MEMOIR: CHAPTER ONE Emancipation

Emancipation

My sister-in-law brought recently brought me a box of mementoes my brother Tim had saved. In it, I found a heavy curved, metal band about 3” long and ½” wide. In gold letters on black, it says BRAKEMAN. Protruding from the top of the band is the symbol NP in red and gold. What…?

Jack looked over my shoulder. “It goes on the trainman’s hat.”

Then I remembered. Before he qualified to be a Conductor, Grandpa Nesmith was a Brakeman…

The train was due any minute, and it was always on time because my Grandpa Nesmith was the Conductor. When he pulled his big round railroad watch from his watch pocket, and yelled “All Aboard,” people knew they’d better be on board, or they’d be left behind, because the trains always ran on time. I hopped from one foot to the other, until Mama jerked my hand and said, “For mercy sake, Judy, settle down!”

She didn’t have to hold Wes’s hand. He stood quietly by her side, eleven years old and knew his manners. He held Jenny’s hand, and Timmy’s. They were six and three.

The train rushed into the station with its deafening noises, the whistle, the roar and the hiss of escaping steam. But my excitement wasn’t about the train, it was because I had turned eight that week, and Grandma was on that train with a special surprise just for me.

Grandma Mildred swooped off the train with two large carpet bags, crowing and chirping the way she did—she sounded just like a bird, the sounds she made. She wore a wool coat with one large button barely fastened across her ample bosom, and a smooth tilted hat with a feather that curved down her face.

“What’s my surprise, what’s my special surprise?” I danced from one foot to the other.

Timmy yanked on her coat. “Do I get a s’prise?”

