Reflections on a Childhood

My earliest memories are of angry voices. My grandmother's was usually deep and velvety, and her convictions, while causing the most minor sprouts of opposition in her midst to whither up and die in a sea of chaos, seemed to freeze a look of genuine serenity on her brow, an expression that only those who never regret their actions can maintain--no doubt these same convictions also supported the steadiness of her voice and the posture of her back, which never seemed to bend. Looking like Ingrid Bergman, with a thin smile stretched demurely under deceptively small eyes, my grandmother was a regal woman, and she knew it. Her steady bearing was rarely disturbed-- except when she became pinned into a corner by her interlocutor, who was usually my mother. When this happened, her shoulders curled forward and she knotted her fists as she shook her head up and down, and her mouth surrendered short, clipped shrieks. For all ten seconds of her discontent, her brow would furrow and her white bobbed hair would shake, similar to a porcupine baring its spines or a skunk lifting its tail. Anyone in her path would run for cover--except my mother.

The most popular subjects of disagreement between my mother and grandmother were my father, who my grandmother detested for years after my mother married him; the "right" way to conduct a household chore; and politics, in roughly that order. Equally unbendable, the two of them would duel most often in kitchen: two immaculately dressed and coiffed chessboard queens with stiff backs and one raised eyebrow each. The ultimate prize was elegance, pride, and self-preservation, which could be broken by the slightest digression into shrieking, the smallest furrow in the brow, or leaving the room altogether, rather than presenting the most practical way to chop apples, the most accurate account of the Oliver North hearings, or the most compelling reason that I should stay at my grandmother's house that weekend.

My grandfather, long confined by cancer to a large leather chair in the living room where he sat sedately watching Tom and Jerry with me, used to be the one who would argue. However, since he had long resigned his desire to speak for himself by the time I came along, and his voice was buried along with him before I turned five, I only knew of him through his wife and daughter. A lifelong Republican, all of his attempts to restrain my mother and grandmother from League of Women Voters rallies, Democratic causes, and civil rights protests were to little avail. He couldn't even keep the FBI out of the house, seemingly emasculated by the fact that his wife was out disturbing the House Un-American Activities Committee in addition to baking apple pies, cleaning houses, and hosting dinner parties. I don't know if he was a religious man-- my grandmother had practically forbidden the family to go to church after being lectured on her subservient role relative to her husband by several Washington area priests.

I grew up then, enamored of strong women, afraid to show my own weaknesses, and largely unsocialized in mainstream male-female roles within a marriage. My mother and grandmother taught me to be proud of my independence, of the equality that they said I shared with boys and men. I hated dolls and played on the boys' soccer team; I debated anyone and everyone that I could in and outside of class; I challenged the authority of my parents. My mother, who referred to a large chunk of women in Houston, where I was born, as "chocolate-covered spiders," often took to saying things like, "Act nobly and wisely, never abandon your convictions, and everything else will come around." Combined with a critical mind, my mother's love of candor could often turn into a particularly nasty kind of venom--brutal honesty-- despite the good intentions that brought it forth.

Today I often wonder where all this has gotten me. My attention to perfection, comfort among men, and willingness to challenge ideas that I see as ill-founded have often served me well, planting me firmly in the world of politics, in which only the hardest men and --very few-- women can survive. I've left my friends and family-- and promising relationships-- to come thousands of miles away, a quest for knowledge, professional success, and perhaps --just a little bit-- to test my own strength. Yet it is a difficult life. The same outspokenness--which in women is more often perceived as aggressiveness-- that has served me well professionally often alienates me from others. As I grow older, and I see things that I want beyond winning an argument or proving my worth-- like having someone to love or even a close, ever-present circle of friends-- I often find myself wondering if I would be happier had I stayed in the city in which I grew up, been a good girl, threatened and challenged nobody. In my heart, I know the answer: to have done so would have been the ultimate symbol of weakness, a total contradiction to how I was raised. As long as I have this heart and mind, I will not be content with such a life. But sometimes I wish it were not so.