My memoir is about “How I became an activist.” It’s centered on my time in NYC, where I joined the women’s movement, protested the Vietnam war and got married on my way out of town. I’d been
thinking for a while that I need to let my x-husband know I’m writing about our time in New York City. I
reached out to him via his City of Seattle email where he currently worked for a Seattle City council
member. I immediately got an email back saying that he acknowledges my email and would contact me
later through his personal email.
I waited weeks maybe even months before getting this message “Hi--I thought for sure I got an email from you about your writing of becoming aware (can't recall term); but I can't find a trace of it in my email even though I also thought I responded. My email servers are a mess; did you/did I?”
I answered right away yes and no. Four months later he answered. The exchanges went on months apart. I thought at the time if this keeps up we might be able to have a conversation in a couple of years. But what did it matter it’s been more than thirty years since we’d seen each other or spoken to each other. My memoir writing is going slowly too. Mostly I hold fond memories of my time with him that I was becoming who I am today and don’t have any hostile feelings towards him. I don’t think he does either we just have gone our separate ways.
In his last reply I could tell he thought of me from time to time because he said that he tried to send a photo of what he believed was our first place in Seattle, 900 block of Market Street, East Ballard. He explained the whole block was being torn down for development. He ended the message by saying “I believe you were instrumental in my own growth as a feminist oriented man.” This meant a lot to me because my memoir is about how I got involved with the Second Wave of Women’s Liberation when we were together.
After this email we exchanged phone numbers and texted until we came up with a meeting time at PCC in Fremont. I wanted to show up by bicycle since we had done a long bicycle tour together which is one of my fond memories but I didn’t. He on the other hand did ride his bicycle to the meeting.
Walking up to meet him I could tell he was on the phone. He vigorously looked like he paced back and forth shifting his weight from foot to foot. I recognize this motion because he did this when we were together, he could never stand still. He’s wearing jeans and a shirt, I guess his wardrobe hasn’t changed either. He looks old and since I’m six months older I’m reminded I’m getting old too.
As soon as he gets off the phone, we update each other about our lives. He tells me about his daughter and the messy divorce from her mother. He explains how he got accused of child abuse but in the end he and his current wife raised his daughter. I told him about my daughter too. The two girls have a lot in common. Both are smart; went to college in Europe; and both have gone into service jobs of sales and hospitality.
I muse over how similar our daughters are and realize that we had formed our life values together during our time in NYC. He’s the only person I can still reach out to after more than fifty years and have a familiarity with. This is a new awareness for me as a military brat. I don’t have people that I still know from my childhood and if I saw them on the street, I wouldn’t recognize them.
He updated me on where some of the people we knew in New York City are today. I know about Bruce who was the bass player in Shanana, I’d googled him and was not surprised he was a professor teaching an obscure topic of the reach between literature and science. I’d also heard about Barry who was a professor of Chinese Language somewhere.
When he brought up Rosalind Petchesky, he raved about her political science writings on feminism. I’ve vaguely follow her over the years. But having worked as a live-in maid for Rosalind during a time when I was becoming aware of class, of women’s health issues but having known her when I was becoming active in the grass roots women’s liberation movement I have a different take on her writings. While it’s true that while working for Rosalind we both became more aware of class we never talked about it. In my opinion she does research for her political writings but doesn’t learn by any practical experience. I always thought people held her on a pedestal because she is a person with money, and attended an elite intellectual institution, Columbia. My memoir is about my experience as a working-class women in the Second Wave of the 1970’s in which I realize my awareness was just starting.
Hearing about all the Ivy league educated people we use to know in New York City I wondered how I missed schooling my x-husband on class awareness. I wished I’d known more about class during my time in NYC to speak up about it like I did feminism. I wish I’d spoken up during this talk too. Having a conversation with Rosalind about class or at least calling Rosalind on her classism might had deepened our understanding about class differences. I only processed this following the next several weeks after this interview. I thought about class a lot and my time in NYC and wondered how I can fit it into my memoir.
I knew I didn’t fit into my husband’s world when we lived together in NYC; I’ve been working on writing about this in my memoir. During my time in NYC as a working-class woman, not a college student like the people my x-husband (then my live in boyfriend) was reinforced in this meeting. Back then I delt with it by never saying much about my Dad being a sergeant in the military, or that I barely graduated from high school. Like this interview I was mostly silently about all that.
During our conversation I thought maybe being an observer in NYC in my twenties was a consequence of being far away from the military world I grew up in. But my military-brat background did give me the knowledge of how to move between groups observing and mimicking just enough to not look like an outsider. This saved me even though I was a drop out in the world but a drop-in at Columbia University in a sea of college students who had a bright future. I wanted so much to be a part of that.
It seems my x-husband and I still have the values we built together in NYC. This became apparent when we talked about imperialism. We shared about how we talk to our peers about it and we both said at the same time “They just don’t understand what imperialism is.” I’m glad that he is still an activist and I am too. We do organize around different issues though, He around environmental issues as an environmental lawyer and me a queer activist as a Lesbian Feminist.
