A Call to Arms - August 4, 2006

There are moments when I think she's right. Like when I've picked up yet another banana peel casually left on the end table or when dishes are left on the counter above the empty dishwasher. I think of my expensive and hard-won education as I wipe strawberry jam dribbled down the white kitchen cabinets. Endless career possibilities floated in front of me in my younger days. There are flashes when I feel like an adult again because someone made a positive comment on my writing and I wonder what it would be like to work where I'm appreciated.

So, who is she? Author Linda Hirshman thinks women who stay at home are wasting their education. In Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, Hirshman writes that women need to be working and filling positions of power, that the "glass ceiling" is our in our own home by choosing to be a stay-at-home mom. She advises we should have but one child. Which of my children would I not have had? Lauren, who plays Chopin with enough feelings to make adults misty-eyed? Or Anna, my sensitive child that writesand draws beautifully? How about William, the one that teaches me look at butterflies, and laugh? Yes, we might have had a bigger house, more things but we wouldn't have each other.

I have many thoughts on her points, but my son is waiting. Yes, this engineer will be building roads, but in the sandbox. You see, Ms. Hirshman,I'm not a data point. I don't want to leave my children for the boardroom. I believe in Heaven, but I also believe in another type of immortality. Long after I am gone, I'll live on inside each of my children. They'll remember my words, they'll remember our times together, they'll remember laughter and tears. I'll live in them. And I will change the world, one child at a time. Your writing is a call to arms. I will call each of my children to my arms, and tell them that I love them. Put that in your study.