I took an old friend on a practice tour today. I wore sandals for the first time this year a couple of days ago and now I’ve got blisters on the back of my ankles. They were made worse by the walk today. Now I just need to wait until they heal into callouses. Then summer can really begin.
Because I was walking with an old friend, I kept forgetting that I was supposed to be telling her about historical spots. I’d get involved in whatever conversation we were having and forget to mention the Parker House as we walked by.
There was one spot I didn’t forget to talk with her about. Really, it’s more of a section, a whole block of things related to Prohibition. One building used to be a pro-Temperance Hotel for women. A bar on one corner is named for Carrie Nation and has a former speakeasy in the back.
Prohibition and the Temperance Movement are widely mocked now, so I usually have to do a little explaining about why so many women wanted alcohol banned. Too many of them had suffered, or seen other women suffer in marriage to alcoholic husbands. They saw how drinking tore families apart. They saw the money for rent and groceries drain away at the local tavern.
Carrie Nation, that bar’s namesake, was famous for charging into taverns with a hatchet and smashing everything she could before she was escorted out. She’d been married to an alcoholic.
I didn’t need to do the whole explanation about it to my friend. She already knows enough on the subject of alcoholic husbands. We’d been comparing notes on the walk over.
We finished up the tour and headed to lunch. We talked more about what we had in common with Carrie Nation. We have it better than women back then, thanks in part to the Temperance movement. They agitated for women’s rights because they saw how women suffered without them. More jobs are open to us and all that. We can have mortgages and credit cards and sorts of cool stuff.
Over lunch, we talked about how much we appreciated that, but also how freaking exhausting it is to be the person doing everything. She still has two kids at home. She’s still on call 24 hours a day.
I’m not on call 24 hours a day anymore. I finished that stage of my life. The kid has flown the nest. I have absolutely loved being her Mom. Nothing could ever make me want to trade that. It is my most favorite thing I have ever done.
Still, now that I’m done with it, I’m realizing how little it really matters to the rest of the world. I can’t put it on my résumé.
Mostly, though, I’m still mad that I had to do so much of it on my own. I’m mad I didn’t get to have a good partner. I don’t get to commiserate with someone who shared the experience.
It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. My life has been good and my kid is so amazing to me that I get overwhelmed by it sometimes.
But looking back right now at the end of all that, seeing it all laid out as a fait accompli, I’m still pretty mad. I think I get to be for a while.