Generations of Learning

My daughter, C, and her cousin, S, have been trying to lure me into blogging for quite some time now. I always manage to find a reason not to: I'm too stressed, I'm too tired, I spend all day on the computer, I just want to veg, and a million other excuses. C asked me to guest post on her blog while she is on vacation. I was bored when I received the email and jotted off the following:

My mother (C's grandmother) was born in 1928 Alabama. Her family moved to New Orleans in 1929 and she lived there until her retirement in 1992. She passed away in 2005. Just think of the significant events the occurred during her lifetime! The Great Depression, World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Kennedy years, Civil Rights, the Vietnam Conflict, Roe v Wade, the moon landing, Women's Rights, Watergate, the Reagan years, the First Gulf War, the birth of the age of computers and the internet, the discovery of DNA and the birth of AIDS, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, as well as the birth of a new century, to name just a few.

Mother was married for thirty years and raised seven children. She divorced at the age of 52 and at 70 buried her eldest son, just before his 48th birthday. She saw all seven of her children married (a few of them more than once!) and had the joy of knowing 10 of her 11 grandchildren. She held her first great-grandchild before she died and spent her last few years living near her beloved North Carolina mountains.

She was an amazing woman, in many ways, but she was also one of the most unfulfilled women I have ever met. She spent her childhood trying to be the son her father wanted (not the one he got!) and married a man she was totally incompatible with because, in 1947, that's what women did; they got married and had babies. She was forced to work out of the home when her youngest was only 2 years old because our family couldn't survive on my father's earnings, a significant amount of which supported his drinking habit. She suffered from chronic depression throughout my childhood and adolescence, which severely impacted her ability to emotionally engage with her children.

Towards the end of her life, the last decade or so, Mother entered her 'Happy Time'. She began to enjoy her children and grandchildren, take up hobbies that interested her, enjoy life, and, for the first time in my life, each day brought more smiles to her face than frowns. I wouldn't say that she was fulfilled but she was at least finding some happiness, no matter how short-lived it was.

I was born in 1956 in New Orleans. There have also been significant changes in the world in my lifetime, not the least of which is that women have many more choices than ever before. However, growing up in the home that I did, in the time that I did, and in the culture that I did, my only goal in early life was to marry, have children, and provide them with the most loving, secure family life I possibly could. So, at age 21 I married a man who expressed the same desires and we started down the Yellow Brick Road to Emerald City. I made a couple of attempts at college but didn't stick with it because all I really wanted was to be a wife and mother. We were blessed with a wonderful daughter (when I was 24) and, although no other children came along, we were happy. Or thought we were, which is almost as good. Or convinced ourselves we were, which is not so good. Then, at the age of 37 I found myself divorced; no college degree, a limited ability to support myself, and a teenage daughter who was even more screwed up from the divorce than I was!

The next 7 years were a blur! Trying to cope with my feelings about the divorce, cope with C's problems, work, going to school to get a degree, and trying to figure out, in the midst of all of the insanity, what exactly I wanted out of life! Graduating, starting my social work career, fighting with C, letting C venture out into the world to start her own journey, caring for and losing both of my parents as well as my much loved oldest brother accounted for the next 5 years. I woke up one morning and realised that for the first time in my life I was not responsible for, or to, another living soul! I was 48 years old and the only thing that I had ever done solely for me was to get my degree! Within 6 months I sold off most of my belongings, found a job in London, borrowed some money, and moved! I've been here since February 2006 and don't plan to return to the States to live.

It took my mother almost 60 years before she started to find herself; it took me 48 years. It gratifies me immensely that C has found the courage to start down this path at a much younger age than either her mother or grandmother did. I love her and am very proud of her.