It is a
quandary, if I had one message to leave behind for the women of future
generations to contribute bringing true equality between men and women, it
would be to support and uplift one another.
To release jealousies and instead embrace acceptance and belief in your
fellow female counterparts. It is only
with a strong unified foundation that whatever is built stands throughout
time. The Great Wall of China is a
perfect example. It was built from very
simple but strong materials and because those materials created a bond together
it has stood for thousands of years. If
only mankind could mimic this simple formula.
May 4th, it is the due
date of this writing and a very important and emotional day for me. This is the birthday of my mother who was
born in 1920. She has been gone for 13
years now and the time has flown by so quickly, I miss her and yet I still feel
her presence with me. My mother was born
in Cambridge, Massachusetts and during that time a horrific flu pandemic had
broken out that had been brought back during WWI. Thousands of people were dying, the bodies
were piling up and they couldn’t even keep up with burying them. It was the H1N1, but a strain of the flu that
instead of attacking children and the elderly it attacked mostly young healthy
adults.
My Pépère decided to sell as much as possible and
left the rest. He moved the family from
Cambridge to Ware, Massachusetts to try to escape it and keep his family safe. At the time, “Ware was home to three major
manufacturers: Otis, Stevens and the Gilbert companies, who were noted for
their production of textiles, clothing and shoes. Their demand for labor
brought numerous immigrant families, primarily French, Irish and Polish, to
this rich job market. By the early 20th century the Ware mills employed almost
6,000 people. The Great Depression era
nearly signaled the demise of the mills. But, the citizens of Ware banded
together to buy shares in the struggling companies. The purchase was the first
employee buy-out of a major manufacturer in America. Ware Industries was born, preserving the
livelihood for hundreds of families. Ware's then-Chief of Police Bartholomew
Buckley coined a new phrase for Ware, calling it “The Town that can’t be
licked!” Life Magazine heralded the event in their May 23, 1938 issue,” (Town of Ware,
Not Listed)
my mother was 18 years old at this time and would marry in two years. The “…article entitled Life Goes to a Party:
Ware, Mass. Celebrates Comeback.” (Ibid)
As you enter the town today the sign still greets you at the entrance of
the town boundary at the Palmer/Ware town line, “Welcome to Ware, The Town That
Can’t Be Licked!” However, when I was
growing up most of the kids didn’t even know the background of the phrase or
the actual strength for what it stood for; but I did, my mother told me the
story. It was of course turned into a sexual
connotation. Go to a rival football game
as a cheerleader and the comments flew.
“Here come the Ware girls the town gets its name because the girls know
how to lick.” I hated it, how
demoralizing. I knew the statements made
me feel uncomfortable but I was so naïve and didn’t even understand what was
meant; I just knew it felt bad. Much
later during a time period when my mother had to go to work, she worked at
those very mills, I still hold onto some of her needles that she used to
correct the imperfections in the reams of fabric manufactured there.
Returning back to an earlier time, imagine
these Cambridge women, my Memere and my mother’s two sisters, my Mom was too
young, in that they kept their fur coats to remind them of where they had come
from, to now living and working on a farm.
The work involved collecting eggs, slaughtering chickens, milking cows
and more. My mother grew up on this farm surviving not only through the flu pandemic,
but the hurricane of 1938 bringing floods to the town and through the
depression as well. It was a hard life and as a little girl I used to love
listening to her stories. They
epitomized strength, courage, perseverance and tenacity. These stories represented my own personal
superhero. She would tell of the gypsies
that lived down the road, finding hobos in the barn staring at her through the
hay, to a runaway horse carriage and outhouses in the freezing winters. This was only one generation away from mine. I have
been so lucky to have lived an easier life, but the strength I was able to
assimilate resonates within me. Just one
generation.
While reading Laura Esquivel’s
passage, At the Hearth, in her book “Between Two Fires,” I felt very connected as
it paralleled the stories that I listened to which would also get passed down. It is in this retelling that we learn of our
ancestry, our family’s survival, and the strength we share as women across all
continents, nationalities, and throughout the passages of time. The
essence of equality has been a struggle for such a long period in which women
have been trying to grasp their share of.
However, throughout history there is also so many women that have stood
out which have moved us forward. So why
then do we seem to slip back after we have achieved and gained steps in this Shakespearean
folly? Could it be that part of it we do
to ourselves. Do we as women have some
responsibility for our own steps backwards?
I believe we do.
Immense strength, suffrage, and
objectification can be found in women throughout history and throughout the
Bible. To name just a few game changers
there is Pharoah’s daughter who plucked a babe from the waters which changed
history, the very wise Queen of Sheba using her intellect to gain an important
ally, and Queen Vashti who had great courage in standing up to her husband, the
King, for her own dignity. All of these
women had great wisdom and perseverance in common and in one of the proverbs it
states “God blesses everyone who has wisdom and common sense. Wisdom is worth more than silver. It makes
you much richer than gold. Wisdom is more valuable than precious jewels;
nothing you want compares with her.” (Poverbs 3:13-15) Ironic that in this proverb from the Bible Wisdom equals her; so perhaps it is our wisdom we must past down, enriching and nurturing
the upcoming generations. This can be
accomplished by retelling stories, stories from our ancestors inclusive of our
own stories. We must encourage our
fellow females to uplift one another always for that is what will bond our
strength; it is only showing weakness when we tear each other down and that only
crumbles good foundations which have been placed before us.
There is a difference between wisdom and
intelligence and with much investigation this comparison I feel honored the
words best, “intelligence is the ability to 'go in depth' by 'reading inside'
the facts so to extracting their real (and often hidden) meaning… a wise person
is not someone that knows a lot of things, but someone that completely
assimilates experiences and is able to give them back in a unique way, making
his(her) unique soul to be evident. Thus to be wise is much more than to be
intelligent...” (Johnson, 2013)
For us as women of today it is so
important to support each other in all aspects of our lives, the work place,
friendships and family dynamics. There
is a saying that women can be catty to one another and I’m sure we all can say
we have experienced it at least once if not more in our lifetime, so I ask why? If we utilize our wisdom and pass along the
intelligence of a more supportive behavior towards one another, I believe that
would lead us to the kind of powerful female force we search for in order to construct
our unified success for a future graced with equality we so richly deserve.
Works Cited
Johnson, B. (2013, September 9). Research Gate.
Retrieved May 1, 2015, from The Research Gate Website: http://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_intelligence_and_wisdom2
Town of Ware. (Not Listed). Retrieved May 1, 2015, from Town of Ware Website:
http://www.townofware.com/pages/warema_webdocs/townhist
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