Author: Sheila Quirke

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‘A Day Without Women’ Is Not As Simple As You Might Think

Last night I read an article in the Chicago Tribune, “Chicago Businesses Prepare for ‘A Day Without a Woman.”  Reading the comments made me realize, in a visceral way, why the concept of a women’s strike is still an important, though complicated, tool in 2017.  Here is just a smattering:

  • “Driving should be easier and parking too.”
  • “Hooters just won’t be the same.”
  • “A lot of women may find out that no one misses them. Then they can start up a whole new victimization scam.”
  • “Did America suddenly become Saudi Arabia?”
  • “This is so stupid. So silly.”
  • “Any excuse not too work.”

The messages these comments send are important to understand and acknowledge.  In a nutshell:

  • Women are not competent or capable
  • Women are easily reduced to their breasts/tits/boobs
  • Women complain too much
  • Women should be grateful to have any rights at all
  • Women are silly
  • Women are lazy

Yeah, no.

The concept of the strike behind ‘A Day Without Women’ was introduced by those same gals that first conceived of the Women’s March in January protesting the election of Donald Trump, and it was scheduled to coincide with International Women’s Day.

women-strike

International Women’s Day has as its origins a group of 15,000 New York City union garment workers, all women, who coordinated a strike on March 8, 1908, working to achieve shorter working hours, higher wages, and the right to vote.  The next year, that strike was formally honored by the Socialist Party of America.  In 1910, the movement went global at the International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen.

In 1911, just a few days after the 2nd International Women’s Day was held, 146 workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in NYC on March 25. 123 of those workers were women, mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants.  The conditions the women worked under were brutal and were what, in part, led to the original strike in 1908.  Alas, that effort did not result in workplace improvements.

A women’s strike in Russia in 1917 was one of the contributing factors preceding the Russian Revolution.  Women, protesting over two million deaths of Russian soldiers in World War I, began a strike for “bread and peace,” which lasted over four days and encouraged other workers to strike, directly leading to the abdication of the Czar and the newly instilled government granting Russian women the right to vote.

People who discount or diminish the impact and effectiveness of women banding together in solidarity to achieve common goals do not know their history.

That said, ahem, changing the course of history is never easy and achieving solidarity requires work, compromise, and cooperation. A friend, just this morning, posted this public Facebook status:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3D10208666395717134%26id%3D1227930123&width=500
Everything Cherie says is to be noted and considered.  And what, you ask, is ‘intersectional?’  Theorized by civil rights scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, intersectionist feminism, very simply stated, is that the oppression women experience is dependent on other factors beside their gender, including their race, religion, and class, among other factors.

The original feminist movement, at its core, was not an intersectional movement.  Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were champions of the needs and issues most keenly experienced by white, middle class women, but not women of color.  The counter argument to holding today’s ‘A Day Without a Woman’ is that it does not take into account the challenges women of other races and classes would face in holding a strike on a Wednesday in America 2017.  Tia Cherie, in her status above, captures why this is problematic.

Personally, I am honoring International Women’s Day / ‘A Day Without Women’ by simply not spending money and listening. Solidarity via withholding my dollars, empathy via openness.  My husband is away on business this week and the kiddos still need to get back and forth from school and eat and all that good stuff they simply expect from mom.  Solidarity and empathy are the tools I can utilize today while still taking care of business.

While I respect and salute those women who are striking today to take an important stand on the call for gender equality, I also respect and salute those women who are simply unable to opt out for economic reasons.  Hell, Imma go all inclusive here and say I respect and salute those women who think all of this is a bunch of hooey.

What I believe to be true is that women are a powerful force who are more vulnerable today than we were a year ago.  We are stronger together, united, than we are divided.  The experiences of women of different colors and classes than middle class white gals need to be welcomed, integrated, and valued in a way they historically have not been.

Solidarity and empathy are the tools I can utilize to achieve that, too, not just today, but every day.  Why?  Because those commenters on the Internet are real people with real power who like to demean and diminish and objectify women every chance they get, and those folks are never taking a day off.

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Have You Ever Met a Refugee?

This morning I had the opportunity to drive three little girls to their dance lessons.  They happened to be Syrian refugees who live in my neighborhood. Two of the girls are sisters and while we waited for the third girl to get to the car, they told me their stories, totally unsolicited, and with joy and laughter.

