[the picture: Otto, serious. He has my eyes.]This is not just a cute grandkid story, not that there's anything wrong with those. It resonates down through, well, my whole life and political development, given that I was born in the fifties and had seven crinolines in junior high, all of which I wore at once under my circle skirts. So when the sixties came along, bringing feminism in their wake, and I learned that it should read "all people are created equal," that was a very important awakening. The added understanding that women are people passed down in a natural way to my daughter. Oh, but not to my grandson yet.
They were here Sunday to celebrate her birthday. Cassie and I were in the kitchen doing the last of the food preparation, and Tom and Chris were in the living room on the couch watching the Steelers game. Otto (who is almost nine, and loves athletics) got into the frig and found his root beer -- you can count on grandmas for certain things -- and went to the living room.
There he found the recliner empty, so he happily sat down in it (I am now recounting what Tom told me) and put his feet up on the ottoman and balanced his root beer on the arm. He sighed and said, "This is perfect. The women in the kitchen and the men in the living room watching football."
And so life keeps softening our hearts and perplexing us.
Maybe this isn't a story about gender, but about savoring the comfort of feeling like we are right where we belong. I was a boy who could never muster the slightest interest in any televised sport but could not tear myself away from what the women were talking about in the kitchen. I know this perplexed the women in my kitchen and also softened their hearts for different reasons.
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