You learn a lot about yourself when you look at your ancestors. You learn a lot about them as well, but given that you are the result of what they lived through, that their DNA shaped who you are, well, yeah. You learn a lot about you.
You also learn a lot about what people want you to give up, return to, and lose.
I can trace my motherline back ten generations. This is what we get.
10. She actually married at 23 —
unusually late for her time — and to a man three years younger. She
had two children. I imagine she had a spark, a bit of spunk, a sense
of her own mind.
9. Married at 16 to a husband eight years older. She had at least thirteen children. Thirteen. A life of constant labor, constant pregnancy, constant survival.
8. Married at 16, husband six years older, at least nine children. Another girl turned mother before she was grown.
7. Married at 20, husband five years older, at least seven children. A life spent raising and burying, loving and losing.
6. Married at 16, husband four years older, at least five children. A childhood traded for domestic duty.
5. Married at 16, husband eight years older, at least three children. He remarried after her, had more children, and died at 42. She died young. Her story feels like a whisper.
4. Married at 16, eight children. Her husband was sixteen years older — and the son of her employer. She was a housemaid. Her life was shaped by power she didn’t have. She had a nervous breakdown when my grandmother was 16. When they put her in the rest home, she was deeply grateful because she no longer had to sweep for herself.
3. Married at 20, two children. A small shift toward choice, toward breathing room. However, I knew this woman. I know for a fact that she never wanted to marry and did not love her husband. She did not want to have children. She just had very little choice given that it was the time period and location of where she was.
2. Married at 19, two children. A generation beginning to loosen the grip of expectation. Mind you, Mom was a very broken person. She married like 5 times to progressively worse men.
Me. Child-free. Husband free. Free.
Now understand, I am not dismissing these women. I honor these women for their struggles and sacrifices, but dammit! I should not HAVE TO honor them for struggles and sacrifices. Their lives should have been more than struggle and sacrifice. What could they have done? What could they have achieved? What could they have accomplished if left to their own devices?
And maybe the answer to that is 'not a goddamned thing,' but even that is valid because we do not HAVE TO accomplish anything. That's not the purpose of living.
I will never accept anyone's argument that men shaped society and should be treated somehow better for that. You can't argue that your gender shaped society when the other gender was being offered no to very few actual paths outside of having 13 children.
You can't oppress people and then brag about what you achieved while you stood on their backs.
So yeah.
Two.
Thirteen.
Nine.
Seven.
Five
Three
Eight
Two
Two.
It ends.
And when I had cancer, they cut out all of my internal reproductive bits, so there is absolutely no way it will ever start again.
IT. ENDS.
And that is a beautiful thing.
