Excerpt 2 - From chapter Mother Tongue

In my sketchy outline, I could imagine having a relationship, much like having a gym membership, as an acquisition that would in no way impact my identity.  Then I had one.  Before Roger, I was unprepared to discover devotion in myself, or vulnerability.  I was unprepared for the tenderness that romantic love engendered.  I was basically unprepared for the possibility that love might change me or alter my course in any way.  And yet, it did.  

My tepid interest in commitment had been part of my identity, a part I mostly liked, and often took for granted.  Left unchallenged by love, I was relatively unaware of the turbulence underneath, or the realization that my attitude toward marriage was dominated by two separate camps that maintained peace by staying on each side of a Berlin-style wall.   As far as my world was concerned, my mom was the prime minister of one, and my stepmother, Rosalie, represented the sovereign state of the other.

Looking back, the first wedding I ever remember attending was my father’s.  At least, I think I remember.  I was about three or four, so it is difficult to know if the memories are my own memories of the event, other people’s stories I adopted as my own, or my interpretation of photographs outlasting both of the former.  Anyway, here is what I think I remember.

My dad and Rosalie had an outdoor wedding.  They had lined up all the little girls to walk down the aisle as flower girls with a sort of visual symmetry, pairing the older, taller, darker girls together in the front, and the younger, shorter, blonder girls just after, all of us dressed in the color of innocence with pastel sashes and matching bows in our hair.  

That was the early seventies.  That dress is what I remember best.  I remember it hanging in my closet.  I remember it being replaced by a nearly identical hand-me-down dress from my big sister.  Slowly, it was crowded out by mini skirts with brass zippers up the front, jeans, halter dresses, flare leg Britannica jeans, cowl neck sweaters, knickers, rainbow shirts, Gunnie Sax dresses, and stirrup pants.

In those years, Rosalie nested and my mom liberated.

Mom embraced the times.  She dated; she went back to school; she joined the Unitarian Church ; she wrote a singles column in the newspaper, attended nudist functions, and competed in sports.  She joined women’s groups and singles’ groups, where she often held offices and organized meetings.  Around her bedroom she posted signs: “A woman has to do twice as much as a man to be thought of as half as good.  Luckily, this is not difficult.” She wore t-shirts that said things like, “So many men.  So little time,” and “Before you find your handsome prince, you have to kiss a lot of toads.”  

My mom always looked down on housewives.  I remember her tone whenever she talked about women whose main occupation was caring for a home and kids.  “She’s a housewife.” Her voice would titter up on the last two syllables patronizingly.

Most of Mom’s friends were single.  I referred to them all by their first names – Jim, Barbie, Chuck, and Denny.   We didn’t really use titles in Mom’s house.

Mom kept a pace like a retreating tornado.  When she was home, she was cleaning, or working, or trying to get us to clean or work.  Sometimes, she entertained.  When she threw parties, it seemed like all the single people in town came.  They stood shoulder to shoulder as they sipped their drinks.  The party spread out onto the back deck, then it populated the lawn.  My mom’s parties were a din of low, high, strong, and soft voices discussing politics, philosophy, personal growth, and change.  Unabashed, us kids took our places in the middle of it all.

I weaved through the bodies at handbag level.  To whatever receptive listener I could find, I offered my own voice to the din as I detailed my views about politics, culture, justice, maturity, and anything else on my mind.  I imagine I was a novelty, such a precocious and opinionated little girl mixing at an adult singles party.  You could almost see their thoughts behind their eyes, “So this is what the next generation has in store for us.”  This made my mom tremendously proud.  Her eyes glowed and the angles in her face softened as she watched them watching me.  Whenever she gets that look, I know she will be especially receptive and affectionate.  If I move up close to her, I can count on getting an affectionate pat or a hug.  

I don’t remember ever attending a party at my dad’s house, although I know that they sometimes did have other couples over for dinner.  When Dad or Rosalie talked about their friends, the names came out in sets: A and B.  “We like A and B.”  It usually turned out that A and B was the couple Dad and Rosalie played tennis with, or the couple they sailed with, or the couple down the block, or the couple they skied with.  

Usually the stories following the introductory description of A and B were either light-hearted anecdotes of self-deprecating humor or some kind of surprising response to the circumstance that made everyone laugh.

Time spent with friends usually included nice dinners.  Rosalie could often remember intricate details of how the food was prepared, how the table was arranged, or what someone had worn.  “We had this wonderful crab soufflé, with asparagus sautéed in a garlic wine sauce.  Oh, and this wonderful, wonderful wine,” she might say.  Turning to my dad, she would ask, “Honey, what was the name of that wine?”

Dad, tilting his head a little and looking into space like a sailor scanning the horizon, would search his memory.  After he had supplied the name of the wine, Rosalie would continue.

“It was yum-my.  We loooved it.  And they had this wonderful arrangement of holly and white roses.  You know, it was really quite clever.  They had taken a sprig of holly with each name place and had tied a red bow around it…”

In the breaks of her story, my dad would often chime in an affirmative comment to reinforce the message.  “After dinner we were so full they were going to have to tow us out of there.   And then they brought out the dessert,” he might laugh.

Rosalie would then elaborate on the details about the dessert as well, how dense or light or colorful or sweet it had been.

From these second-hand accounts, I developed an impression of how my dad and stepmother’s social life looked and operated.

In the roots of my developing gender identity, my mother and stepmother had each represented an ideological camp, distinct and polarized, each with different romantic implications.

The promise of feminism was that we would have choices.  I saw only two, and they were mutually exclusive.  Many women inherit gender role issues from their mothers.  In that respect, I was no different.  What was different was a history of weekend visitation wedging me between two women who always seemed to be sizing each other up.  If I rejected one role, I feared I would be giving my allegiance to the other, and not just to one model or another, but to one person or another.  Would it be the mother whom I had lived with all those years, confided in, fought with, and whose rock-solid love had been my foundation, or would it be my stepmother, the one who had succeeded where my mother had failed – in keeping my father?

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