I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

The Players

My mom, my sister, and I provided ancestral history to my niece Meredith, for a grad school project in 2007. She wrote a paper called “The Women Who I Am,” and recently when I was searching on my computer for something unrelated, I ran across her paper. It is a thoughtful reflection on a family tree. I decided to make it my own, since after all, we descend from the same tree. Many of the words are as written by Meredith, so I consider us co-authors. This tree is full and big and has roots that dig deep, but into no single geographic location. It is not the land that makes this tree strong, but the people on it. For me specifically, it is the women on this tree that shape who I perceive myself to be.

            Let’s step back to a bit of oral family history, passed down from my mother. Sally Lee was my mom’s great-grandmother, the daughter of Duke Hamilton of Argyleshire in Scotland. Sally lived in a time when marriage was decided by a woman’s father. She was told who to marry and when to marry, and she had very little say in the matter. Many times marriages were arranged as political alliances or as business ventures, thus creating good relations between men. Sally Lee was betrothed to a man who can be described no other way but OLD. She was horrified and decided to take matters into her own hands. She snuck out of the house and made her way to the coast. Once there she stowed away on a ship headed for America, to find a new land and a new life. This life would be one in which she could decide whom she loved and whom she married. This actually turned out to be the man who discovered her on the ship. Sally was the beginning of a line of women who are strong and independent. She has given me a rebellious spirit that allows me to push myself, even when society tells me I shouldn't.

            My grandmother, whom I knew as Gran-Gran, was also one of these women. In a tradition, with a nod to our cherished ancestry, my sister is now known as Gran Gran by her grandchildren. Our Gran-Gran grew up in North Dakota where she was a school teacher. She considered herself to be a Gibson girl. Gibson girls were the women of the late 1800s who wore very elaborate clothing, had their hair swooping upward high on their head, and wore very large, glamorous hats that stood out in any crowd. Yet she was a very practical woman. Gran-Gran taught school in Minot, North Dakota, where she would canoe upriver during the summer every day to get to class. During the winter, she would go on horseback with her rifle at her side for protection from the wolves. She was strong and beautiful and lived her life the way she wanted. She would go on long sight-seeing adventures, at a time when women were not to travel alone.

            When it came to marriage, Gran-Gran made her own decisions. Her marriage is one of the most inspiring things to me. In a time in history when women married at 18 and were considered old maids by the age of twenty-six, Gran-Gran married at age thirty-six. She then waited three years to have her first child at the age of thirty-nine and continued to have three more children after that. She lived her life and experienced it all. She is what I would consider to be one of the original feminists of history. She didn’t need society to tell her how to live her life; she had no problem seeking it out on her own. Gran-Gran's sense of adventure has been given to me and pushes me to seek out my own risks.

      As a bride at age 17, my mom had pretty much the opposite experience when living out her life. She was raised in Kingman, AZ, by her very strong mother, and a dad who wasn’t much into family life as he had a gambling problem. She was exceptionally smart, talented, and beautiful. She wanted to become a fashion designer, but there certainly wasn’t money to send her away to college. She was working as a cook for 16 men who worked at the mine, tending a goat herd, and just generally struggling to get by. When the dashing Canadian equipment operator came by, she was quick to agree to marry him. They were married just 6 weeks after they met, and that marriage lasted 56 years, until he passed away. And they say young marriages don’t last! She was a stay-at-home mom, typical of the era, and raised her three children with steadfast love and energy. She expressed her artistic talents through making elaborate cakes, including multi-tiered wedding cakes, and sewing all of our majorette costumes and wedding dresses. At age 50 she finally got to attend college, and graduated with an AA in accounting. She then began her professional career, working for an accountant, then at the IRS as a customer service representative. She accomplished all of this after suffering through ovarian cancer, which at the time had a 5% survival rate. Doses of powerful cobalt radiation left her insides scarred and skin burned, but she kept on keepin’ on! She lived 11 years after her husband passed away, and was known as the “Butterfly Lady” at The Atrium where she lived until she found her own heavenly wings at age 85.

