A Feminist’s Daughter
Before they came along, my mother was home with me. We played and had a grand time making sauce from the little crabapples we collected off the tree outside our kitchen window. My mother’s attention always made me joyful. I was five, and I felt like she and I owned the world. That was when she was all mine.
Those NOW women changed her. They changed everything. First, they made her make me share my Easy Bake Oven with my brother. I wasn’t a fan of the concept of boys cooking when it meant I had to share my shiny new things. I played with his cars because I knew it would make my mother happy, but I thought they were boring, and I didn’t like playing with my brother. But I would have done anything to make my mother happy.
When I started kindergarten, she wanted me to wear pants. That was another one of those NOW things. I was suspicious of pants. For years, my mother had sewn me dresses from the same pattern. All the dresses had tulips on them, and she made them in every color. They were all I wanted to wear. But when she stitched up a floral pantsuit, I agreed to give pants a try. I lived to regret that choice. After that, she got a part-time job and began buying me clothes from the store. NOW made her do that, too.
Of course, there was so much I didn’t understand. I didn’t know she had to lie to my father about attending those NOW meetings. She didn’t…
