YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE WRONG PEOPLE

Tom Hart*

 

There is this theory that after the age of 45 or so, women become invisible. There was a book I read back in my 20s where these two middle aged broads go away on a girls weekend and make a wish and apparently are turned back into their more youthful selves and men hit on them again and all is right with the world.

This seems patently terrifying to me.

I reeeeeeally like my 50s. I like being invisible until I speak up. I like not being too concerned that I am wearing socks and Birkenstocks. And most of all, I like having an excuse to be nosy. Don't get me wrong, I have always been nosy! I am always, according to el Guapo, about 5 minutes from poking my nose into someone else's business. Not to stir up the shit. I am very low-drama, thank you very much. I just find people's stories fascinating.

In BETSY AND JOE by Maud Hart Lovelace, Joe, a suitor of Betsy as you perhaps have sussed out from the title, pays her father a wonderful compliment. Something about being a student of human beings. I am far too lazy to look it up. But I like to think I share that attribute. I really do find people interesting.

My best conversation of the past week was with a woman with whom I have worked for years. For some reason we got to talking about husbands' schedules and I casually asked what her beloved does for a living. Well, it turns out he is a horse dentist.

WHAT??? How do you get to be a horse dentist? How do you find any horses to work on their teeth? Is he one of the 4 horse dentists who recommend Trident to their horses who chew gum?

I did not ask all of those questions, but I got her started and out poured the story of how she, herself, used to be a horse groomer at the racetracks in Boston and how she traveled the country and would just show up at a track looking for work and be grooming horses in no time. This is an immaculately put together lady who looks like she spends her weekends drinking tea and looking at the Ann Taylor website from her breakfast nook in Marblehead. And here she has had this amazing life of adventure. Who knew?

I do find the young people of my acquaintance to be interesting by virtue of the fact that they are just starting out and finding their way. High school and college and just beyond are the times just ripe for seeing the world and trying to figure out how it works. I remember the feeling of being adrift and at the same time wanting to suck out the marrow of life. (While at the same time wanting to stay in bed and read...Ah, youth...) When I run across a friend of my kids, or a student at work who seems to have that wanderlust, it warms my heart.

One of the reasons I love the Facebook is because occasionally I will come across one of the travel videos made by a former student, or the political rants of a current student and smile at their newly-hatched enthusiasm. I love that we are churning out more creative, brave young adults every day. But I also appreciate those of us who may have most of our physical adventures behind us, but continue to explore the landscape of humanity through the stories of other people.

*From Julie Schrader's amazing blog - https://betsytacysdeepvalley.wordpress.com/
 

All My Best Friends' Husbands are Feminists

Mindy Kaling said it best, “Best friend isn't a person, it's a tier.” I have found this to be true throughout my life. In addition to my sisters (the best friends God insists you keep) I have been lucky enough to have a group of best friends I can count on.  Right now there are four women who I refer to as “my best friend”.  I sometimes ruminate about what my standards are for best friend and the commonalities have pretty much come down to - they are all whip-smart, they all love to read and they are all funny as funny can be. Added bonus, they usually ask me to be their children's godmother. I'm really good at godmothering, if I do say so myself...

With the change in the federal administration, I have begun to think more and more about women's issues and how they have changed through time. I have also been thinking about my “bubble” - even though I was born in the midwest and have family members and friends in red and blue states alike, most of the people I am closest too are on the coasts. And well educated. And liberal. And I started thinking yesterday about marriage and why my friends have long lasting marriages. We are all Godless communists – how can we not be engaging in free love and naughtiness? Perhaps it is generational – three out of four of my best friends are pretty menopausal (sorry to out you ladies) – but the ones of us that are married have been with our spouses for a LONG time and while things have not always been a picnic for everyone, we have persisted and remained faithful and loving.

For the longest time I have thought that the divorce rate in the US was 50%. It turns out that (according to the New York Times – which I read every morning, ask anyone!) the divorce rate is dropping. And one of the main reasons for this is feminism! And they reported this in 2014.

Well, dammit.

That was going to be the point of this whole essay. And I was going to have a big reveal at the end. Smart women marry feminist men. Your minds would be blown at the way I was able to pull this amazing truth out of anecdotal evidence.

