When my youngest daughter comes from my bedroom after placing her daughter’s rock-and-play next to the dresser, she often pauses beneath a dark spot on my light ceiling. Lauren is a construction worker and has previously identified the spot as a “nail pop,” a construction term that means a nail popped through the tape. On occasion I will glance at the spot myself, though it does not halt me as long as it does her; she wants to fix it.
A few years ago, Lauren called me and asked me to bring my car to her house; she wanted to check my fluids, and reattach the driver’s side mirror that I had scraped off on a tree while backing into my driveway. I visited with her dogs while she worked on my car, and I was quietly proud of the craftsmanship she demonstrated in fixing my mirror. I have referred to her as my “diesel daughter,” and my friends have seen her shed her Carhartt clothing at my front door so that she can reclaim her daughter from me. When we were travelling together from a family reunion and my ragged and rotted tire exploded in Ohio, Lauren elbowed me aside, jacked up the car and changed the tire. I’m sure that the sight of a man standing around while a young woman changed a tire was the reason the police car stopped behind us, and why the officer asked for my identification so that he could “make sure everything is OK.”
Lauren’s sister, Lisa (the first “grandchild delivery device”) can remember when steam billowed from beneath the hood of the big Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon we had been driving to Pittsburgh, Penn., from Clarksville, Indiana. A truck driver pulled up beside us as I stood in front of the car, hood open, wondering what knob to turn. The driver of the truck stepped down from the rig, and she cautioned me not to open the cap on the radiator. My daughter watched as the small woman reached to carefully release the pressure on the radiator.
A large portion of my social life is spent in a pool hall, and though many women compete in the league, the atmosphere is predominately male. When a man drives a cue ball into a rack of fifteen billiard balls and does not successfully pocket at least one of them, another man will say, “You hit that with your purse.” There are other things that men say that imply that women are not equal competitors on the table, but in the game of pool, an abundance of testosterone does not make for an advantage on the felt. I told a friend that my recalcitrant car might have a dead cell in its battery, and when I thought of it later, I heard a wry, ironic tone when I remembered saying that “My daughters told me that.” When I recognized the tone, I felt anger, and then, shame. I should have shown pride in the fact that my daughters were able to help me.
March is Women’s History Month, and ten years ago, 4 intrepid women set sail on an uncertain sea piloting a barque named The Eastside Voice. Now called The Weekly View, the ship’s foremast is Ethel, its mainmast is Paula and the mizzenmast is Judy, and its sheets, though ragged, still fill with enough wind to bring you this paper. Those three women still grant me a space on these pages, and on the subject of my car and possible solutions to its illness, I’m proud to say, “my daughters told me that.”