mama tried

Thinking about mothers staying home full-time or working "outside-the-home" full-time, or part-time, or whatever made me remember and reflect on a bunch of stuff....  My childhood began when most wives were home, and then by the time I was fifteen, Working-Outside-The-Home was a huge trend.

So -- I kind of watched that "evolution" unfold. 

Photographs of me when I was pre-school age showed my mother with me, wearing a dress for the usual daily-round:  cooking, shopping, laundry, whatever.  By the time I was even 9 or 10, I would look at those pictures, and think, "Mom was wearing a dress just for being home and doing regular things?"  That style changed fast, in my grade school years -- women started wearing slacks a lot more.

In the 80s, (I think) people said "full-time homemaker" -- now it seems like the most popular term is "stay-at-home-mom," abbreviated as SAHM.

But when I was little it was simply MOM.  Our mothers didn't call it "stay-at-home-mom" or "full-time homemaker," they just called it Life.

I tried to think about, and imagine, what life is like for children whose mothers work outside the home, as well as their dads -- I don't know if I can do a good job imagining myself as a child in that situation.  I guess I can't really think how it would be very different. 

I did think about swimming.
Because I remember being taken swimming just for fun,
and also
being taken to a pool for swimming lessons.

And thought -- do children whose parents both work outside the home full-time get to go swimming?  Well -- see, that's pretty silly....I suppose someone else just drives them.  Probably not a big deal.

Remembering swimming lessons made me remember "hitting a wall" with swimming.  I learned the things they taught us --
doing the "jellyfish float"
the back-float
even some diving....
but I hit the wall with the Australian crawl.  Couldn't learn it. 
Or -- I "learned" it if you count --

listening carefully to the instructions,
watching closely when the teacher and the other kids did it,
and then
trying my best, as
"learning" --
but -- I couldn't do it.
{  ?  }
I -- don' -- know.
That whole thing of turning your head to the side and breathing in,
and then putting your face into the water and breathing out --
not my area. ...

I think I worked up to the "crawl,"
in swimming lessons,
and then
worked unsuccessfully on doing the freaking "crawl"

two God-damned summers in a row - !!

 (lol)
But -- that was a No.
Not happening.
Not good at it.
Not Australian.
I don't know.

Temporarily I felt a little bit sad and frustrated about it -- was unaccustomed to being the only kid in a "class" who couldn't "get it." 

I had to accept that there are some things in life you might try and not succeed.  And that's a valuable lesson, too, when you're trying to learn how to be a person. 

Decided I didn't mind about the crawl, because I could still swim.  (As in -- stay above water and not drown.)  Could swim out to the raft at Friendship Acres, and dive off of it, & also go down the really tall slide.  (Fast!  Yay!)

(Years later, reading about Jacqueline Bouvier back in the 1950s, opting out of Kennedy-competitive-sports-frenzies:  she said, "It was enough for me to watch them play tennis.  It wasn't necessary for me to be the best." 
I could relate to that.)

Remembering Friendship Acres (in Ohio), led me to think of playing pretend, which was really my favorite -- one time swimming and playing in that little lake, a bunch of children were pretending different things, thinking up a story about the "act" they wanted to do, right on the spot, and then doing it -- I pretended to be drowning -- "Help!  Oh no!!" 

and even though I was in water that was not over my head, this super-tanned lifeguard

(it was the Coppertone era, no one worried about sun exposure, they only worried about having the more glamorous, darkest tan)

got down off that high chair and came ploughing through the water toward me, with her whistle dangling from a chain around her neck. 

I felt very silly and stupid about that, I apologized, because I knew she was supposed to be worried about saving people who might really be "drownding," and not have to waste her time on someone like me who was only acting -- I didn't know I was that good at pretending....(!)

Picturing that Pretending Day led me to think of another memory that I hardly ever think of, but it's never gone, it's always floating in some brain file, even if I don't think of it for decades....in -- Second Grade in Mineral City, Ohio, the two second-grade teachers let the students go together one time, to make up stories and act them out, in the classroom. 

("Acting out" didn't have the negative connotation that it has, today:  it meant "act out" the story.  Show us, rather than tell us.)

I forget what I did,
but there was this kid from the other second-grade "room"
who did this whole routine where he ran out of the classroom, into the hallway, and got water out of the drinking fountain -- I can't remember exactly what he did -- did he have several different water glasses?? 

I don't know, he had something, and he'd bring the water back in with him, and drink some, spill some, and sort of dance around -- it was quite wild, for our little classrooms.  And there's always this sense....if you're having too much fun, Teacher's going to question. 

Sure enough one of the teachers asked him, after a couple of trips out to the hallway and back, "What -- what are you doing?  What are you acting out?"

The energetic little angel replied, "I just got off-work, and I'm drinkin - !"

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lol...and that little urchin probably had a perfect, home-full-time, pillowcase-ironing, apron-wearing, permed-hair Mom who had taught him better'n'at. ...

Similar to the Australian crawl, we try, we don't always achieve perfection.

-30-