“Nostalgia. It’s delicate but potent…It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.” – Don Draper, Mad Men, AMC TV
Mad Men was the best show I’ve watched since The West Wing, and that is saying something, because I am a huge Wing Nut, and can quote whole episodes in their entirety. I am a child of the Mad Men era. My mother was a stay at home mom, as were all the moms on our street. They hung out laundry, did dishes, made weird Jell-O mold salads for church suppers, and were often found counting up Green Stamps and lighting up a Lucky Strike. My mother raised my brother and me in those few years after the fabulous 50s, but before the social uprising of the 1970s. My childhood was all about Saturday morning cartoons, toys with lead paint, dresses for girls, pants for boys, and all the expectations that went with those distinctions.
I still live on the street where I grew up. When we moved here, there were more than a dozen children the same age as we were. We roamed the streets like feral animals, prowling around the playground, hitting the beach, riding bikes, and going on adventures in the woods along the train tracks. Neighborhood schools meant the kids that lived near you, were usually in school with you, and I’m lucky to still have so many friends from that time.
While you don’t have to have been brought up the same way to be friends with someone, it’s true that birds of a feather do tend to flock together. The other night, while sitting in my back yard having socially distant drinks and snacks with two childhood chums, it kind of hit me. There we were, three fully grown, extremely capable women, a few kids between us, decades of careers and shenanigans behind us, and who knows what ahead of us. We are all the product of being raised in Irish Catholic homes, so we all had similar memories of Easter dresses, with matching hats and gloves, meatless Fridays, church every week, and the same two choices for every meal…eat it or starve. Yet, here we are, so very different from the women that raised us.
We are modern women, but we came from women that, while amazing, did not have the opportunities and experiences that we enjoy. We own houses, condos, cars, all on our own. We don’t have to ask a husband, or a father or a brother for permission to do anything. When we want something, we go after it. Now, our mothers were not shrinking violets; Mary, Ruth, and the other Mary were incredibly strong, unbelievably wise, and truly the best examples of parenting anyone could imagine. However, they came of age in such a different environment.
How can women who were not allowed to open a bank account on their own, or have a mortgage in their name, raise confident women that, not to brag, are pretty much running the world? So many women who married and raised families in the 60s were told what to wear and how to act. They were funneled into “pink-collar jobs” and working wasn’t about career advancement but rather a nice way to spend some time while finding a husband. They were denied so much of what my friends and I take for granted, and yet, they still pulled it off. They produced fabulous children that are literally changing the world for the better, and they did it while dusting, baking, and hanging cloth diapers on clotheslines.
We look back with nostalgia on those years. We go through photo albums of faded Polaroids, and we smile at the silver Christmas trees, the avocado green kitchens, and the shag carpeting. Do we really want to go back though? Of course, I’d give anything to have my mother, Mrs. H. and Ruthie here today, because there is so much I never got to ask them, but there’s no way I could be a 60s housewife. Looking back on a period of time and fondly remembering people and places is one thing, but I would have failed miserably at being a mother in the Mad Men era. Being raised by one, however, has been a very good thing.