Grandma leaned down to kiss him. “You’ll see—as soon as I unpack my bags.”

~~~

At home, Grandma pulled surprises out of her worn carpet bag, a small wooden train for Timmy, a cloth doll for Jenny, and a spiral-bound notebook for Wes.

I pulled the bag over and looked inside. I saw no more little presents. “Where’s my surprise?”

She laughed. “Let me get my coat off, for goodness sake!”

Grandma reached into the bag and pulled out a square blue tablecloth and a lacy white tablecloth. Rummaging into the bag again, she came up with a small corked bottle: Perfection Concentrated Coloring BLUE. Blue. My favorite color. And a small box of white birthday candles, with a drawing on the front of a fairy with lots of long curly hair, using her magic wand to light candles on a cake.

“I’m starting a tradition!” Grandma crowed. “Since you are my first granddaughter, you get to be the first to have a Coming of Eight Party. Jenny will be next, in a couple of years.” Turning to Mama, she asked, “Where’s your card table?”

Grandma spread the blue cloth then the lacy cloth over the card table, the blue twinkling through the lace. She baked my favorite vanilla cake, and used the blue food coloring in the icing. It took a lot, because I wanted a really blue cake.

The only people invited to my Coming of Eight party were me, Mama, and Grandma. Daddy took the other kids to the library in Astoria during the party, so we could have a grownup conversation, like Grandma said.

Sipping milky, sweet weak tea from a flowered china cup, I had the undivided attention of both my mother and my grandmother for the first time in my life. I asked what I figured was a grownup question. “President Truman will come through here on the train to get people to vote for him again for President, but Daddy says Mr. Dewey is going to win anyway. Is that who you’re going to vote for, Grandma? Mr. Dewey?”

Mama beamed at me. She looked proud, and maybe a little bit surprised. Grandma glanced at Mama, then showed her buck teeth in a grin. “Ever since Women’s Suffrage, I have only voted for Democrats. So I’m voting for Give-‘em-Hell Harry.” Her grin grew wider, saying that forbidden swear word.

“What’s Women’s Suffrage?” I asked. Grandma had taught school briefly before she got married. She knew a lot of big words.  She leaned forward, her dark eyes sparkling. Every time she did that, I knew I would learn something.

“Suffrage is the right to vote in elections and run for public office. Until 1920 only men had those privileges. Your mother was three years old before I was finally allowed to vote like a real person.” She clattered her teacup into its saucer. “Until then, women were simply the property of men, with few rights of their own.”

“Do you remember the first time you voted for President, Grandma?”

“I’ll never forget it. It was 1924, and I voted for the Democratic candidate, Mr. Davis. The Republicans won anyway, and we got President Coolidge. But at least I could finally cancel out your Grandpa’s vote, for the first time. Canceling him out with my vote was the only power I had.” Her bird-call laugh held a smug, triumphant glee. “And my vote helped to elect President Roosevelt eight years later.” She dabbed at her mouth with a white paper napkin.

Mama entered the conversation. “Why did Dad always vote Republican?”

“Because he belonged to the railroad union,” Grandma said, “and President Cleveland used the Army to break a railroad union strike. Cleveland was a Democrat. That was one of the reasons Frank always voted Republican after that.”

[What I didn’t know until many years later was that my grandfather was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which campaigned against Democrat Al Smith in the 1928 election. I learned it, those many years later, from my mother, who told me of her father and uncle coming home from “meetings” and scaring her by putting on black hoods with eye holes. I then researched it and learned that the KKK had been very active on the Northern Oregon Coast and other parts of Oregon in the Twenties. And yes, they wore black hoods.]

Grandma poured Mama another cup of tea. “More cake, dear?” she asked me.

“No thanks,” I said, “I want to know about that First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. She writes for newspapers and gives speeches. Mama really likes her.”

“I wish it had been Eleanor Roosevelt running,” Grandma said.  “I’d have voted for her.  “She’d have been a fine President.”

“But could a woman be President?” I asked.

Mama set down her cup, slopping tea into her saucer. “Of course a woman could be President. Before I die, I plan to vote for a woman for President. It could be you.”

Me? Me? I could imagine a lot of things I might be able to do, maybe be an aircraft pilot like Amelia Earhart, or a newspaper reporter like Brenda Starr in the comics. But President?

I looked back and forth between Grandma and Mama. Tried to imagine either one of them as President of the United States. It was easier to imagine my Mama as Bess Truman, who was kind of pretty. Or Grandma as Eleanor Roosevelt, who wasn’t. Grandma looked like Eleanor Roosevelt. She wrapped her dark hair around her head in a thick braid, and she had those same buck teeth.

I’d rather be First Lady, I thought. Who would even want to be President? They had to start wars and people called them names, and President Roosevelt died of a heart attack from all the worry. Then President Truman had to end the war, and those atom bombs must have made him feel awful about all those Japanese children who died.

But voting—yes, I could handle that.

I’d only vote for women.

FOREWORD: A MEMOIR

 Who will teach your children the meaning behind the facts?

- Tammy Drennan

 

And who will teach them the facts?

Recently I commented to a woman friend of my daughters’ generation that when I was a young professional woman in a male workplace (30-40 years ago), I usually found myself in meetings where I was the only woman. And I noticed that, often, when I made a comment or a suggestion, I was disregarded. Only when, later, a man repeated my thought as his own was my idea given credence and validity—as his idea.

She responded dismissively, “That never happens to me, because I have skills, knowledge and competence.”

