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Today I heard a podcast interview with the author of a new book “Cinderella Ate My Daughter (by Peggy Orenstein).” It talks about the nature versus nurture aspects of raising a daughter to be comfortable in being a woman yet open to all the opportunities and possibilities in life. This made me reflect on my own upbringing and to appreciate the way my parents allowed me to be who I am.
I loved my father dearly and from an early age, spent as much time as I could with him. When he worked on household repairs or on cars in the garage, I was often by his side offering to help. He never turned me away. There was always some little way I could help, like holding a flashlight or getting a tool he needed. He wasn’t hesitant to teach me about what he was doing, and never made me feel like I couldn’t learn to do something because I was a girl. In the evening when he was relaxing after a hard day’s work, I would sometimes sit with him on the front porch and he would tell me stories about the family. Inside, we would watch TV together, westerns, Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, and others.
My brothers also took his lead. My oldest brother was married by the time I was 5, but he came to visit often, and “let me” help him wash his car. When he restored an old car and when he built a boat in our back yard, he was happy to answer my questions and show off his work to me.
My second brother taught me in other ways. When I was little, he let me play with his toy cowboys and Indians in my sandbox, and built me a snow horse to ride in the winter. He also tried to teach me how a car engine worked. In addition to the cowboys and Indians, I also got to play with his old trains and erector sets.
Now I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I was raised a tomboy. I had plenty of dolls and stuffed animals to play with, and was a big Barbie fan. I was also underfoot in the kitchen when my mother baked, which was just about every week. When she trimmed the pie dough, she would give the remains to me and I would play that I was making little cookies, using the chairs as my oven, then eating the raw dough. After awhile, my mom showed me how to make cinnamon and sugar cookies by rolling the excess dough into strips, adding cinnamon and sugar, rolling the strips and baking them. In high school I took Home Economics, which was basically a class on cooking and meal presentation. I remember the first meal I ever cooked at home was hamburgers, potatoes and vegetables, presented on a serving platter that I was very proud of. My parents were supportive, encouraging and appreciative of that simple meal that I was so proud of. After that, my mother would leave me in charge of dinner when she went to pick my father up from work in the evening.
My sister, who married when I was 8, taught me by example how to care for her babies and hired me as a baby-sitter by the time I was about 12 or 13. Growing up, my favorite books were a series “Cherry Ames” about a nurse. I read almost all of them, so in the summer between 8th grade and high school, I volunteered to be a “candy striper”. This was a hospital volunteer, who usually made beds, brought things to the wards on carts, or did other non-skilled jobs to help the nurses. Because my aunt was a XRay technician at a hospital, I volunteered to be there full time so I could ride back and forth from the hospital with my aunt. As a result, they decided to use me as a receptionist in the hospital lab. Although this summer activity made me realize I did not want to be a nurse after all, it opened my eyes to the many jobs that were out there and gave me a true respect for these hard working technicians.
My aunts and uncles also played a key role in my development. The two aunts who were closest to me were single ladies who shared an apartment all their adult lives. They were independent, working at city jobs during the week and helping out on the family farm on weekends. My aunt and uncle who lived on the farm and ran it shared all the work. I don’t think there was anything my uncle could do that my aunt couldn’t.
The point is, my family gave me a very balanced view of the world, showing me that there were no limits in what I could learn or do, and that if I applied myself, the rewards would come. I internalized their values and know that I have succeeded beyond anything they would have dreamed. Thank you Mom, Dad, Brothers, Sister, Aunts, and Uncles. I am who I am because of you.
