Chasing Superwoman

by Susan DiMickele

  While I was in college, I began to think deeply about my own grandmothers, both who ruled their respective homes with hard work and faith, but little emotion. My paternal grandmother, whom we called “Granny,” struck fear in our hearts when she shook that bony German finger, but I was grateful for the special bond we shared right before she passed. I was crushed when she died right before my wedding—just as we were getting closer—and I realized that one day soon, this generation of women would be gone. How could I learn from them?

  My maternal grandmother, “Grandma,” was still alive. Although we had never been close, I knew I had much to learn from her. So I decided to write a book about Grandma and her remarkable generational values, and I started to take notes in my journal.

  Now, when you’re getting ready to enter law school and you’re newly married, you have better things to do than write a book. About that time Tom Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation and stole my idea. Okay, maybe his book wasn’t just about women, but he had made the generational points (much better than I) and had left me with nothing to write about. So I put the journal away and stopped writing. Somehow, I knew I would pull it out again to finish the rest of the story.

  Grandma died while I was pregnant with Nick, and it was only after her death that I connected the dots. Why is it that death has a way of bringing greater clarity? It wasn’t just that my grandmothers would be missed and learned from; they were still a part of me in many ways. My journey as a working mother had everything to do with the women who came before me, even though they didn’t work outside the home. As for Grandma, I can hardly deny that her stubborn spirit and determination formed the core traits of Lady Lawyer, and I’m thankful that her independence and fierce loyalty to family are stamped on my character forever.

  I realize my stories about Grandma on the pages to come are unique to my own family and experiences, so please think about your own matriarch—a grandmother, a mother, or an aunt—who has made you the working woman you are today. As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water.

  D’Ercole Blood

  When Anna is being particularly stubborn, Doug says she has “D’Ercole blood.” Rose Catropa D’Ercole, my grandma, had a mind of her own.

  I was not her favorite and she never pretended otherwise. Of my sisters, I was the only one who never learned how to sew. It bothered Grandma, and she let me know it. I also hated to clean my room. I never made my bed, and everyone was always picking up after me. Grandma would tell me I was just like her baby sister, Helen. Helen was lazy, and made everyone else do her work. Grandma would call me “Miss Prissy” and say, “The baby in the family is always spoiled.” Did I mention that Helen was also the baby?

  I liked being spoiled. I also had my mother telling me every day that I was just fine the way I was, so I never took Grandma’s comments to heart. Her criticism helped me develop a thick skin—something Lady Lawyer would thank her for years later.

  Maybe I couldn’t sew, but I could do other things. And I wasn’t really interested in sewing anyway. Even at a young age, I could do the math. By the time my sisters found a suitable pattern, bought the material, pinned and cut the material to the pattern, and started sewing, they had already spent more time and money on a dress that probably wouldn’t fit. And that doesn’t even count the time putting on buttons, zippers, and other finishing touches. Half the time, our old Singer machine would jam, and then they had to rip out the thread by hand and start the whole thing over. No thank you. I had better things to do with my time.

  I was more interested in books. And with all that reading, I never had time to clean my room. This is where Grandma came in. She couldn’t help herself, and every time she visited, she would unilaterally purge my room of my worn clothes, old toys, or other favorite items she said I was “too big for.” How could I stop her? Someone had to clean my room, and I wasn’t going to lift a finger. It would happen during her annual summer visit, a visit that would last days or weeks depending on how well she and my father tolerated each other. He was always respectful of Grandma, but he wasn’t her favorite either, and she let him know it. Besides, he was used to being in charge. He was the king of the castle, except when Grandma visited. She cooked food he didn’t like, watched shows on TV he didn’t want to watch, read his paper before he came home from work, and even took over his chair. It wasn’t intentional, it was just her nature. She didn’t know how to be anything but in charge.

