Earlier in the week I questioned the interpretation of data regarding men and women in the new economy. This morning, I am going to take a different stance. I'm nothing if not consistent in my inconsistencies.
This morning, my Aunt Theresa passed away. Her last few years were very tough. She got hit with bone cancer and Parkinson's Disease and lived with pain and frustration about being confined to a wheelchair. When I visited her on Monday, she lay on a cot in her sun room mumbling ma-ma-ma-ma. Her face was shrunken and grey. Her passing is a blessing in many ways.
Aunt Theresa grew up in the same Italian ghetto in the Bronx as my mother. She's not a relative, but her frequent appearances at family gatherings granted her the title of "aunt." She was always a formidable personality. Never afraid to state her opinions on everything from our clothing to politics to art. She offended my sister by disapproving of the names for her children. She told me that I should continue to live with my parents after college. She didn't like my clothes, so she bought me new ones. She told people what to do, when they should do it, and how often.
Aunt Theresa never married. In those days, tall, opinionated women didn't have suitors waiting outside their door, especially in the working-class Italian community. She clearly longed for a family of her own. She fussed over us telling us that we were gorgeous. She sewed up matching Sunday frocks for us. Later, she gingerly held our babies and cooed.
She was smart. She went to a selective high school down in Battery Park and later to college, when other Italian girls were becoming secretaries and planning their weddings. She became a public school teacher in the Bronx and stayed even when the Italians moved out and minorities moved in. She had the same high expectations for the children, when other teachers gave up.
She travelled, making friends wherever she went. With her indomitable spirit, she inserted herself into communities in Argentina, Spain, France, and Italy. When my mom sent me up to her bedroom to look for some paperwork, I found stashes of old letters from these far off friends in her sock drawer.
She didn't have brothers or sisters. Her parents were recent immigrants, so there was no extended family to take her in during the holidays. She invited herself to our gatherings some times; other times, she went to other homes.
She rallied against the loneliness that goes along with being single with no extended family. Not only did she have my family for Easter dinner and the friends in Argentina to host her during her annual visits. She also had an assortment of gay men in her life who were amused by her campiness. They accompanied her on her frequent visits to the Guggenheim. She made five course dinners for her gay friends and invited local clergy.
It was impossible to look at Aunt Theresa and not see shades of myself and my friends. Opinionated, political, cerebral. As independent as she was, she still had such limited choices. Smart girls became teachers, end of story. Smart girls were single, end of story. Smart girls were a punchline, end of story. Today, we have so many more options.
Feminism today is in disarray. It's thought leaders take on strange, marginal issues. Instead of looking at the alarming poverty rate among women and children, the biggest debates involve 50 Shades of Grey. But today, I have to celebrate the big victories. Smart women have a plethora of career and personal opportunities. During her funeral, I will be thinking about what Aunt Theresa could have achieved if she was born 50 years later.
Apt. 11d 
What a beautiful post. I’ll be thinking of Aunt Theresa too and you and your mother for watching out for her over her last few years. The future holds caregiving for all of us.
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Maybe _she_ was gay.
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Matt – She very well was gay. I know that my parents (now 80) had friends of both genders who either “never found the right man/woman” or who lived with their “best friend”. Everyone knew but no one spelled it out.
I come from a long line of dissatisfied women. When I was younger, I thought it was dissatisfaction with being a mom – so much so that I delayed my own parenthood for many years.
In fact, however, I see now that it was a dissatisfaction with having no choices. They are all women who should have gone to university and should have had careers. Instead, circumstance and world wars and social & economic class played a huge role in limiting them to only being a SAHM.
I am the first of my family to have graduated from university, let alone graduate school. Having my life be an “and” rather than an “either/or” has made all the difference. Having the choice to have a paid work career initially and now the choice/opportunity to step out of that to be with my daughter is a luxury that the women in my family have never had.
I can’t even begin to imagine all of the wasted talent from generations of underemployed and uneducated women. But I’m happy to be part of changing the trajectory for women in my family.
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Don’t be silly there are no gay Italians, everybody knows that.
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We got a huge subsidy, growing up, from those able energetic women teachers who law firms wouldn’t hire. Recently, not so much. I kind of suspect in future – near future! – there will be a move back – both genders – to teaching from able people who can figure out how little satisfaction they would get with MBAs and LLDs
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Sorry about your aunt. Touching eulogy.
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I love your description of Aunt Theresa, and know several myself, of all ethnicities, and even a couple of different professions.
Like you I know lots of aunt theresa’s of my own generation who had many more options, from choice of school to choice of profession to choice of men and families. Reading Sandra’s comment, I realized I’ve never thought of myself as the “first one to graduate from college”, but I am indeed the first woman in my quite large family to have graduated from college (unless I count my father’s cousin’s wife, who looms large in our family history because she did indeed graduate from college).
One big part of this choice is the men — we toy with the idea that the women without families and men might have been gay (which, frankly, would have been lovely, if their lives did include love). But, I think one of the big changes in the world is that the women who aren’t willing to mold their personalities to fit a particular gender expectation can still find men.
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That is an amazing post. I agree with you that it’s good to know that smart women have many more options today and that the feminist movement is talking about some weird stuff (one of the reasons why I researched women writers in my dissertation but never called myself a [restrictively] feminist scholar)
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What a wonderful post. Theresa reminds me of my Aunt Mildred, who turned down proposals and job offers to stay home and look after her mother and sister–but was also the first woman to major in math at Penn and a lifelong math teacher and curriculum designer for the Philadelphia schools. Thanks so much for telling Theresa’s story.
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Crying…very touching.
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God bless Aunt Theresa- what a gift she was for those whose lives she touched.
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Very nice eulogy. I’m sure your Aunt was happy to have ‘family’ like you in her life.
This reminds me a bit of my 4/5th grade teacher, who was an amazing teacher when it came to curriculum and lesson planning, but I don’t think actually liked children, especially young children. She was quite prickly and aloof and had no tolerance for noise or chaos. She was from a very conservative Dutch community in Michigan though, and even though she was baby boomer age, teaching was her only option out.
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