I was going to tell funny stories of my friends' marriages. Well, not best friend #1 – I was going to call her Victoria. She is my best friend from work. We became friends when I started working at the high school over 10 years ago. She is younger than me and single by choice. She was the favorite teacher of both of my sons and she has had a huge influence on them. She has not made me a godmother, but she has decreed that my sons are her dog's godfathers. So I am essentially a godgrandmother or grandgodmother. (Spellcheck is really resistant to both those options.) Anyway, you can bet your ass that if she ever finds someone she deems worthy of sharing her life with exclusively – they will be a feminist.

There is my friend Lady Chardonnay (she came equipped with her own secret internet name!) and her husband Dr. Chardonnay. I believe she calls him Mr. Lady Chardonnay in her blog, but he is an esteemed academic so I will refer to him as so. So Lady Char just had double knee surgery a few days ago and Dr. Char has been sending email updates to her friends and family. The thing that shines through these is the fact that he respects and adores her. And he may win for feminist-est husband in my circle – these two met when she was working withPlanned Parenthood and he was volunteering with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center when those two groups joined up for an education program.

My friend Anna (short for Indianapolis – her zombie survival name) is married to...hmmm...we'll call him Mankato (even though he has a very uncalled for superior attitude about Mankato, the greatest small city in Minnesota). If you look at the facts of their marriage, it doesn't look typically feminist. They were both raised in small towns the midwest. He is quite a few years older than her (although he looks a few years younger than me which is patently unfair). She married young. He is a minister. Ooh! He is her boss at work! (Okay, I have been known to make very funny and only mildly inappropriate jokes about sexual harassment in the workplace to her.) He has spent most of his adult life searching for truth and meaning in this world and helping other as they aspire to do this as well. And he clearly respects and adores his wife. Now I don't know if he calls himself a feminist, but in the 18 or so years that I have known and loved this family, I have never heard him say anything that was disrespectful towards women. And I have heard him talk a LOT! And they have raised a daughter who is a teenaged feminist of the highest order.

Mo is my anomaly. We have been friends for over 25 years. She moved to California 20 years ago, but we have remained besties. She has married two feminists! Okay, yes, I know, the point of this was supposed to be that smart women marry feminists and that makes their marriages last longer. But when I talked to her about her marriages, I couldn't help but think that she had chosen wisely twice. I watched her fall in love with her first husband, Herle. I was actually friends with him before they met and I have to say I was not a fan when she showed up at our house. She mocked my spelling. (This seems to be a theme with me!) And she was a pain in the ass. But she grew on me. And I was the matron of horror at their beautiful wedding. They split up for reasons that were, I think, out of their control. They remained co-parents of their amazing kids. Sadly, the kids have kind of aged out of my spectacular godparenting, but someday they will have children of their own and I will be waiting with a pocket full of butterscotch candies and a used tissue tucked in my sleeve to begin my grandgodparenting.

A few years after their marriage ended, Mo started talking about this guy. Just a friend. But she talked about him a lot. And she showed me a picture. He looked just like Mal Reynolds, captain of the Serenity! And - like any sensible person would do when they met someone who looked like Captain Mal and was a trained chef and was an excellent father – she married him. Now she is married to her second feminist husband. I am not saying that this makes her twice as smart as my other friends, but you do the math...

My husband, el Guapo as he is known around these parts, gave me the stink-eye when I asked him if he was a feminist, way back when. “What do I look like, an idiot? Of course I am...” My mom told me when I was a teenager that if I wanted to have a happy marriage, I should marry a man who is smarter than me. I joke that el Guapo was the closest I could find. Fine. He is CLEARLY equally as smart as I am. I will admit that he knows way more science and how to fix things, but I kick his ass at Jeopardy and I will never stop.

I would amend my mother's advice – to have a happy marriage, you should, of course marry a smart person if at all possible. But also make sure that they believe that, regardless of gender, marriage, any marriage, is the coming together of equals. There must be a word for this, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is...

Oh Aunt Betsy...

Well, you've gone and wrecked one of my favorite names. I usually name my cars Betsy, and, of course, the Betsy Tacy books. And now we have Betsy De Vos. Where do I begin?

So I guess I will begin with the Bloomer list. It is a list of book that is put out by an ALA committee every year that features books with feminist content. I am applying to be on the committee this year. One of the questions on the application is - “Has feminism played a role in your community involvement and/or activism? If so, please describe.”