  My sisters and I got a kick out of seeing her dethrone the king, something my mother wouldn’t dream of. By the end of her visit, she would buy him a case of beer, and they would part on good terms. Grandma couldn’t drive, so she would ask my mother to take her to the grocery store. They would always get separate carts, and my mother would shudder every time we hit the beer aisle and say, “He doesn’t need it, Mum.” Grandma would ignore her objections every time and say under her breath, “It won’t hurt him, Stella.” It was her way of making peace with him, something he always appreciated.

  After we secured the beer, Grandma would move on to the other items on her list, including olive oil, peppers, sausage, and meat for her sauce. She would tell me I could have anything I wanted, and I would always pick out a bag of puffed cheese curls—the kind that melt in your mouth and make your hands orange from all the food coloring. We’d have a few duplicates with my mother at the checkout, so Grandma would push ahead and make sure she got in line before my mother, pulling crisp bills out of her pocketbook (she never owned a credit card) and elbowing my mother who always tried to pay first. She and my mother would argue, and my mother would insist on paying for everything but the beer.

  Ethnic women can be extremely loud at the grocery store, especially when they’re fighting, and everyone would stare. Grandma was so loud that even my mother relented and let her pay for her own groceries. Sometimes sheer volume can win an argument, especially in public. I can’t help thinking the stares prepared me for Devoted Mommy’s shopping adventures.

  Men, Mosquitoes, and Meatballs

  The only time Grandma rested was in the evenings on the back porch. As much as she loved the summer air, she would constantly complain about the mosquitoes that always plagued our Ohio summers. “Your Aunt Rose doesn’t get these mosquitoes in California,” she would say. I would put on shows for Grandma with dancing and singing, and she would clap and tell me stories about my grandfather “Papa” and growing up in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. She loved to tell stories about all the famous people that grew up in West Aliquippa, like the composer Henry Mancini. My uncle Anthony would make fun of Henry and call him a sissy for practicing the piano and being a mama’s boy instead of playing baseball with the neighborhood. Uncle Anthony played ball with the Yankees farm team and Mickey Mantle until the bottle got the best of him. Grandma would get a sad look in her eye, and I knew not to ask questions.

  Grandma’s strength always drew in neighborhood women, and she would update our family on the local gossip as our next-door neighbor, the only divorced woman around, would visit every evening. We would learn who was cheating, who was dating, and who was divorcing. This was a far cry from my mother, who never entertained gossip or attempted to meddle in anyone’s business. A cheating man was a no-good man. There were no shades of gray when it came to fidelity and commitment. Men who cheated would burn in hell. And she didn’t feel sorry for them.

  When Blonde Sister began to date the man who would become her husband, Grandma first asked about his nationality: “What is he?” Blonde Sister jokingly told Grandma that he was half “hillbilly.” This was a serious mistake. Grandma had lived near a group of hillbillies in West Aliquippa, and she proclaimed that they were the dirtiest people on the face of the earth. The other strike against him? He was a football player. Never mind that his football scholarship gave him a full ride to college, where he worked hard inside and outside the classroom, earning straight As. All football players were dumb, not to mention self-cen
tered. We laugh about it today, but poor Blonde Sister shed her share of tears for dating and then marrying a “hillbilly football player.” Did I mention that he isn’t even a hillbilly?

  Sometimes you just can’t change a woman’s mind. No matter how hard you try, it’s useless. Strong, obstreperous women tend to repel some people. Not me. Instead, I am drawn to them. Doug always tells me I have managed to pick the most overbearing friends, starting with Sassy Shelly, the only woman in the world Doug refuses to argue with. Why? It’s completely useless. No one has ever won an argument with her. There are two ways to see the world: her way or no way. And Jock Jill is the last person you want to meet in the courtroom. She’ll eat you alive, and most people, except me, are afraid to ruffle her feathers. But I find her rougher edges endearing. I am right at home with hardheaded women.

  The D’Ercole women share this trait, and my father likes to proclaim that we are the most stubborn women on the face of the earth. I used to think he was overreaching. Then I had Anna and Abby. Just try talking Anna out of wearing leopard tank top on a cold winter morning.

