Women's Day....

Woman’s Day

Heidi Katharina Wiedemann

Today was International Woman’s Day - and appropriately enough my activities revolved around woman things. I nurtured an elderly woman friend of mine - took care of her needs rather than my own. She lives alone, has no one to care for her - and is isolated. She is living out the consequences of her choices, I wonder if she sees that. We had tea; I did some cleaning, some chatting, gave her a hug and went on my way - glad for my ability to do so.

I then went to fetch my 15 year old daughter, who I was supposed to have dinner with. I picked her up and while we drove we tried to decide where to go. I thought of my mother - clear across the island - and said let’s go there. So on this Woman’s Day, I found myself with my mother and daughter, the three of us breaking bread together.

I was conscious of the three individuals - how very different we each were, how our stories would sound so unique - and in that, how similar we were. We share a thread of pain and hardship, of difficult choices and difficult consequences.

Holly, being fifteen, spoke to my mom about sex. I wasn’t surprised - what else do fifteen year olds talk about? - even better, fifteen year olds with other women. I guess I bristled somewhat thinking it would be nice to find a space with my daughter where that was not the central topic of conversation - and my mom noticed. She reacted by saying she never knew I was such a prude! What a delicious laugh I had!

I brought my mom two boxes of old records my elderly woman friend had given me earlier in the day. She loved them and while my daughter and I were there, she played several of them, playing a particular song and changing the record. I thought about how the life of the woman who gave me the records had now woven itself into my mothers life. The records gave my mother joy - as I am sure they once did for the woman who gave them away - it all seemed somewhat circular to me, the great wheel of life.

I spent my energy on relationships today. I read that that’s what women do - Thank God I’m a woman. I was conscious of the nurturing and cultivating I did today. I see the threads between my mother and daughter. Those two have found allies in each other. Holly doesn’t hold a daughter’s grudge against her grandmother and her grandmother no longer has that shadow of fear - or was it disappointment - in her eye. She beams with pride at her granddaughter’s womanhood - and as I write the thought occurs - well finally I did something right.

As we ate, I sat between them, sandwiched as it were. For moments I felt closer to my mother - and her time, age or position - I’m not sure which - than I did to my daughter. Holly was a glowing, funny, raging hormonal teenager, sitting next to me. I didn’t feel old, but I felt like an adult. I suppose that will be happening more often. I loved how my mother and I let her know her place - not so much by what we said to her - but by what we didn’t say, what we chose not to acknowledge and without having planned it. It was at those times I felt my own womanpower - and I was conscious of Holly’s place in the circle. I have a feeling she may have been too - and respected that. What a fine young woman! My beautiful woman-child struggling to make sense of herself, the world, and her place in it. What work!

I love my mother. I am so pleased to say that. She shared with me bits and pieces of her life the other night, explaining her choices and the consequences she suffered - I believe I said I forgave her, and that I understood her. I believe she understood me - and really what greater gift could we ever, ever have given each other.

She was, or is - I’m not sure, but was a woman trapped in her time, her beliefs, her upbringing, her pain. Her fear of losing her children was so great it blinded her to any other possibilities.

I asked my mother what she was most proud of as a woman and her answer was her daughters. Thanks Mom.