Waiting at Mass General Hospital in Boston for my wife to emerge from surgery designed to repair damage to her throat resulting from a tracheotomy, my thoughts turn to the many women in my life and their impact on the person I have become. Mothers start our stories and mine was unusually strong, picking herself up from a divorce and raising three children largely on her own. Common in her generation, she had left college to marry the love of her life and supported him as he finished his degrees and forged a career as a mining engineer. He took their growing family to remote locations before settling in the Bay Area to join his father in a consulting business. My mother felt that she had arrived at her dream life: a handsome husband, three children and a very comfortable suburban home. And then he left her for another woman, giving her no choice but to accept the generous support of her parents on the opposite coast. We moved into the house they owned in New Jersey and they moved to an apartment. My mother scrambled to get a job, with virtually no credentials and an urgent need for an income.
It is hard to overstate her accomplishments. With inconsistent child support and only a month a year of relief when we three traveled to California to spend August with our father, she cared for us and taught us the values of responsibility, empathy and curiosity. By any measure, she succeeded, holding our small family together and weathering the rollercoaster of child rearing. The eldest went off to Yale for a BA and MA specializing in archaeology, my older sister graduated from college and went on to get a divinity degree and ordained into the ministry with the United Church of Christ. I completed degrees through the PhD in anthropology. Our mother supported us with grounding in the church (she sang in the choir) and on the basis of a secretarial salary supplemented with many overtime hours. She was rarely overtly loving — hugs weren’t common — but her rational problem solving and steady character gave us the tools we needed to be independent and successful.
As important as my mother was to my developing personality, there were also many women who came into my life and tested me in many ways. Girlfriends in high school and college, a first marriage started during graduate school and finally the union of 35 years with the woman presently under the knife all contributed to my growth and, hopefully, maturity. I also had the great pleasure of teaching at a superb college for women where I guided more than a thousand students over my career in the exploration of world cultures. Graduates from my school, few of whom I had actually taught, joined my wife and me on numerous adventures planned by the alumnae organization. Through those experiences I came to appreciate the independent thinkers that emerged from four years of a fine liberal arts college.
I am not naïve when it comes to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of women I have encountered over my lifetime. Most have been particularly strong in traits of empathy and intelligence, as well as being strong-willed and ambitious. A few have made my life more difficult, particularly in my profession, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. I bridle at the chauvinism of some men, who seem to believe that diminishing women is the key to their own ego. Women, whether or not I agree with them, deserve the same respect and freedom to make choices as men. To think otherwise is to spin the clock backward to far darker times.
The surgery is over and an arduous recovery period begins. Fortunately, my wife will be cared for by extraordinary nurses and physicians, many of whom are women, and will return home to a dedicated team of women caregivers who have been with us ever since she suffered a stroke over four years ago. I am privileged to have all these women in my life.
Donald Joralemon, emeritus professor at Smith College, lives in Conway.