  Stubborn as she was, Grandma, like most of her generation, wasn’t afraid of a day’s work. While we spent our evenings on the back porch, the days were full of labor. Scrubbing, mopping, sweeping, dusting, washing, ironing, and drying. Grandma was very passionate about her work. She would wash windows and walls, and even though she was only five feet tall and aging, she would stand on a ladder just to dust the light fixtures or reach for the corner cobwebs with her broom. A dirty house was something to be ashamed of, and a clean house was a woman’s crown.

  The best part of the day was spent in the sanctuary of the kitchen, the hottest room in the house in the summer heat. Hot enough to keep the men out, but not hot enough to keep three generations of women from gathering, even without air conditioning. It doesn’t matter if you have an empty dining room, comfortable furniture, or a cozy great room with plenty of seating. Women will gather in the kitchen—no matter the size or the available seating. The reason? We know where the action is. Kitchen conversation is sacred. It was in the kitchen that Grandma told us the story of how she married Papa not knowing his true age. He lied to her before the wedding, and it wasn’t until after they were married that she learned he was sixteen years her senior. Fortunately, her fierce independence enabled her to care for herself on a small pension after his death. She never bought anything for herself and always showered her grandchildren with cash. For an eighth-grade education, she knew more about politics than both of my parents combined. She devoured the newspaper every day and never missed a current event.

  But even more than politics, Grandma’s favorite subject of kitchen conversation was my mother. Like a proud mother, she loved to brag about her own daughter in front of her, as if she wasn’t in the room. As harsh as Grandma was with the rest of the world, I never heard her give anything but praise for my mother. “Saint Stella,” Grandma would call her. She loved to tell us stories about how my mother would gladly iron the family shirts, would never complain about housework, and most importantly, how she had her choice of boyfriends. In fact, she was the envy of every young woman in Aliquippa, officially nominated as the “Woof Girl” of Aliquippa High. My mother had smart boyfriends, rich boyfriends, and—most importantly—Italian boyfriends.

  Not being Italian was my father’s first mistake. But his fatal mistake was much more serious. He didn’t like Grandma’s cooking, and he didn’t even fake it. Grandma would spend hours laboring over the very foods he didn’t like—ravioli, gnocchi, minestrone, wedding soup, and pizzelles. Not only did he not like these foods, he complained when they were served, so much that my mother had to make him his own plate of plain spaghetti, the only pasta he would eat. My father would be served first. Never mind whether or not he liked the food. I always liked Grandma’s meatballs better than my mother’s, although I would never admit it. But I had to agree with my father about the sauce. I was used to my mother’s sauce. Grandma always made her sauce by first browning a roast, and she usually left the fat in for flavor. Too much fat for me. Yet another thing for my father to complain about.

  Sometimes, I wished he would just keep his mouth shut and eat, but like Grandma, keeping quiet wasn’t his nature. Not to mention that he liked to tease Grandma, and the more he got a reaction out of her, the more it entertained him. Grandma would yell at him and tell him how lucky he was to have my mother. Then she would proclaim, “Uncle Sam will eat anything that Aunt Rose puts in front of him.” She would always end the sentence by saying, “He will even eat dog food.”

  At least she never talked about my father behind his back. One thing I fully appreciate about Grandma’s generation of women is their honesty. Brutal honesty. Even Lady Lawyer doesn’t have the guts to tell people what she really thinks, so she acts diplomatic on the outside so later on she can undermine them when they’re not around to defend themselves. Not Grandma. If she had something to say, she’d say it right to your face. When I was dating Doug, he was standing right next to me in the kitchen when Grandma proclaimed that I was spending too much time with “that boy.” She never called him by name until long after we were married.

