned and saved and loaned. By the time Mimi and Poppy moved to Louisville, she had enough money that she loaned them what they needed to buy their house on Dorothy Avenue.

She owned the apartment building in which she lived, so she made money from the renters. I can imagine that she did not tolerate late rent payments.

She looks hard in her pictures. All who knew her, from MJW to Dad to Uncle Bob, said that she was not a "nice" grandma. Not mean exactly, but not warm and fuzzy. She meant business.

She certainly was not sentimental. She burned family pictures so no one would "laugh at how funny we looked," as she told MJW. She roasted red peppers in that same furnace, holding them in the fire until the skin was black and blistered and peeled off the meat with ease. Says MJW, "They were delicious."

She buried her son, Willie, when he was seven years old, dying at the end of July of a rheumatic heart. She buried her daughter, Margaret, when she was in her 30s, dying in child birth. Jane was with her through the labor and could not do anything but watch helplessly as her daughter slipped away.

She raised Margaret's children, living with them, while their father, a fireman, worked long hours. She must have been religious. One of the grandchildren she raised became a priest.

What is left of Jane? Only her name on some documents and a marker in Calvary Cemetery in Queens and the stories about her that keep her alive through the telling. I think that is why I write my life for people to read. So that when I am gone, there will be something left, and I will live once again when my words are read.