That is one of the reasons I feel compelled to write this memoir. I had skills, knowledge and competence, and was generally acknowledged as the first and most experienced person in the country in my field. She wasn’t born yet when the Women’ Movement commenced. By the time she reached adulthood and became a professional woman with a career, many of the gains had been made, because those of us who lived in that time did the work for our daughters and granddaughters, and all of womankind. We showed up, wearing our lipstick, our power suits and high-heeled shoes, with all our superior skills, knowledge, and experience, and the added qualification of insight and intuition—which we honored—and respect for human relationships over profit. We demanded equal pay, and dignity, and demanded laws be passed. We demonstrated in the streets and testified in court and Congress. We pissed off our male colleagues when we wouldn’t “just shut up and take notes.” We took advantage of every opportunity for advancement, often at the expense of our free time and sometimes, family time. We never asked for special dispensation because we were pregnant, premenstrual, a single mother, or exhausted. We were constantly dissed: disrespected, dismissed, disregarded. We had to fight for every promotion, be better educated, better qualified, and harder working than our male “equals.” And still we had to fight for equal pay in order to get even small adjustments. We fought battles that were not won for many years. After decades of persistently demanding, we lost the big one: The Equal Rights Amendment.

African-American men achieved the right to vote 50 years before women did. We finally got it in 1920, 3 years after my mother was born. Her mother finally got to cast her first vote for President, canceling out her husbands’ vote! YAY!

The right to have dominion over our own bodies wasn’t won until 1973, after many women died having illegal abortions, and many more women had sacrificed and fought for the a woman’s right to choose.

And now, a significant number of politicians want to send us all back to the early days of the last century. Before birth control was legalized, before the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut. This 1965 decision, which considered a Connecticut law criminalizing the provision of counseling and medical treatment to married persons for the purpose of preventing pregnancy, recognized the constitutional right of married couples to use contraceptives.

Forty-seven years after this landmark decision, many U.S. women still have problems obtaining contraceptives and preventing unwanted pregnancies, and state and federal policies increasingly limit women’s access to contraceptive information and services.

• Public funding for family planning fails to keep up with the demand—nearly 17 million women are in need of subsidized family planning, yet only 4 in 10 of these women receive services at publicly funded clinics.
• Federal legislation guaranteeing insurance coverage for contraception is stalled indefinitely.
• State and federal laws are allowing health care providers (including pharmacists), institutions and insurers to refuse to offer or cover contraceptive services.
• Federally funded abstinence-only education prohibits teachers from discussing contraception, except in the context of failure rates.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly resisted attempts to make emergency contraception available over the counter, despite overwhelming support from its own advisory committees.
• LATE-BREAKING NEWS (5/25/12): The Senate Armed Forces Committee just voted to end the military ban on insurance coverage of abortion care for rape and incest. Progress! http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/

Before I was born, women were beaten, imprisoned, tortured, threatened and sometimes gave up their health or their lives to achieve suffrage—the right to vote—for generations to follow. We stand on the shoulders of giants. And our shoulders are now there for future generations.

But these facts and memories are lost to the generation which now benefits from knowing that their hard-won skills, knowledge and competence will be appropriately acknowledged and rewarded. They have no concept of what is was like to work in an environment where women were not welcomed, accepted, or honored.

For many women, even of this generation, the atmosphere of inequality still exists, albeit in more subtle forms. The laws regulating equal opportunity make it easier to be treated fairly, but unless they form networks of their own, professional women are likely to experience lack of opportunity—they are shut out of the deals made in locker rooms and on the golf course.

Women today don’t have the exhilaration of participating in a movement intended to change the world, the joy of newfound sisterhood, of a personal liberation we had not known was possible. The fun of plotting strategies and choosing who would be deployed to the front lines. The new-found self-assurance and confidence that came from joining with others when we thought we were alone in our perceptions and experiences and disappointments. During a period of intense social ferment and change, we relished the excitement of being a part of it.

That is why I write this memoir about the years of the Women’s Movement, and my experiences during that time. I was lucky enough to have pioneered in a newly-developing area of expertise, computers and technology in education, beginning in 1963 when all things were possible and very little was known. The opportunities for creativity and invention, development and innovation were unlimited. My early experiences and success propelled me into a career filled with opportunity, an international reputation, and indeed, respect. But not in everyday experiences in the workplace, marriage, or society as a whole.

 “Can the increasing loss of memory be a collective symptom trying to call attention to the deeper issues of sustaining culture and helping nature? Is it possible that the real social security crisis is about recollecting the deeper reasons for living one’s life, rather than simply collecting compensation for surviving it? Can life itself be trying to provoke an effort at recalling the deep memories and imagination that form the true inheritance of human kind?” Michael Meade