The sisters are in Kindergarten and 4th grade. We giggled that all of our names start with the letters “Sh.”  The 4th grader loves school, but her sister finds it boring and wants to switch to the school her friends go to because it is more fun.  They looked a lot like twins, despite having a few years between them.

The younger sister told me they have lived in Chicago for two years and before that, they lived in five other countries after leaving Syria. Their father died when the girls were one and five. They miss him. The older girl, who was four when her dad died does “not really remember him.” They knew that he had eyes that turned green in the sun. They wished their brown eyes did the same.

A few minutes later, the other girl came down with her mom who didn’t speak a lot of English, but gave Chicago a thumbs up. This little girl recently relapsed with cancer.  I wanted to explain to her mother, the woman sitting next to me with the kind face and gentle eyes wearing the hijab, that I understood, that I, too, once mothered a daughter with cancer, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.  Her English was much better than my Arabic, but it still wasn’t enough for us to share such specific intimacies.

I dropped them off at the dance studio where my own daughter danced so many years ago.  Officially, the main studio has been named after our girl, and there is a plaque and photo of Donna above the door as you walk through.  After the girls went in, I pointed to the photo and said, “My daughter,” to the mom I had just met.  She smiled and said, “Oh.”

I left and returned as the class was ending.  The teacher invited me in saying the dancers needed to get used to having an audience. Would I mind watching?  I was honored.

The music started and within moments I felt tears welling up.  There were a dozen dancers, probably eight to ten years old.  Some had blond hair, some had black hair, all were beautiful.  The choreography was gorgeous and involved the dancers huddled together at times, protective and nurturing.  Other times they danced in formation, powerful and graceful.

dancers

These girls, in their pink and purple lycra, were bonded.  It didn’t matter that some have fled war across oceans, or others were born not three miles from where they still lived.  It didn’t matter that some worship in a church and others in a mosque.  None of that mattered to any of them.

As we were leaving, the girls laughing again and holding hands, happy to get outside where they could run along the sidewalk, I noticed another photo of my daughter in the lobby of the studio.  In this one, Donna is bald and concentrating on her dancing, focused.  I pointed again, to my fellow mother and said, “My daughter.”  Again, she smiled.  Did she make the connection?

In the car riding home, the three girls laughing and going in and out of English and Arabic, I asked the mom if she had other children. Two other daughters, she said, one ten and one nine months.  It struck me in that moment that she was the mother of an American citizen. She asked me the same, “You?  How many children?”

Answering this question is complicated on the best of days, but today, with the language barrier and the bond of cancer between us, it was especially hard.  “I have two boys,” I said, “Eight and three years old.”  “And your daughter?,” she asked.  “She died,” I offered, “She is gone.”  I think she got it.  I don’t know.  Does it even matter?

A lot of people want you to believe that we should fear Syrian refugees, that they are somehow a danger to our way of life here in America.  I am not afraid.  I refuse to fear three little girls giggling in my back seat.  I refuse to fear a child that carries a purple backpack with colorful cats on it.  I refuse to fear a nine year old in the midst of a cancer relapse.  I refuse to fear a mother who left her home in search of something better for her children, one of whom is an American citizen.  I refuse to fear another mother who lost her husband in civil war and fled with a young child and infant, hoping for safety and peace.

Fear is a powerful tool.  It can easily be leveraged and manipulated, exploited for political gain.  It is easy to fear that which you don’t know or understand. Today I met four Syrian refugees.  There was nothing fearful about them.  They were lovely and sweet and very much like our own daughters.

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What a Muddy Backpack and Stuffed Rooster Taught Me About My Mothering

My eight year old son is a child sized version of an absent-minded professor.  I am constantly reminding him to keep track of his things, not to lose his things, and to stay on top of his things.  “Things” being the all inclusive umbrella term for the trappings of boyhood — backpack, handheld game system, stuffed animal du jour, current book, homework, hat, gloves, you know the drill.

