The makings of a feminist.

I was reading an interview with Ann Patchett in Time Magazine, about her new book, and ran across this: “Danny was a very easy character to write because, oddly enough, I have known many men who are smart and charming and funny and interesting, who have no understanding of the fact that their whole life is built on the shoulders of the women who carry them around.”

That really hit home for me. It could be describing me, and I've only come to realize it late in life. No wonder Dawn was ready to get away after the kids were grown. She was carrying the whole family.

I grew up in a family where the women carried most of the burden--my mom and my grandmother who lived with us. My dad was a good father, and not uninvolved, but he was gone 11 hours a day because of the distance from where he worked. He also worked swing shift, so he was home at different odd hours of the day, and it didn't seem to me like he was gone as much as he was. He did some things around the house, though not a lot, and absolutely nothing of what was then considered “women's work”. I mowed the grass and took the trash out and fed the dogs. Well, most of the time anyway--the fallback was always my mom or grandmother.

When I was married, briefly, the first time, I had a job and she didn't, so she did all the household stuff. (It was the early 70s.)
When I was on my own for a few years after the divorce, things really fell apart because I had no idea how to “adult” without a woman to do certain things. When I married Dawn, we gradually came to a consensus on who did what. I did some basic housecleaning and the dishes every day, along with the basic yard work. She did show me how to iron a shirt and do laundry, along with other things, though I rarely did either. She cooked and did the laundry and decided when to do the serious housecleaning. She also took care of the finances, because I was really bad at it. Without going into all the particulars, most of the load fell on her.

So here I am, 64 years old, and still learning how to adult.

There are lots of other reasons I'm becoming a feminist, though. This is just a brief sketch of one of them. I've learned much from my ex-wife and daughter.