The summer at home that spawned my manifesto

In 1968, as one of four children and supported by a generous government tuition-reduction program, I followed my two elder brothers, who were away in their second and fourth years of university.

We rarely saw one another, but as the only girl and well-trained to serve, I was expected to keep tabs on their activities. I found myself expert at developing the “believable” narratives my parents wanted to hear and increasingly incredulous within my own newfound freedom. My brothers cavorted. I learned to cavort.

During that process, I did locate my first-year classes (sort of). Some were stocked with 500 to 600 students, baby boomers in a university setting ill-equipped for the boom, but boasting expansive grounds, rolling hills and sun-speckled walkways. The fall term sped by as a series of conundrums — assignments often misunderstand, professors remote and forbidding — experiences shared with young women bursting the seams of the residence we shared, women fussed further by the defining of the primary objective assigned to us: “marry well,” if possible, “marry up.”

When the first term break arrived, I made the long trek home in my brother’s second-hand vehicle, a castoff secured by sundry means, hardly roadworthy. We ripped along freeways, floor boards partially exposed, a passenger door wired shut, back window taped, regaling with epic tales of all-nighters and midterms put to bed.

Arriving just before midnight, we found our mother presiding in the kitchen, its counters smothered with favourites — welcome respite from catch-as-catch-can cafeteria fare. My mother’s offering: succulent chicken breasts, kasha, kugel, chocolate cake, cinnamon buns, streusel — an astonishing array we devoured while she observed our various conditions and “filmed” our enthusiasm with her heart’s eye.

We might have answered some questions, but mostly we hovered over counters, gobbled, jostled for last bits.

A feast, a mother’s love for children safely returned.

We dragged our duffel bags down to the basement full of dirty laundry — mine considerably lighter because, unlike my brothers, I did wash my clothes during the term. My mother did not openly protest; she was bound by a “selflessness” imposed upon women in a culture slanted in a slew of wrong directions. I stood with her in the dark and dingy laundry room with its tiny, dust-smudged window above the speckled, dank, concrete double sink. A dungeon of sorts, it stayed that way — an upgrade never crossed anyone’s mind.

My brothers and I returned to our second term, but just before its end, my mother fell and suffered a difficult break. Her doctor felt, and rightly so, that she needed rest and prescribed a lengthy time-out in hospital.

Thus, at term’s end, we returned home to empty kitchen counters. My brothers’ weighty duffel bags made their way to the basement. I had a summer job. My brothers had summer jobs. But the laundry became my responsibility.

I did not begrudge my mother’s time out and my parents did plan for a lady to come during the day, a lady strangely fond of doilies, who cooked dinner for us. I don’t remember what we ate, but I do remember despising the doilies, yet diligent in the emptying of duffel bags, the ongoing sorting and tidying, the making of beds in the morning before I took off for “work.”

I supported my mother’s further rehabilitation at home during July and August, but I had become increasingly aware I’d been both diligent within and duped by the patriarchal model triumphant in my parents’ household. I returned to my second year stuffed with the memory of months steeped in gender-based inequities. My growing discontent fuelled the writing of a narrative of my own: a manifesto developed further during late-night debates with dorm sisters who, though taught to serve selflessly, were awakening, dedicating themselves to demolishing that directive.

When I met the man who ironically would become my husband, I declared — even as love at first sight encouraged the introduction — “I don’t pick up socks, don’t cook and clean after others as a way of life, don’t…”

This man, redheaded, curly haired and green eyed, smiled contentedly. Having heard my proclamation, he expected — in fact, looked forward to — nothing less. Of course, initially, he still felt himself the better driver, more astute in the handling of finances, more understanding of what he defined as the “real” world the patriarchy had consistently declared as too much for my weaker sex.

But, his contentment and mine, over the course of the next 50 years, depended on an emerging, joint narrative that reassessed reductive, culturally assigned roles. We discovered and cared for an emancipation we understood as feminism, a movement whose bearings coincided with our beginning as two young ones, smitten with each other and determined, as best we could, to actualize our equal rights together.

arts@freepress.mb.ca