This makes my think about my mom. She was a nurse, at the time when girls only had the options of nurse, secretary or teacher. She wanted to go to Johns Hopkins. Her father thought the local college was just fine. Her mother signed the Johns Hopkins application forms behind her father’s back so when she got in, he had to go along with it.
She became an RN and supported my father while he got his graduate degree. Later, when my sister and I were kids, she went back to school to get her Bachelor’s degree. She took a bunch of community college courses, only to find a lot of the credits wouldn’t transfer to the local university. She had to redo a lot of things, but she never gave up, finally got her BA, and advanced her career. She’s been retired for years now, but has the same practical, don’t-give-up attitude in her 70s that she had when she was trying to balance home, kids and career. One of my favorite stories when I was a kid was when she was an ER nurse and a woman came in giving birth; my mother, who was in her 20s at the time, rode on the stretcher holding the baby’s head as they were wheeling the woman into the delivery room. My other favorite story was about the tunnel that connected her dorm to the campus hospital. The nursing students would carry a box of matches and throw the lit matches to keep the rats away. That woman is tough!
It’s not that I don’t care at all, but I care a whole lot less than I used to about what the general world thinks. I always try to be polite and classy, but if someone is going to judge me for my outfit or hair style, that’s their problem. Getting a bit older can be freeing in some ways.
I think cute beach totes are hard to find.