            I’ll just let Meredith tell about her mom from her perspective, completely in her own words: This family line then brings me to my own mother. To me she is a representation of what all three of these women before her lived for. My mother is independent, strong, and very smart. She is capable of doing anything she puts her mind to and has lived her life in a way that has inspired me to live my own. A great story she tells is how in 1964, at the age of nineteen, she had planned a trip to Europe with a friend. They were going to take a ship from California through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic, to Europe. Three days before they were to leave, at their bon voyage party, the friend informed my mom that she had decided not to go. Keep in mind that this is a time before backpacking across Europe was the “cool” thing to do, and doing it alone as a nineteen year old woman was definitely not something that happened often. My mother was determined, she had planned and saved for this trip for months, and she couldn’t not go. So her parents bought three airplane tickets, flew down to where the ship was leaving, put her on the boat, and waved goodbye. She left and was gone for ten months. She traveled all throughout Europe, meeting new people, seeing all the sights, and experiencing a grand adventure. She, like the other women of my family, took control of her own life. She was self-reliant and powerful. She continued her traveling throughout her life by becoming a flight attendant. She traveled around the world for over 20 years and continued to meet new people, to see what she could see and to have grand adventures. Her independence has inspired my own. To realize that being by myself can be a strength is a lesson I will treasure throughout my life.

            I add to my sister’s story, noting that she lost her flight attendant position when she was a victim of the sexism of the day. She was grounded when she got married, then fired when she had a baby. She picked herself up and established a high tech career in Silicon Valley. The discrimination case slowly worked its way through the courts, and she had an interesting choice… to get her job back with a small cash settlement, or just take a larger cash settlement. Everyone thought she was crazy, but she made the decision to return to travel. She excelled upon her return to flying, although she did find the job much more physically challenging in her later years. I like to think of myself in the same terms as Meredith sees her mom, my sister; independent, strong, and very smart. She is capable of doing anything she puts her mind to and has lived her life in a way that has inspired me to live my own. I hope I have passed these qualities along to my sons, and if they have children, the strength will live on.

These are just a few of the women on my tree who add to how we identify ourselves. There are many others. For instance, my great aunt Ethel, who was a very spiritual woman, traveled to Liberia in the 1920s to become a missionary. Aunt Mildred ran a one room schoolhouse in the hills above San Jose. She not only taught, but also drove the school bus, cleaned the school room, and had her husband do all the maintenance the school required. Aunt Margaret ran her own large dairy comprised of national prize winning Jersey cows on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. In the early 1960s, in protest of the government-set milk prices which she felt were too low, Aunt Margaret led her cows up the steps of Parliament. Aunt Agnes, with her wonderful outgoing personality and photography skills, became the first female television news photographer for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC). Also, let us not forget Aunt Marilynn, Honey’s sister. For her 50^th birthday she took herself on a two-week rafting trip down the Colorado River. She was the originator of our family motto, “Don’t spend $50 on a $5 problem. Just let it fly away like a butterfly.”

            All of these women have created what I consider to be a beautiful, strong, immovable tree, helping to make clear to me why I am who I am. I have a drive to see what’s over the next hill, to travel and see the world. I have a stubbornness and determination to accomplish anything I put my mind to. I have a desire to experience life to its fullest, and I am reluctant to allow society to determine how my life should be lived. It is in these women that the strength of generations has been passed on to me and in which I live my life now.

            I added my own branch to the family tree, but alas, I have no daughters, only three sons. Since my niece Meredith looks and acts more like me than she does her mother, we have always considered me to be her “other mother” and hold that relationship near and dear. We feel honored to be a part of a family where independence and determination are encouraged. It is within these women and me that our family’s identity lives on. I consider myself to be strong, independent, determined, smart, and adventurous. Without the women who make up my tree, I wouldn’t be me.

     Since she is prominently mentioned in this story, I ran it by my sister before publication. I don’t really need to say another word. Her comment? “You might stress the love our family has for each other through each generation. I’ve always thought that was at the root of our strength.  No matter what crazy ideas we came up with, our families were always so loving and supportive.  Strong on love, short on criticism.”