David, I think you wrote in some year book of mine -- must have been Jr. High
School -- that I would probably end up living in the suburbs, married, with 2
children, and a station wagon. This was comic in that at the time it
apparently seemed perposterous.
As it happens, I live in the suburbs (Westfield, NJ); I am married (three
years this time, eight years cumulatively Mr. Loewer of the E-mail ID having
moved into the ex-husband column some time ago.); I had my second child in
May; and, yes, I recently acquired a station wagon (having drawn the line at
mini-van thereby narrowly avoiding a wholesale slide to bourgeois).
My husband works for the Census Bureau. (Anyone who has read The Alienist
take note.) My eldest child is eight (third grade). He is almost as tall as
I am (not much of an accomplishment) and is just emerging from the
snaggle-tooth kid stage. He has recently developed an obsession with penguins
to the bewilderment of all. While other children are agitating to go to
DisneyWorld, my kid wants to go to Antarctica. I haven't had much luck
getting him to settle for a trip to the zoo.
My baby is a girl and very cute -- in the unbiased opinion of her mother. I
too face the prospect of raising a girl with worry. Mine runs more to the
"pretty princess" toys advertised on TV and the passive roles of female
characters in kid movies -- still. I wonder how you counteract all the
negative subliminal messages on femininity that are baked into our culture.
Well, we all survived worse, didn't we?
I work at AT&T in the finance department. For the record, I'm in the part
that remains AT&T post-Big Bang. Several months ago my dear son announced to
a waitress, "My mother counts beans for the 'phone company. Do you have any
beans you need counted?" Charming child. Again for the record, I am not an
accountant. My duties have more to do with financial planning which is sort
of like being an accountant -- without the glamour.
My sister, for those that may remember her, lives in Philadelphia, and until
recently was defending the poor and downtrodden as an attorney with the Legal
Aid Society. Now that some of Maggie Whelan's friends have cut the money for
that sort of thing, she is clerking for a federal appeals judge.
I am enjoying reading the notes coming in although I will have to get more
adept at web crawling (at least some of my folks are helping me with the
lingo) to make it to Dan's page. Look forward to seeing those folks that
will be at the reunion.
Becky