Marlene Wagman-Geller

~Posted in tribute to Sally Ride Day, May 26^th

        The men who heeded the siren call of the sky are legendary: Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong, Aldrin. Then came Sally Ride, who blazed a cosmic trail when she became the first woman astronaut and shattered the glass dome of the galaxy.

        Since the inception of the pandemic, the Internet has showcased countless posts of health- care workers with super-hero capes draped across their shoulders. As May marks the month Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross, now is an apt time to remember the heroine.

       “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” While Ophelia associated rosemary with memory, a 20^th century woman used another flower to evoke the echo of yesteryear.  

       Memorial Day weekend is a holiday that signifies sales at malls, barbecues, and fireworks. Too often overlooked is the somber shadow that led to its creation.  

No matter how near we are to our biblically allotted three score years and ten, we always remember our milestone firsts: first kiss, first car, first horizontal episode. Mothers are likewise big on firsts: first word their child spoke, first step, first lost tooth. These events constitute the magical moments, forever tucked away in the tissue paper of the heart. 

As a 1950s housewife, my mother was “a woman who lunched.” The Mrs. So-and Sos-who went by their spouses’ first and last names- were unable to pursue careers. The mindset of the era was a wife who worked meant her husband was a poor provider; a bank- issued paper bearing the words: PAY TO THE ORDER OF were an attack on his masculinity. Moreover, the little lady’s real job was in the PTA, the kitchen, the bedroom. And so she lunched.