Gains
I am starting to see my family tree like a never-ending relay race, where one generation passes the baton to the next, picking up speed as each of us takes her turn to run in the world.
When I think of my grandma growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, married at the age of sixteen and having my mom at the age of eighteen, I am stunned by the ways in which my mom’s, mine, and my daughters’ young lives have differed.
My grandparents left Oklahoma due to the unsustainable state of farmland during the Dust Bowl and relocated their young family to Bakersfield, California. There, my grandpa delivered milk straight from the dairy to the houses on his route while my grandma tended to her home and three children. She had no other options available to her with no real education and no child-free adult years to pursue interests for her own personal development.
By the time my mom was eighteen, in contrast, she had graduated high school, participated in beauty pageants, and soon became a flight attendant with TWA so she could see the world. She regaled us throughout the years with her adventures in Manhattan and Rome. After leaving the airlines, she worked as a blackjack dealer in South Lake Tahoe, to the great horror of her mother, and came home engaged to my dad after her second summer there. She gave birth to me when she was twenty-six years old, enjoying eight more years of adventure and personal growth than her mom did before staying home to raise us.
When it was my turn to warm up on the track, I started by going to a four-year college, studying abroad, and pursuing a teaching credential. I taught high school for ten years, had our first child at 27, and worked a few part-time jobs while raising our daughters. I also took on leadership roles within the PTA, Project Cornerstone, and San Jose Leadership Council. I have given a couple keynote speeches, written books, and founded a local organization for women.
While it is easy to measure my family women’s generational gains through the lens of education, employment, and increased financial independence, the part that intrigues me is how the changing societal norms and the stability and security of the homes we were raised in have allowed for more confidence and more risk taking with each generation.
The moment this crystalized for me happened when my mom approached me in the lobby with tears streaming down her face just after I delivered my Ted-X Talk. “I could never do that,” she whispered in my ear as she wrapped her arms around me, then stepped back and looked at me with awe.
What I wish I had said to her then was that, ultimately, the reason I could address such a large crowd is because I was raised to believe that there was value in what I had to say. I learned to charm a crowd and find precision with clever phrasing from her, and I learned how to frame a message with logic I could defend from my dad. Sure, I received an education from official channels too, but there is no denying that the stability of my homelife and my mom’s early messaging played a role in my believing in myself.
When it comes to my daughters, well, I am not entirely ready to pass that baton to them just yet. I feel them catching up, looking for me to extend my arm back for the transfer. Sometimes, I even feel a tap.
I gasped with great insult on Thanksgiving, in fact, when my oldest said, “Hey, Mom, I would love all the pie-making supplies you got from Grammy when you’re ready to pass them on.” I replied with a sassy, “Child, I only took over the job three years ago—don’t get twitchy for the rolling-pin transfer just yet.”
I am still running my leg of the race—hop off, young buck.
But since my hammies get occasionally crampy, I have started to consider how my girls will run that baton. Already, I see signs that their warmup laps are pretty impressive.
With my oldest, the gains are apparent in the way she addresses her students’ parents when they gather for events like orientation and Back-to-School Night. She started teaching kindergarten at the age of 22, handily explaining the curriculum and class expectations with confidence to a community of parents known to be, shall we say, involved. While volunteering in her classroom I have watched her convey – to parents and students alike – that perfect blend of competence and caring we all want to see in our child’s teachers.
In my youngest, it is evident in the way she takes meetings and callbacks with casting directors, producers, and directors who could easily leave a person intimidated, but she talks with them like she is exactly where she belongs. She never had to internalize the fear-memos I grew up with: “Never let them see you sweat.” “Visualize your audience in their underwear.” Any nervous energy she has comes more from excitement than fear. She is ready and she knows it.
I recognize that these gains I take for granted for the next generation are not forgone conclusions. Trauma and substance abuse could easily start a different kind of cycle that can perpetuate just as easily in the opposite direction. But since I have been instructed that this thinking would lead some certain offspring of mine to think me a catastrophist, I will, instead, be curious about how they will take the gains from Dorothy, Marcia, and Shana to do some brave and cool shit during their legs of the race too.
I can’t envision the specifics of what that might look like since the answer lies within their own interests and skills on their journey. But my wish is that the outcome will be a generation that goes even further towards lives of full equality, giving them pay parity and an equal division of labor within their homes so that they and theirs will all know what true partnership and equality feel like. This is something that their great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and even their mother have never fully known.
Only then, chests out for a final push toward the finish-line tape, will the race be won.