First of all, how sweet that you assume I am an activist! Most of my activism consists of whining on Facebook. That is an activity, right? But I am involved in the community. And since my community is often times mostly made up of teenagers, I thought I would look there to see how feminism has played a role.

And how does this circle back to the new Secretary of Education, you ask? Well, it became clear to me how closely related feminism and education are. I am a feminist, I have been since I became aware that it existed. And I have had the gift of being well educated in both public and private schools. And believe me when I tell you that a public school education is a gift.

So I talked a girl yesterday at school. She is an ELL student who I have seen around, but haven't really interacted with before. She speaks 6 languages. She is 17 and moved to the US from Malaysia three years ago. She is worried about passing the state standardized tests for 10^th graders. Even though she is 2 years older than most 10^th graders, this is where she has ended up because she missed so much school. She only attended school for 1 year in her home country.

She is Muslim, but apparently pretty liberal: no headgear, cute fashionable outfit, made up as if angels from Sephora did her face this morning. But with a clearly Muslim last name.

Oh, why did she only have one year of school in her home country, you ask?

Well, when she was 11 she got her first period so she was no longer allowed to attend school. I don't know specifically why, but it sure seems like someone in her her home country doesn't want women to be educated.

Her little sister just turned 11 and she told me with a smile that since they are here in American her sister “will not have to miss any school.”

This student lost the four years that we take for granted. The years where kids wonder if they should be taking AP, wonder if they should try out for the musical, if they should run track, if they prefer math to social studies. She might be brilliant (and she seems pretty damn smart) but she lost 4 of her brain-spongiest years not being allowed to be educated.

(And her Muslim parents upended their entire lives to come here for a better life for their girls. For a more secular life. And yet our government vilifies them because of the their background. That isn't radical Islam, that is radical parenting. But we won't even get into the immigration debate.)

For her, being a woman directly impacted her education in a way that makes me want to scream! Feminism depends on education.

I had an interaction with one of my favorite students yesterday as well. This girl is a senior and she has some pretty significant medical issues and some learning delays. And she is the most engaging kid, she never stops reading and if I didn't adore her already – she is a compulsive book buyer who purges her YA collection regularly and donates her books to the school library!

So this girl came in yesterday wearing a shirt that said, “Books make me happy. You, not so much.” I howled with laughter. And I got to thinking, because of public education, she has been able to overcome so many challenges to become the woman she is today.

And Aunt Betsy isn't even sure if we need to fund special education. I don't even have the words to express my dread.

As I mentioned earlier, I attended private schools. They were very warm, kind places where I was surrounded by a lot of privileged kids who looked just like me, who had parents who thought just like mine and who, if they exhibited any challenging behaviors, were invited to go back to public school. Aunt Betsy would have LOVED my educational experience. And I am grateful that my parents wanted their daughters to have a good education. And I don't regret the time I spent in those institutions.

But the truth is, private schools separate us from people who are different. And it is important to surround yourself with people who have different experiences. So many of the problems of this world (not the least of which is the current administration) stem from not understanding that your experience is not necessarily universal.

My younger son attends a public university where his 10 suite-mates are essentially a United Nations. This pleases me to no end. I was in third grade before I met a non-white child. (Not because my family was racist, I just lived in a super-white suburb. My parents hosted a Fresh-Air kid every summer and caught a rash of shit from some parts of the community for that.) He has had gay friends since elementary school. I met my first gay friend in college. (If you don't count every closeted boy I had a crush on in high school...) It was Michael Tolliver from Armistead Maupin's TALES OF THE CITY. But then I met non-fictional gay friends too.

Part of my slow exposure to people who were not “just like me” was because of geography, part of it was because of the era in which I lived, but part of it was the way that private education can insulate you. The idea that it is somehow superior to public education is laughable.

Take it from me, I experienced it and I love to laugh. And I have devoted what will probably amount to the second half of my life to public education. I tell my students that there is no more extravagant gift that they will ever receive than a free public education. And I firmly believe that.

So, Aunt Betsy, before you destroy everything that I hold dear by your greed, incompetence and misguided sense of superiority, be aware that I am a feminist educator and I am watching you.