The Career With a Capital C

I had missed my senior year at high school because of illness.

Now I sat alone on an important chair, being interviewed by the dignified Director of Admissions, a handsome, sharp-nosed man with carefully trimmed white hair, steel rimmed glasses, sitting at an imposing desk. He peered at me over his glasses and asked politely what career I would like to pursue.

Had I been coached ahead of time, I might have answered differently -- less honestly. I might have been tempted to "pad the resumé" to wiggle into acceptance at this discriminating school, but instead I just blurted out,

"Mostly I just want to have children."

Well, they admitted me anyway, and I was privileged to spend a year grabbing everything I could get my arms around that that school offered.

By graduation, I could have gone on to nearly anything I aimed at, and was offered a scholarship at a choice women's college and another scholarship to a highly rated city university's School of Fine Arts. I chose, finally, not the lofty college, but the art school, and I never once regretted the choice.

But that was not my "Career" with a capital "C" -- not really.

When you get what you want, you know it. No one could have been more thrilled or awed by the coming of babies than I have been. The whole business of pregnancy and birth-giving and nurturing small people into big people is something that has engaged my heart and mind so fully over some fifty years that it's a wonder anything else fit into the giant jigsaw puzzle I have watched come together.

The intoxicating highs and abysmal lows of having children-- the narrow escapes! I have come near the loss of a child several times and it is the most agonizing of all concepts no matter how adult the child has become! My eldest has so often called me overprotective, and she is right. Like a lioness -- born for the task!

The times came, I found, that the children threatened themselves! They even sometimes wished each other pain! Children can tear the nest apart, I found. Then what's a lioness to do?

For many years I had a sepia-tone portrait of my daughters at the ages of about 3 and 5 stuffed into the corner of my mirror frame. This photo was a prayer. The two girls in the picture were tender little things-- the elder girl smiling tentatively, obediently for the photo, and the younger one beaming unselfconsciously, caring not that part of her bangs had been snipped unevenly and in places very close to the scalp by her sister the evening prior to the portrait sitting.

These girls came to such odds during their late teens and twenties that they could barely be together even for family holiday dinners. Neither was willing to mend the severed ties and it seemed impossible they would ever love each other again. So I gave up preaching and pleading and suggesting, closed my mouth, and put the photo in my mirror. I explained to God that it was a prayer that would be there until there was an answer from Him.

These two daughters are devoted to each other now. They have stood by each other like the U.S.Marines-- moving into the gap when there is a need-- speaking the truth to each other even when it's excruciatingly painful -- sharing the happy and sad secrets.

They have weathered the perfect storm that raising sons can be and the maddening frustration of money troubles and love troubles and illnesses. The little brother who came along about two years after that photo was taken is securely woven into the network my Career begot. The bonds are palpable around a family table of reddish-haired adults eating pot-luck together, laughing about quirks of life and telling their stories and memories together. They tease and support. They argue fine points and they sometimes disagree strongly and roll their eyes at each other. They love each other really really a lot.

About five years ago I "ran away from home" -- about 3000 miles away -- retired, at least geographically, from my Career -- the one I had told the Director of Admissions. I have watched from afar how beautifully things are flowing, how the set-up is working. There have been some very precarious moments since then when I thought things might fall apart. I had (for my own needs) to fly to try and help and it is a gift they let me do it.

The photo of the two girls still surfaces from time to time. They smile into the camera with their little dresses on and their baby teeth showing. I look long and give thanks.

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