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EVERY WOMAN
23 April 2000, 01:00
I was eating dinner at a friend’s house, recently. Actually, I was part of a little get together for her birthday – her mother, grandmother, aunts, and many girlfriends. A veritable ocean of estrogen, I found myself awash in home cooking and conversation. Most of the females were married and mothers, and I was in the minority of whom who hadn’t bore a baby or had a divorce or had a LEGAL half-interest stake in a penis. But, as in most female gatherings, some topics are always covered – kids, cooking, cleaning, makeup, and men. I don’t care how much of a feminist one is, I think every female always has an opinion on these topics, and even I don’t feel totally uncomfortable talking about these things – briefly. The inevitable questions come up – Are YOU married? WHY NOT? Don’t you want KIDS? WHY NOT? YOU DON’T WANT TO RAISE CHILDREN? Well, YOU’LL CHANGE YOUR MIND ONCE YOU HAVE THEM. WHAT KIND OF WOMAN ARE YOU?
My first thought is always “YUMMPIN YIMMINIES!” If you tell a group of older married women leading the traditional American dream life that you don’t know how to cook, try to avoid any major cleaning chore more than once a week, that your laundry skills begin and end with hot water and bleach, that marriage is not a feat you will manage within your lifetime, and kids are best left up to anybody else but you – you’ll get a look similar to ones a poor dirt farmer gets when he watches spaceships suck up some of his cows on a summer night.
I find that attitude of some women who pontificate on what are the right and proper feelings and activities for ALL women is akin to missionaries who go to the savages, and if tell them if they don’t believe in the one true god of peace, love and righteousness, that this god will allow them to fry like fritters in hell. One of these women, straight-faced took me aside and confided in me that she was proud of the fact she was more open, accepting, and non-judgemental, but in the very next conversation, she announced that she couldn’t understand what sort of women wouldn’t want children – that one cannot love truly unless one has had a child. What kind of women could give up children for adoption? What kind of women could love another woman in the biblical way? How could one put paprika in potato salad?
Pity from well intentioned group of Donna Reed near-do-wells sets my hair on end. Indeed. What sort of woman am I? Obviously not one who will rear children. Not one that will have all her clothes clean at one time. And not one that could be Mrs. Anybody and be happy with it. I tried to explain that I had nothing but the highest respect for women who choose this path, but, hey – don’t cry for me, Argentina, for choosing a different road toward fulfillment and seeing value in different kinds of activities.
For a moment, let’s see what sort of woman I am.
Childless. I don’t have kids. I don’t plan to rear children. Sorry. But I think that finding out that caring for and rearing children isn’t something you want to do shouldn’t happen AFTER you have them. I don’t want to have kids, on the off chance that it will CHANGE my mind about the joys of motherhood. What I have done donated time and money to the womanish shelter in my area. What I have done is donated time to teach latchkey kids to read afterschool. What I have done is adopted or found homes for over forty abandoned animals. What I have done is held, comforted and cried for a half a dozen dogs that had to be euthanized.
Single. I do have someone in my life, but I don’t feel a great need to make it legal. I don’t feel that I need to have a man to feel complete or whole. I do, however, am ever vigilant (some say hypersensitive) to keep my own identity, my own being separate and unique. I treasure my independence, I even treasure my mistakes because it is only lately that I can take credit for them. And I treasure the fact there is someone living in my house with me who loves my dogs as much as me, kills bugs, scoops dog dooky, and gives a pretty large rat’s ass about me.
Non-domesticated. I cannot cook, though I will not starve. I did try a couple of times. Lets just say its better for me to buy fast food, than to replace the odd oven top, redo burnt kitchen walls, and clean up doggie aftermath when they have to eat my mistakes. Ditto for the laundry. I can, however, rebuild a Macintosh, heave 70 lbs. of camera equipment up the side of a building, push a small car three blocks barefoot, and in my jammies, set a dog’s broken leg, fight off a muggers with a large piece of wood, perform cpr, recite at least half of the periodic table and say “bar” and “toilet” in four languages.
That’s what sort of woman I am.
