Hearts, Heads and Anna Quindlen

Are you a person who lives primarily in your heart or your head?  More about this later.

I am a better person because of the company of good women.  These are not the women you party with.   Those girls best belong to the, “…misery loves company” category.  I am talking about the women who make you talk, think and laugh, ladies like the ones in my book club.

One of the best things the book club has done for me is introducing me to a great deal of fiction that I otherwise would not have read.  I prefer nonfiction, defaulting to biography and history with a little science thrown into the mix.   (Truman by David McCullough; A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester; and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking are part of that list).   Since getting involved in this book club I have read some books I would not have wanted to live my life without (A Prayer for Own Meany by Irving Stone; Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood; and the delightful Ladies No. 1 Detective Series by Alexander McCall Smith come readily to mind).  We are all books, all the time, and if a good bottle of wine gets cracked in the mean time—well so much the better. 

Recently a friend recommended the book, One True Thing by Anna Quindlen.  Do three things: buy it, read it, thank me later.  Like all good women and all good books, One True Thing, starts a dozen useful and interesting conversations in your head.  But the one thing that I can’t stop thinking about speaks specifically and poignantly to the status of the feminists movement.  This is a movement I was devoted to, and one that I feel has frequently betrayed me. 

Besides being a very good read, the book keeps coming back to two types of women: those Ms. Quindlen refers to as living in their hearts (the homemakers, the caretakers, the givers) and those who live in their heads (the professionals, the driven, ambitious, glass ceiling breakers).  She uses the two main characters, exceptional examples of each type of woman, a mother and daughter, to examine how each feels about the other.  Instead of judging each type of person, she is judging how they judge each other.  If the feminists movement means freeing women from sexually delineated servitude does that also mean freeing women to choose the role of mother, homemaker, caretaker if they so wish?  Why can’t an intelligent, literate woman choose to use those skills to make a family a better place?  Are, “head” types sexual beings while, “heart” types dismissed as mere mothers? 

I am a third generation working woman.  My grandmother didn’t marry until age 28 (old for that time) and continued to work as a bookkeeper for the rural creamery near her Minnesota home.  My mother always worked outside the home.  When we moved to Denver she started work as an office drone for the City and County of Denver, and worked her way up to the head bookkeeper in the mayor’s office.  She was so respected that when the Mayor needed specifics about the city’s budget he walked down the hall to her office, not the other way around.  Since we Blaisdell women breed true, I worked my whole life.  Now, thanks to a good book, I am rethinking how I feel about the women who choose to stay home and look after home and family.  Perhaps we should accept strength and skill where we find it.  Perhaps we need both. 

Raise strong women and keep the faith.