  Communal Living

  Grandma modeled community—a real sense of knowing and caring for your neighbors—so much that often I long for a houseful of women making pasta together or sitting on my back porch. Most of us live far away from family, don’t know our neighbors, and certainly don’t hang out on our back porches for conversation when we can be talking on our cell phones or multitasking on our laptops. Yet my roots convince me that women were designed to live together in large communities. Unfortunately Doug has informed me he has no interest in communal living. So I hold tightly to the memories of my mother’s kitchen, and I live for my college reunions every few years.

  The last college reunion was at my house. We don’t get hotel rooms. It’s against the rules. Husbands are invited but not expected to attend, and children are always welcome. So last year we had a houseful of eight women, one brave husband (not counting mine), and a dozen children under the age of five. Doug made it until Sunday afternoon; then he locked himself in our bedroom until everyone left Monday evening. Built Becky had taken all the furniture out of my living room and turned it into a fitness studio, and Self-Employed Stefanie and Trusting Tracy had turned my kitchen upside down entertaining guests while Meticulous Molly and Caring Christie cleaned up everyone’s messes. It was just like we were back in college. At least I got communal living out of my system for a few years.

  Sometimes I still wonder, didn’t Grandma have it right? Why are most women trying to do it all alone? In the New Testament church the believers were devoted “to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”1 This requires a devotion to other people. But in today’s modern church, it’s unusual for families to live together in rich community. In fact, I would venture to guess that in circumstances when the mother works outside the home, the family is less likely to be involved in a church. Why? Probably a variety of reasons. Like me, some working mothers have felt judged by the church so they’ve decided to pull away. Others are simply too busy, too overwhelmed, or don’t feel like the church can even begin to relate to their daily world. The result? Too many of us feel as if we are all alone. Why can’t we live in a greater sense of community with other mothers and families? After all, wouldn’t communal living be ideal for the working mother? Is a sense of community completely lost in my generation?

  I was recently talking with my brother-in-law Jon (Encouraging Amy’s husband) about their church in Las Vegas where he serves as one of the pastors. No, it’s not perfect—there’s no such thing as a perfect church—but they really take the message of community to heart. So, you don’t have to clean up your act and become the “church lady” before you’ll be accepted. Instead, they preach the three Bs—belong, believe, and then behave. There’s something about b
elonging first that really has a nice ring. It’s all about being part of a community—knowing that you have a “neighborhood” to call home. Too many of us are sitting at home and talking on our cell phones or glued to the TV watching chick flicks when what we really need is a live group of women to talk with, laugh with, and even cry with—like the women who gathered around my mother’s kitchen when Grandma visited.

  Lots of working mothers just need to hear that they belong.

  Saying Goodbye

  The hard thing about losing people you love is you’re never ready to say goodbye. And looking back at those last few years, I could have learned so much more from Grandma. But I was busy getting ready to be Lady Lawyer, and I rarely saw Grandma after I went to law school. She traveled less in her late years, and it was always inconvenient for me to visit her. She continued to play favorites. I visited her during my second year of law school with Artist Sister, who was then in graduate school. She gave Artist Sister a twenty-dollar bill right in front of me and wished her luck in school. She turned to me and said, “Tell Doug I said hello.” Grandma eventually learned to like Doug. In addition to being Italian, he scrubbed her favorite pan, ate her food, and even sat in the kitchen and listened to her stories. But Artist Sister was by far her favorite, and Grandma always felt sorry for her because she didn’t marry until she was almost forty. “Poor Marybeth. She still isn’t married,” Grandma would say. And Grandma would always say that she hoped and prayed Marybeth would get married before it was “too late.” Of course, we all knew what that meant. Soon, Artist Sister would be too old to bear children, and a husband was a necessary part of the progression to motherhood.

  Grandma understood, as I do now, the wonderful gift of motherhood. But she never got to see me wear my mommy cape. I was four months pregnant with Nick at her funeral. The last thing she told me was that I was going to have a boy, something she rarely got wrong. Like so many women who never had ultrasounds or genetic testing to determine gender, she could just look at a pregnant woman (Is she carrying “low” or “wide”?) and know the sex of the child immediately.