Wednesday, April 7, 2010

A Woman On Her Own

A WOMAN ON MY OWN

I went to work in ‘fifty three
At the local Daily News
To prove to Mom that I could be
A woman on my own.
An independent seventeen,
I wrote obits, and wedding notes –
I found it fun to telephone
For quotes to use in articles –
On who went where and what they did.



No casual clothes for working gals in 1953 –
My car hop friends were envious
That I dressed up for work.
I felt that I was all grown up.
Mom was
Unconvinced.



I went to work in ‘fifty five – a summer job
Out of town to prove to Mom
That I was grown
A woman on my own.
We sublet a flat, Leah and Elaine and I.
I worked at a Boston brokerage.
My boss was Mildred Hatch.
I worked with Ginny HaggartyAnd Helen Jack from Dorcester
My age, she was engaged to wed
A Cambridge man; her parents feared
She’d move away from Dorcester. 

I learned the Boston dialect –
A milkshake is a frappe, a spa -
A corner store, where tonic is a coke.
That summer my romance broke up
Those Boston girls - they saw me through –
The helped me laugh, and schemed with me
To get him back. It didn’t work.
When I went home to tell my mom how grown I was
Mom was
Unimpressed.

Then I grew up and had three kids and went to work – a full time job
From 8 to 5, two blocks away. We all came home for lunch.
A secretary at a church - whoever would have thought back then
That typewriters and secretaries would soon be obsolete.
I went to work to subsidize the children’s college years
And give those kids a chance to go
To school in a different town, and maybe get a summer job
Like mine had been. They did.

We moved once more – Move number ten
I went to college once again
Became a City Planner then,
Got “Planning Certified”
Became “Kay B – AICP”
And after working twenty years
Retired, with full benefits –
A woman on her own
With better things to do.
If Mom had lived, I know
She would
Approve.