More Than Just A Housewife, More Than Just A Mother

I read an article on Glenn Close's speech from the Golden Globe Awards last night and she said something that made me think of my mother.

OK, I think about my mother a lot, but that's beside the point.

In Glenn's speech she recalled that her mother felt that she sublimated herself to her husband and that in her 80s she felt she hadn't accomplished something.

Well, my mother, who was in her 80s, accomplished much. Perhaps not great things that amass wealth, or things that will be written down in history books or any book, but my mother did things. She made a difference in people's lives. She accomplished things. I truly believe she knew she had a full life in her 84 years.

When she decided she wanted to be a girl scout leader, she'd tell people she always wanted to be a teacher.

That may have been the case, but like many young women growing up in the 1950s, she wanted one thing, and that was to have a husband. I can recall her telling me, she was glad she met my father, because she wasn't really enjoying college.

So she chose the role of the housewife, but she also found ways do the things she wanted to do, and perhaps part of that was because of the man she married.

See, my father wasn't the typical alpha male, though he could be, when he wanted to be. He was a help mate. He brought home the bacon, so to speak, but he would help with the dishes, and in later years, he did the shopping and other chores too. He was a good man. Yes, he was in the generation that wanted their wife home, with a meal on the table when he came home from work, but he let my mom spread her wings, even if it were to be a scout leader and later a CCD teacher. There was grumbling, to be sure, but he let her do it nonetheless.

So though she wasn't a school teacher, my mother touched the lives of countless children she taught or had the care of over the years, and as she found herself in the hospital more often, she learned that when some of her Brownies or CCD students remembered her years later.

She did what she wanted, though she got there in a round about way.

I loved hearing her stories, though in her last months she shared a little too much about her personal life with my dad. She was definitely more than the mother I saw her to be and the world is a dimmer place without her light shining in it.

Yes, Emma Jane Guy accomplished much!