“Who am I?
My name is Ned. I do not like my little bed.” No, no that’s Dr. Seuss. But who am I? My husband and I are strolling through the airport waiting on our flight to San Francisco. We are off for a four day trip of pleasure mixed with business. We have left behind our two children who will hardly miss us because of a list of activities as long as my arm. I feel pretty good walking among these strangers at the airport. I’m walking with my best posture and I’m dressed up a bit for the occasion. I have on a lovely floral print blouse that I just ironed last night and well-creased gray wool slacks. Today I’m wearing blue lace trouser socks and tailored blue-suede Rockport flats. This all looks well-matched with my short-waisted boiled wool Geiger jacket. I think to myself, “I look organized, efficient, professional, in-control.” This is who I am-temporarily.
Usually I am not this person with dignity and control. At my house I am the breadwinner some of the time, but often I am the bread maker, literally. I like being the bread maker and on a Saturday afternoon will select just the right bread to accompany our dinner and commence making it. I’ll just get the flour, yeast, water and sugar mixed up to a sticky mass and begin kneading it when inevitably the phone rings. I’ll drop the dough and dash to the phone and try not to drop the handset while gripping it between a dough-encrusted thumb and index finger. After a brief conversation with one of my sisters I’m back to kneading with only small bits of bread dough clinging to my right ear. Just when the dough is at that elastic stage I’ll hear “Mom” trickle down from the needy child upstairs. I negotiate a few minutes of patience from my child and finally plop the dough ball into the well-greased bowl before dashing upstairs to find the lost toy. This is who I am.
Usually I see myself as the promoter of good moral values and supporter of free-thinking for our two children. I have always thought that I promoted equality for girls and boys, men and women, until my eight year old daughter caught me at dinner one night with gender bias. She and her brother were in heated debate when I interjected with, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.”
“His or her own opinion,” my daughter responded.
“Oh, yes,” I sputtered. “His or her.”
“Of course,” she noted, “some people say his when they mean his and hers, girls and boys. Whose darn idea was that anyway?”
Well I’m sure I don’t know whose darn idea that was, but it left me reflecting on my success with enlightened child-rearing. Now I’m not too sure about who I am. I may have occasional lapses with my children, but I’m fairly consistent as chicken caretaker. I look particularly dignified in my knee high forest green rubber boots that I wear out to the chicken pen. Those six chickens count on me to dish out the layin’ mash and fill up the water trough every day. In return I gather up two or three eggs almost every trip. Occasionally I have a special assignment at the chicken house like the day that three of the guinea hens who are the outside birds fell through the nylon screen mesh of the chicken yard and become inside birds. I found the six chickens in quite a state of distress over the three intruders, but was helpless to fix the problem until nightfall. At dusk I returned, green boots and all, and plucked the three sleeping guineas from their comfortable roosts and tossed them out. The guinea toss and minor screen repair left me a hero in those chicken eyes and that is sometimes who I am.
When I scuffle off to bed at night in my gray boiled wool slippers with the apple tree appliqué on top I know who I am. I am all these things together in an unorganized jumble. Some days my more dignified self shows up, but some days I’m covered with chicken house mud. Some days I’m full of right-on-target advice for life and some days I have dough in my ears. But unlike Ned I like my bed.