My Mom Working Was the Best Thing
For International Women’s Day (March 8) I wanted to share one aspect of my mother’s life — when she first went back to working outside the home. In the years prior, she had given private French lessons in our dining room, but in 1968, she became a translator at Washington, D.C.’s Comsat. When discussing all the changes it would entail in our routine, my parents were very open about the financial necessity of her going to work. At 10, I didn’t understand that this was a subject only discussed within the family, and told a neighbor “oh yeah, my mother needs to work to get us out of the hole we’re in”. (I was gently schooled later that this was inappropriate sharing. Ironically, my clueless indiscretion got back to my parents via the same neighbor whose twin sons were paying kids a nickel to come into the woods, so they could smell their shoes and socks. You can imagine the embarrassment was far worse when my father told Mrs T. as diplomatically as he could about her sons’ “hobby.”)
Not only did my mom pay off the credit cards, she saved enough to take all five of us kids to France in the summer of 1969. After that, we moved to New York, and she almost immediately started working as a French teacher at Mount Vernon High School, where she introduced Latin as well, two years later.
My mother working had a big impact on me and my siblings. We suddenly did the dishes…
