A privileged life she leads

Mosaic/mural in the Mission/Castro district of SF

Struggle is not a word that I would use to describe my life. That's not to say that it has always been easy. I have experienced challenges, grief, fears, disappointments and regrets.  I have felt overwhelmed, depressed, scared and out of control. I have struggled with emotions, relationships, experiences and beliefs, but I don't feel like life has been a struggle. Which has made it difficult for me to tackle this new koan. In many ways, it has brought up for me, again, awareness that, in this world of 6.5 billion people, I am an extremely privileged individual.

Consider these things:

• I cannot remember going hungry a single day of my life
• I was assured a K-12 education and due to my grades & support from my family was able to go to a private, high ranking university for my Bachelors degree
• I have never been physically or sexually assaulted by anyone
• I grew up in a family and community that allowed my to explore my own ideas and beliefs and that did not force me to take on theirs

I'm not sure how many 28 year-old women on this planet can say the same.

I mention my age because I know that I say all of this from the relative perspective of youth. I have a lot of living to do and I expect there will be challenges and experiences that I struggle with in the future. As terrifying as it is, there is one bullet point above that I can never be sure will remain true. And as one gets older and more entrenched in this world, the opportunities for grief and injury grow more real.

I am also aware that I began looking at this koan from perhaps the opposite perspective that my mother did. While she thought of the struggle of the individual experience through the story of the moth, I thought of the massive struggle of human and women's rights. So, having stood upon my soapbox and reminded us all of what we may often forget, I have decided to look at this koan from a more personal lens in my next few posts and really explore struggle within my life experience.

Looking Back

 Who needs a wife? The short answer is, we all do. But this is a blog and we are about the written word, so I shall delve a little deeper. The word wife comes from the old English wif which really means woman. The topic has produced a couple of books in recent years, A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom and more recently The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston for those who want to really explore it historically and in the context of our society today. But here is my take on it. Growing up in the sixties gave me an opportunity to see some radical changes in the meaning of wife as the role of women in society underwent major changes. I grew up in a household dominated by women as I have no brothers. The expectations for me to eventually meet a man and marry and have children were no doubt present and expressed both verbally and non-verbally by my parents and immediate community. But I also felt that I could pursue my own interests and have a career due to the social climate of the day and the relative enlightenment of my parents. What did I want? I wanted to marry and have children and take care of a household. Not like the Donna Reed caricature or other media representations I grew up watching, but a true, keeper of the keys, household manager because I believe when you truly manage a household, it is a job and a full time job at that.

Lauryn and Krista...we can only guess at what they were discussing

How have women managed over the last fifty some years to be wives and mothers while working another full time job? I can't say how others have managed, but for me it meant sacrificing one for the other many times. I am not sure what my husband and children would say about what kind of wife and mother I have been, but for me it wasn't optimum. When I was working, I needed a wife and I was working all the time. Now for some this means hiring a nanny or a housekeeper to do those routine duties of cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, minding the children. For most households though this is a luxury and not a reality. That was the case for me. Oh you say, what about the husband. Doesn't he have a responsibility to share in these household duties? My answer may be obvious, yes he does. I was very fortunate that my husband did help.

But here is my truth. Running a household is a full time job. Basically in a marriage where both individuals are working a full time job outside the home, dividing the duties means working a part time job after hours and again it comes down to what is an optimum situation. There are only so many hours in a day and something usually has to give and it is probably going to be the unpaid, unglamorous, routine chores of cleaning and childcare. Whether one wants to choose (as I would have liked to) to take on and do the job with creativity and purpose or to delegate those important tasks to someone capable (and pay them well) is a personal choice. I am not advocating only women can be wives, but rather that we embrace this ancient tradition since it is something we all long for, to be cared for and nurtured. To have our personal space in order and meals prepared with love is something basic for all of us; men, women and children. So who needs a wife? We all do. It is a noble endeavor.