SEEDS OF CHANGE
A Widow Bit – Dec. 31, 2010
By Mary Koch

            I cannot allow 2010 to pass without noting that it represented the centenary of two significant events:  women’s suffrage in the state of Washington and the birth of my late mother-in-law, also in the state of Washington.

            Washington’s male voters (bless ’em) approved women’s suffrage by a nearly 2:1 majority, making this the fifth state in the Union to give women the right to vote. National women’s suffrage would arrive 10 years later, with passage of the 19th Amendment. It was the great watershed in the epochal struggle for women’s equality that continues today. 

            I wonder what it was like to be born into a revolutionary era like that. Edna Mae’s generation (which included my own mother, born in Illinois six years later) subtly reinvented the role of women. With new assurance of their equality with the male, they were challenged to perform an intricate balancing act. They still were called to safeguard certain cultural values and perform their traditional role as family nurturer. They advanced the cause of equal status for women, but quietly – and certainly not as quickly nor as far as my generation demanded.

            Edna Mae was born into a religiously conservative family. She left institutionalized religion behind when she escaped to college (“normal school” they called it then) and developed her own strict moral code that was the marrow of her being. She met her future husband, John M. Andrist, on a geology field trip. They ultimately eloped.

            Their marriage was similar to my own parents’ – husband and wife were equal partners, yet with roles clearly defined by the norm of the day. The economic fate and social status of the family depended on the father’s career path. It was the responsibility of the wife to be the Oscar-winning supporting actress. Yet as the decades advanced, roles were modified to meet the demands of the times. When Edna Mae and John bought a small restaurant, he did the cooking. He’d had experience and was good at it. Edna Mae ran the wait staff, and I’m certain she was good at that.

            The term of endearment my late husband used most often when describing his mother was “stubborn.” A petite woman, she had a set to her chin that said without words, “Don’t waste your breath arguing.” Yet she did not argue when we invited her to move in with us after she’d lived alone as a widow for six years. What followed was a challenge. Andrist men tend to marry strong-willed women, and there were two of us under the same roof. We adapted, not easily and not always gracefully, but we knew we had to. Without ever losing her sense of self, Edna Mae had been adapting all her life. It was the most important lesson of the many she taught me.

            Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking it was my generation that brought about the most significant changes in gender and racial equality. But, ah, let us never forget the women – and men – of 1910.