I always wanted to travel, but have always carried a heavy load of responsibility, which kept me shackled to place and time. I do regret the lost opportunities for travel, and career advancement, which in my case was integrally linked to travel. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Life goes on, if we are lucky.
For instance, I had a chance to spend a few weeks at Oxford University, but the host did not want my children along. It was a trip, not a move, so it would have been possible to take my children with me. All through graduate school I was a single Mom, my girls and I were a family, and of course my children would go wherever I needed to go. There was no one else to provide childcare while I pursued opportunities. The Oxford opportunity went to another female Graduate Student, who did not have children, and so was acceptable.
An ironic experience I had at an academic conference, where I was chairing a session on Feminism, was a lunch meeting involving Professors teaching feminism at Canadian Universities, all women, all individuals professing “equality” for women. The chair of the meeting made reservations for us at a restaurant. I had to bring my children with me to the conference, which the chair knew; there was no one else to care for them, and they could not be left alone. They behaved beautifully, particularly considering how monumentally boring the whole affair must have been for them. At the door to the restaurant where the lunch meeting had been planned, I was informed that the children would not be welcome there, and we were refused entry. The “Feminists” passed on by us as if we were not there, proceeded into the restaurant to the meeting, without me. I was chastised by a few Feminist colleagues for my lack of “collegiality”. This is a serious “black mark” in the academy. It seemed to me, on this and many other occasions, that “professional feminism” is oxymoronic. The corruptive nature of power and expediency is not gender specific. I do not respect “isms” that act out “the end justifies the means”; even if I am the intended beneficiary.
Occasionally my friends were in a position to help out with childcare. They know who they are, and hopefully how much their good will meant to me, and to the girls. They helped my little family believe in humanity through some very trying times.
Because I could not legally move from the location I lived in, I had to turn down many prestigious scholarships and opportunities for study and work, at home and abroad. To leave my children behind, so as to pursue these opportunities, was unthinkable. My first husband, the father of my daughters, was hostile to my career. His wish was to “trip” me up, which he stated on more than one occasion. He used every impediment legally available to attempt to place the children and myself in a subsidized housing development, Ontario Housing. He seemed unable to put the best interest of the children before his “vendetta” towards me, another term he used on several occasions. The threatening letters from him and his lawyers stopped at the same time Terra, the youngest, was no longer a dependent, and therefore no longer leverage for legal actions against me. He never succeeded in any legal action he instigated against me, or in forcing us into rough neighbourhoods. My girls grew up in pleasant neighbourhoods, paid for by my pension fund, which I exhausted in the process. I may not have had the opportunity to advance in my career, or save any pension for my old age, but I did my best for my girls.
I still would love to travel! Who knows, perhaps if I make it into my late seventies and early eighties I will be able to get around a bit!
Worldly Distractions
Weather
-5°C
Date: 12:00 PM EST Thursday 16 January 2014
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.1 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -4.7°C
Dewpoint: -9.7°C
Humidity: 68%
Wind: SSE 28 gust 43 km/h
Wind Chill: -12
Quote
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749 – 1832