 What is the deeper meaning of the Women’s Movement, the true inheritance? It was about the simple equality of opportunity and treatment, about civil rights, about the rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution of the United States. And yet, we needed the 19^th Amendment to give us the right to vote, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to give us equal rights in the workplace. The ERA, never passed and adopted, would have guaranteed that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Finally passed by Congress in 1972, it had not gained ratification by the necessary 38 states within the required seven years, extended to ten.

As far as women’s lib, since we really don’t have it yet, it’s important to keep reminding young women how tenuous our hold is on what little forward movement has been made in the last 100 years.  Thankfully, a lot of men  have changed for the better, so maybe they wouldn’t let backslides happen either, but sadly, that’s just the educated ones, with a MORAL framework which ISN’T fundamentalism-based.

“Moral outrage weakens. Compassion strengthens.” ~ Roshi Joan Halifax

 I have to contrast techniques that worked for me (moral outrage) with what is necessary now in the age of David Letterman, the serial schtupper.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” ~ Gloria Steinem 

Although women have made many gains, women still don’t have equal pay for equal work and are now making an average of 77 cents for every dollar that men make. The biggest wage gaps are for working mothers—and   80% of American women become mothers by the time they are 44 years old. Single mothers make about 60 cents to a man’s dollar. I was a single mother for four years during the period of my fastest career development. Fortunately, I was able to negotiate for a fair salary—and yet, I was still not paid an equal salary to the men at my level. The reason? No doctorate. (There’s always something…) So I got a doctorate. And came back, asking for equal pay. Didn’t get it, until I used an underhanded strategy that involved working for free for six weeks, while in my spare time writing a grant for a federal agency that insisted on my salary being the equal of any other Director in my institution. The Program Monitor at the funding agency in Washington D.C. made it a condition of the funding.

Women are not equally represented in Congress. We represent more than half of the population, but only 17% of Congress, behind Turkmenistan, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. This is a huge loss for our country, because research has consistently shown that there are better outcomes when women are more equally represented. The Harvard Business Review reported recently that “If a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises.”

Perhaps this email I received the other day from a male friend, 85 years old (which he describes as eight and a half decades of moral bankruptcy and male superiority, which actually ended at age 9 or 10 at the hands of a little friend named Irene) typifies the changing attitudes of many of the men of our generation. It made me laugh out loud. I have his permission to pass it on:

“The Solution

So you think we would do better if our leaders would be women.

Is that a sensible question? Just look around at the state of the nations.

How would that work?

When it came time for decision making all of the women leaders would have a quilting party. Sit around and discuss possibilities along with juicy news about this and that.

No question. The results would be more sensible

And the men. What would they do?

What they are good at. Hitting balls and playing with their privates.

You think it is possible?

I think we are well on the way.”

Beach McConnell

I hope so.

The Women’s Movement was about creating a better world for our daughters, and for our daughters’ daughters, and thus for our sons, and their sons.

We must not forget.

Mystery Cookies: A Recipe

I made mystery cookies for the reading tonight at Bay City Arts Center. Yumm. Chewy-crisp-carmelly, and you can eat just one. Well, maybe you can. I can’t. To sample them, show up tonight at the BCAC to hear me read from Looking Through Water and Tricia Gates Arciga read from her memoir, Jesus Loves Women. Both books, though different genres, explore the mystery of a girl/woman coming to term with her spiritual gifts. So I made mystery cookies. Here’s the recipe:

Market Mystery Cookies

MARKET MYSTERY COOKIES

The Oregonian columnist who published this recipe in the Nineties wrote, “The originator of the recipe was an elderly woman who supported herself baking & selling these cookies at the Lancaster County Farmers Market in Wayne, PA. Tiny, less than bite-size, these cookies were sold by weight, not by the dozen. I’ve watched grown men & children of all ages eat Market Mystery Cookies so fast both hands blurred.”

makes about 200 tiny cookies, a little more than a pound.
This recipe may be doubled, but no more.

1/2 c. butter (1 cube)
1 c. firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 1/4 c. plus 2 Tbsp old-fashioned oatmeal, uncooked.
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla

Melt butter in top of double boiler over simmering water. Stir in sugar until lump-free & smooth.

Stir in oatmeal, then egg & cook dough, uncovered, for 1 hour over barely simmering water, stirring occasionally.

Remove top of double boiler from heat, add vanilla & stir. Let dough stand at room temperature 1 hour to firm. (Dough is quite runny when hot.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover several cookie sheets with foil and spray liberally with Pam. Drop dough by level 1/4 teaspoonfuls [seriously! They have to be that small!] 1/2-inch apart onto cookie sheets. Once you determine how much ¼ tsp. is, you can use the tip of a butter knife to dip that much out, and use buttered fingers to push it onto the foil. Don’t flatten.

Bake 7 minutes or until well-browned. Turn cookie sheet once during baking. Cool to lukewarm, 5-10 minutes, when cookies will peel easily from foil. Use a butter knife if one is sticky. Finish cooling in single layer on baking sheet. Store in tightly covered container.

If too-cold cookies stick, return to the oven briefly to reheat to barely lukewarm.

On Memory and Storytelling

I’m working on a memoir, and the excerpt below from Melanie Rae Thon inspires me. I’ve read recent research on memory that reveals how fluid and flexible our remembered stories are. Every time we tell or write a memory, we change it. When we put it back into storage, we store the changed version. And then, because it is “my memory” of the event, we believe it to be absolutely accurate. And we are wrong.

