I was six years old in 1978 when I was given my first metal lunchbox, a smart aluminum case with a red plastic handle, a silver latch, and colorful Peanuts cartoon characters painted on the sides. While Linus tended his blanket and Charlie gripped his football, Lucy spent her enameled life marching in ceaseless circles around the box, picketing for something called "Women's LIB."
“Lib” was a confusing word for a first grader, so much shorter and easier to sound out than the counter-intuitive "wimin," yet so much less familiar in meaning. Though proud to be the owner of a big-kid lunchbox, I spent the first week of school baffled about that word. Shy in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub, I'd sit silently rolling it around my tongue. I'd scroll through my mental glossary, trying out “lib” next to “hop” and “spot” and “sam” and “ham,” without getting even a glimmer of recognition.
Finally, I asked my mother about it. She explained that "lib" was short for liberation. Women's lib meant that I could do anything. Unlike unlucky little girls born before me, I could overcome the limits of my sex. True, lunchbox Lucy wore a dress, but it was colored blue. Together we were charged to stride forth freely, oblivious to the flapping of our skirts.
For over two decades, I clung to that promise. I balanced every frill and ruffle with a mortarboard and tassle. Through prom nights and true love and a classic white wedding, I never wavered in my determination to buck the status I was born with. Eventually I earned three degrees and found success in a man's profession.
I did not exactly live my life in drag. I always knew that to pick up Lucy's picket meant managing to be a wife and mother while also pursuing a serious career. I promised myself that I'd try for a baby as soon as I turned 30 and sure enough I did. Still, deep down, I felt that I could have enjoyed life as a man and a father with far greater ease than I could as myself.
My first suspicions about that strange word lib faded completely from mind until about the time of my third miscarriage. Only then, as my plans failed again and my body spewed out my dreams, did I start to grasp that I'd gotten things a bit mixed up. I began to feel that the sum of my life made me less than, not more than, a woman.
As I clicked through the unabridged dictionary of my adult mind, women's lib began to take on new meaning. I suddenly understood first hand that liberation from sexism need not and should not imply elimination of the female sex. There were crucial things I wanted to do because of, not in spite of, my female status.
My grief for those three spirits lost mingles now with another sadness. By some cruel accident of fate, the womanhood I so long sought to overcome has instead eluded me.
Somewhere, that lunchbox lies empty and dented, much like me. Still, Lucy continues ceaselessly with her cheerful circumnavigations. I think, now, as I gather my strength, and promise my husband that we'll try once more, that I'll link Lucy's arm again. This time, though, I'll hum a lullaby as she chants.
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3 comments:
Wow, Anne, this is a really thought-provoking post. How do you think feminism - OK, women's lib - ended up being about "overcoming" being a woman for you? I know what you mean, I've often found the kind of feminism that celebrates women's womenness to be kind of ghettoizing, and it can look like a path that leads in the opposite direction from the prizes - prizes of a man's world - that I was raised (as the child of a feminist mom in the 1970s) to believe were what we were fighting sexism for. On the other hand, who in their right mind would want some of those man's-world prizes? I spend all day in a fancy office on a high floor of an office building and work with lots of high-powered aggressive people, and let me tell you, that is what I really want to be liberated from! It's all so weird. Sometimes I feel almost a little guilty - almost as if I've betrayed my foremothers who struggled to give me access to the fancy office etc. - that my biggest dream is to have babies, knit, and make carrot cake. These feelings get even more mixed up when you add in the single mom factor. I find the paradox very noticeable in the SMC community. We are doing this really liberated thing, making a choice to create a family without a man, and in a way it's amazingly feminist. And yet - what do we all want? To be moms! Many of us are to one degree or another pretty traditional women who always dreamed of doing this with a man in a pretty traditional way.
Sorry to ramble on. I hope you and Lucy make your peace. And I hope you get something great to fill up your lunchbox.
I'll be right there - joining arms and marching with you and Lucy.
I know the lunchbox is not the point, but your post reminded me of my excitement at going to fourth grade the year we lived in the US. I also had a Snoopy lunchbox and it seemed so grown up to me to be taking my own lunch to school (in the UK basically everyone has school meals).
Re the feminism point, I think that for me what our mothers did was enable us to have choices, and to create a world where it is (almost always, and in the West only) not automatically assumed that women are less intelligent, less able, limited in many ways etc. We still have a way to go.
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