The ideal

 

Growing up in the Heartland during the fifties and sixties, there was one ideal. Our parents and grandparents expected us to be husbands and wives with a houseful of children. He would go to work everyday at the same job for 45 or 50 years. She would keep the house running efficiently and clean while rearing the children. After that it got a little blurrier. Typically he would do the yard work and attend the children's extracurricular activities, but not necessarily. And children were generally relegated to one or two of those activities, dancing if you were a girl, baseball if you were a boy, or maybe music lessons. The piano was a favorite where I grew up.

Anything outside of these was regarded with suspicion and they had subtle and not so subtle ways of making it known. A woman who didn't marry soon enough was dubbed an old maid. A man was given a bit more grace, because everyone knew boys had oats to sow, but if he waited too long he was a carouser and possibly lazy. Which brought up another point. Should one of those oats start growing in an unmarried female, she was a tramp and that baby began life as an unmentionable thing beginning with "b."

Thank goodness most of this has changed, although there are still a few remnants of the old guard around. My children and two of my grandchildren have grown up in a much more forgiving and accepting world and because of that they are all relatively content and respected members of our family and world. Each found their own way into a life that fit them pretty perfectly. From my granddaughter who has cerbral palsy to my son, the attorney, each one, through traditional and nontraditional ways has created a whole, rich, life, independently supporting themselves in a way that makes me proud.

The ideal now is to find your bliss.