As author Tom Spanbauer says, “Every time we open our mouth, we lie. But it’s the lie that tells the truth.”

The Heart Breaks, and Breaks Open: Seven Reasons to Tell a Story in 2011

“I believe storytelling is a human impulse, not a choice, but a necessity. Unlike the old idea that memories are “wired” in the brain, synapses seared for (almost) all time, current research indicates that “reactivating a memory destabilizes it, putting it back into a flexible, vulnerable state.”

In other words, every time you remember an episode of your life, you are reinventing it: embellishing, deleting, altering it through fusion and imagination.

If you cannot imagine, you cannot remember.

There is no such thing as “I.”

Re-membering is transformation!

Every person on this earth is a storyteller.

Our memories are shifting collages, narratives spun from fragments, a ceaseless flow of images and associations, an explosion of sensory impressions, a web so splendidly complicated we have no hope of translating experience into language.

Yet we persist in trying to do so.

Every living being, human and more-than-human, is an infinite mystery.

Every moment of love is filled with the love of a lifetime.”

Procrastination

Every writer knows the insistent call: there are dishes in the sink, 61 unread emails, the dog needs a bath, prepare for that book club appearance, make that dentist appointment …maybe if I just take care of those things first, then I can write. But “those things” are gluttonous; they devour the day.

And the next day: I have a meeting to go to this afternoon, can’t start anything now, might as well do the laundry and clean the fridge, return those phone calls, answer those emails. And there’s always the marketing: make the phone calls, deliver the packets, schedule appearances.

But the real reason writing time is sporadic? I have too many projects, chapters, and blog articles in my head, and want to do them all at once. Can’t settle down and do just one.

Last night, after getting home from a long weekend attending a granddaughter’s graduation from UW in Seattle, I was too tired to write. But I wanted to start out Monday morning writing!  I made a list of projects, their current status, and the single next step needed to make progress on each one. Then it seemed easier.

1. MEMOIR

Status: Plot/scene outline completed;  Five pieces reviewed, must revise

Single next step: Pick one piece, revise it

2. SEQUEL TO WATER

Status: Many chapters done, must revise to reflect   Looking Through Water

Single next step: Draft a new Chapter One

3. “ON CAREGIVING”—Postlogue/sequel to Five Stages of Getting Well: Requested by publisher of Chinese translation of Five Stages

Status: Two pieces written; this could be another book

Single next step: Revise “Shut Up. And Don’t Leave.” and send to publisher

Simply organizing the tasks in this way freed up my mind. Immediately, I saw that I could revise the “Shut Up” piece before I went to bed. It turned out to take only half an hour and left me feeling ready for the next day. Today. 

It’s 9:20 a.m., and I’ve done a second revision of “Shut Up,” sent it off, and posted it on my other blog. Check!

Now I’m going to start to work on the first chapter of the Sequel to Water. I know where to start, because a month or so ago I made a chart for the four sections of the novel, and plotted 12 scenes for each section. It turned out I had already written (before Water) 39 of the 48 scenes. But 11 of them require major revision. I’ll need to do a mini-biography of each character in light of Water. Lots to do. But for now, I have to tackle that first chapter. I’ll do the bios later.

Finally, after a couple of months of running in place, with lots of distractions, most of them necessary, I’m back on track. And now, I’ve added a fourth item to the project list:

4. UPDATE BOTH BLOGS

Status: Not much, lately

Single next step: Write and post an article on Procrastination for the author blog

Check!    

Great Reviews Still Coming In

Click on the “Reviews” tab above to read the reviews of some who have read the novel.

And please add your own by clicking on the Comment link below.

On another note, my 9-year-old granddaughter Gracey is avidly reading the novel, which surprised me, as I hadn’t anticipated the strong responses I’m getting from young adult and middle school-age readers. She showed me which chapter she was currently reading–she’s more than halfway through–and said, “Oh, and I found a typo on page 5.”

She was right. I had found it, too, and the second edition, out now, has corrected it. Yet another advantage of Print On Demand.

Now I’m wondering–should I give her another, corrected copy? Or let it forever stand in her library as is, evidence of her sharp eyes and discernment.

Her sister Kelley has just turned 13, and is also now reading the book. Her question: “what genre is this book?” (She’s doing a book report, it turns out.)

Both kids liked and could relate to the characters.

A Whole New Audience

OK, I wasn’t surprised to discover a cat (see post below) had discovered and apparently admired my novel–cats are very discriminating, as any cat-lover knows–but an audience that did surprise me was children. I hadn’t thought Looking Through Water would appeal to teenagers or children, with its themes of family conflict and tragedy. But after receiving great reviews from kids aged 9 on up (most not related to me) I reviewed some middle school and young adult literature. The major themes? Family conflict and tragedy. Not to mention drug and alcohol problems, incest, bullying, and suicide. Children tell me what they like most in Water  is the characters. They can relate to a gifted, curious, but lonely child, growing up to make difficult but mature decisions about her life. A granddaughter who just turned 13, and has never enjoyed reading, found that the novel changed her attitude about books.

An interesting note: children and young adults tell me they “never cry reading a book.” And they didn’t cry reading this one. But many, many adults have told me the novel brought them to tears, more than once. Perhaps it takes more life experience to develop that kind of empathy with a character.

I’d be interested to hear if you know of young people who have read and enjoyed Looking Through Water.