A Pause in Seriousness

The last couple of weeks has been fraught with anxiety, frustration and anger by many women as they followed the Ford/Kavanagh case.  We won’t know until the November mid-terms in the USA how fired people will be when they cast their votes but in the meantime let us hope that we have a breather before the next round of craziness begins.

In that light I want to take some time to celebrate wives and mothers for their role in centering family life.  Women have been undervalued for being stay-at-home moms even before that phrase was coined and yet the trauma of not having my mother at home when I got home from school was so great that I recall my emotions to this day.  Old Home Economic text books, and even my notebook, lectured the female student on how to appear well groomed at the end of the day to welcome home the husband, with the delightful aroma of a well cooked meal wafting from the kitchen.

When I was a child all of the mothers of my classmates were stay-at-home moms but by the time I was in junior high school some of the mothers had begun to work outside the home.   By the time I finished high school I think my mother may have been the only mom not working, or at least one of the very last hold-outs.  I didn’t think very much about it at the time but I must say that it was good to know that my mother would be home if I was ill and had to stay home from school.  My mother was the bastion that warded off all kinds of evil and served up comfort in a glass of ginger ale or a cup of tea. When Dad came home his newspaper was by his chair and he always took a few minutes to unwind before sitting down at the table. Sometimes we would have already eaten but if he was home by 5:00 then we ate together.  We always had a hot meal for supper, meat, potatoes and gravy and frequently we would have a dessert of some kind but not always.

After supper we would do our homework, if we had any, and then we would watch our favorite TV shows.  By 8:00 p.m. we were in bed (or at least supposed to be in bed) but lights were not necessarily turned off.  I almost always read for an hour or so before I fell asleep and I know my sister (who had the TV in her room) watched more TV when the rest of us were sent out of her room (it was so large it served both as her bedroom and the downstairs family room).

And we could hear Mom making coffee for Dad and they would talk a little as he read the paper finished while she would knit, crochet or sew something for one of us kids.  All was right with the world and we could sleep in safety and security.

Oh Mothers of Yore, I salute you.