Every Broad Had...

...a summer like this

Fifty-six years ago, right about this time of the year, I was looking for a job as a Mother’s Helper in one of those swanky Chicago suburbs. It was 1969, I was 15, and the astronauts were preparing to land on the moon.

It was also the summer I grew up.

The year before, my parents had told me they could not afford to send me back to the Catholic High School I had been attending, so I switched high schools that year, lost my friends, became depressed, my grades fell, and I realized I would have to pull myself up by my training bra and figure this out.

Babysitting and tomato picking, my jobs then, would not do it, so being a Mother’s Helper, which I quickly found out meant Slave Girl was my choice. I took a job, packed my little suitcase, and started training as a young woman.

I was in charge of a toddler and a baby (Wait, were there more?) and was not allowed to eat with the family. There were many other tasks and random assignments, like helping lay sod in the front yard and making sure if the baby cried in the night, I was the one who got up, not his parents. It’s a wonder I ever had children after that mess, but I loved those little babies up hard because someone had to.

I called home a lot, often crying, and my Mom wanted to come get me. I vividly remember saying, “If I quit this hard thing, what will happen when the next hard thing comes along?” I stayed, and I physically and emotionally grew up. I thought about life in the five minutes a day I was not acting like a 35-year-old mother of three. I set some goals for myself, and I grew taller. I had to buy a big girl bra, and I appreciated my parents, brothers, and sister in ways that changed me.

A lovely family in the neighborhood made me a meal on my few free hours, and I wish I had kept track of them so I could tell them now how their kindness helped turn me into who I am.

I was a Blooming Broad!

When I left, I had enough money for tuition and bought my little sister (Mo!) a Barbie dollhouse and who knows what for my gorkey but wonderful brothers. It will shock you to know that my parents took me camping for a few days before school started because that’s what I wanted to do.

Back at school, when I walked into the opening assembly, I was so damn proud that I survived, and that’s also when the priest noticed me, said, “Wow!, Look at you.”, and eventually tied to kiss me, but I guess that happens to everyone at Catholic school.

That summer set me up for so much that was to follow. Rejections, the death of my cousin, who was like a sister, more hard work, the importance of not surrendering, the power of my own inner strength, and the silly notion that I could also reach the moon if I kept going.

My instincts tell me that every Broad has had a summer, or a job, or even a moment that turned her from a girl into a Blossoming Broad. Broads are not born overnight, but, wow, are we something or what?

In other news, my 95-year-old Hot Mama is here, and that’s so wonderful that I can’t even write about it yet. The camping trip was so-so. Hey, older men who get up at 5 a.m. and are deaf, Shut the Hell up!

Let’s all take a breath this week. The birdies are singing, and we are having wine in the yard every night with the Broad who helped teach me how to be a woman.

(Oh, that is me, one of my charges, and a little neighbor girl up there in the photo. Was I hot, or what?)

And now, as we did in the old days of journalism…###…this one is over.