This trait in my son is equal parts annoying and endearing.  I love that his little head is so full of such interesting thoughts that he is distracted from the minutiae of life.  Committing to memory the lyrics of all 46 songs on the Hamilton soundtrack is infinitely more rewarding than remembering to empty out and store his backback after school.  I get it.  But damn if we both don’t get frustrated when he’s five minutes late the next morning and he can’t find his mysteriously missing backpack.

And I can’t tell you how often we’re getting ready to leave school and I need to ask him if he remembered to bring home his homework or hoodie or insert necessary thing here.  The sheer volume of stuff on the lost and found table, though, makes me realize that my little fledgling absent-minded academic is merely one of many at his school.  Kids lose their shit all the time, resulting in moms across America losing a different kind of shit all the time, too.

Today as we were leaving, his teacher called out to him, “Don’t forget your backpack!”  I was grateful she was on it, as that damn backpack wasn’t on my radar in that moment.  We had a long afternoon ahead of us and I was thinking about the precision timing involved in getting us from Point A to Point B to Point C in the time frame we needed to keep on schedule.

Knowing we had a few minutes to spare, we went to the school playground to allow my boys to get their afternoon ya-yas out before we headed on to our packed schedule.  Happily, everything worked out.  We were on time for our first adventure, despite bad traffic, and my husband arrived just in time to meet us afterward so that we could share a quick dinner out together before we traded cars and he headed home with the boys and I went on to my evening event.

I was in the middle of that evening event, a guest lecture I was giving about finding meaning after child loss to a room full of social work students when my husband started texting me.  “Do you know where the boy’s backpack is?”  “It’s not in the car.”  “Did you bring it to that focus group?”  “FYI, he is very worried about the stuffies that were in it.”

What a perfectly typical moment of motherhood — impending doom and competing needs.  So there I am trying to convey the reality of what it is like to bury a child when I am thinking about the missing backpack with the stuffed rooster inside it and how sad I know my boy must be, missing his rooster friend.  That, right there, my friends, is my grief in a nutshell.

The texts stopped as soon as they started and I got back to the matter at hand.  Afterwards, I checked in with my husband.  My son didn’t remember having it at our first stop, but I was convinced he must have left it there, as I know he had it leaving school, as his teacher made sure of it.  On this lousy, rainy night, I circled around back to our first stop.  I checked with the lost and found at the security desk, no backpack.  Hmmmm.

I called my husband and said, “Well, we did go to the school playground before we left, maybe he forgot it there and the after school staff found it and took it inside.  You can check in the morning at drop-off.”  I started driving home and thought it might be worthwhile to take a spin to the school myself, just in case the backpack might be on the playground.

BINGO.

backpack

Sure enough, the backpack was there, soaking and filthy, sitting in a pile of mud after hours of rain.  I was elated to find it.  I picked it up with relief and booked it home, feeling like a true hero.  MOM TO THE RESCUE!  How great am I?  Job well done, Mom!  I rock.

As I drove through the rain, I thought about my boy and my love for my boy.  I thought about how happy and relieved he will be in the morning when he learns his rooster stuffie is safe and sound, albeit a bit damp.  I thought about how lucky it was that I went back to the school, especially given that it was out of the way.  I thought about how tender it made me feel that I could do something so simple that will make my boy feel so happy. Isn’t life grand?

Then, out of nowhere, I thought about how I might have reacted if we were halfway to our destination and my son had remembered in that moment that his backpack was missing.  I thought about how angry that would have made me.  I thought about the frustration and resentment I surely would have felt towards my son that no doubt would have snaked its way out of my mouth, lecturing and probably shaming him for being so forgetful.

Ugh.  I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it — motherhood is humbling. I got to feel like a hero tonight and tomorrow morning when my boy finds his favorite stuffed rooster, he will think I am a hero, too.  But, in my gut, I will know the truth, that the flip side of that hero coin is a yelling, overwhelmed, angry and imperfect mom.

I am both those things and my mothering could go either way at any given moment. Tonight it worked out for the best.  On another night, it might not.  The next time I find myself angry and frustrated, resentful towards an eight year old boy for committing the heinous crime of forgetting, I hope I remember that muddy backpack and stuffed rooster.  I hope I remember the tenderness I felt towards a sad boy worried about his missing friend who just happened to be a stuffed rooster.  I hope I remember that how I react is about me and not my son.  I hope I can be a hero more often than not.