Quill Feather: Do You Want to be a Modern Woman?

Quill Feather: Do You Want to be a Modern Woman?

Do You Want to be a Modern Woman?

I am proud to be a woman. I am proud to be part of what 'woman' stands for. I am proud of the fact we campaigned to be equal, to have the right to vote, to have equal pay and opportunities in the work place.
I am also proud of a heritage that seems to be disappearing. The smiling picture of a woman in an ironed apron , showing off her clean home and sharing her fabulous baking; while the children are nurtured into school and the husband knows there will be a meal on the table when he gets home from his long day at work.
I have always been ambitious. I have always enjoyed empowering opportunities to prove myself. I wanted a career and a family. It's not too much to ask - to be the best mum, the best wife, the best friend, the best cook, the best house-keeper, the best daughter, the best sister, the best teacher - after all there are a whole twenty-four hours in a day, if we don't sleep too many of them away.
But, in all that ambition the smiling nurturer has to be sacrificed. In order to achieve what we, as women, campaigned to vigilantly and valiantly to achieve in the early twentieth century, the fifties housewife has gradually become replaced by a stressed, hormonal scowling and anti-social bitch who is spread far too thinly across work and family to ever really achieve either fully. A selfish zombie who hasn't the patience or tolerance to live harmoniously with neighbours, work cooperatively with colleagues or spend hours reading children's stories to her children at bedtime. The modern woman is destined to live a miserable unfulfilled life missing most of it in the blur of the fast lane. When we retire at sixty-five will we look back and feel proud of all those sacrifices and un-cherished memories? The children, now married, with children of their own, following in our full paced life-race, who we never really noticed growing up?
I am proud to be a woman. But, just as men's expectations, once the traditional breadwinner and absent father, are now changed and often confused, so are women's. We have ended up trying to be superheroes, trying to be everything to everyone and ending up as nearly nothing to no-one. What happened to our family values and neighbourly conversations? What happened to the government and country that once encouraged and nurtured those oxo family values that kept our families together and taught our children about what was really important in the world? Is it too late to recapture tradition and security before our children turn into our modern selves?

Well, I don't know how I ended up here, in this tight room. The files of different colours, shapes and sizes, on that shelf behind her tall, thin and yellow-bobbed head. Her features are sharp, shallow cheeked. She has not long turned fifty. I will be forty soon. There seems a bigger gulf than that in our ages, she has lived longer than me. Her minutes have stretched, like her skin, over pointed bones and awkward gecko-looks. She can sit and stare without changing expression for hours.

I wipe the tears from my eyes, needing the hydration, throat bone-dry, wondering if she has taken anything in, but her own sense of significance.

'This is professional misconduct.' She rasps. A fly flicks from her tongue, sticks, she swallows. 'I have never known anything like this to happen in the whole of my professional career.'

My minutes have been quick, sometimes intuitive or impulsive. I try to cling onto time before it disappears. She wishes hers away, with a silent bat of her eye.

'Probably because no-one else would leave the evidence in a locked drawer of their locked room, where they were unaware others had jurisdiction.' I smile, ironically. I don't want her to think I'm not taking things seriously.

My son's waiting outside.

I said I wouldn't be long.

I wonder if we made the right decision sending him here. Having him in the same lost valley in which I work. The heat is stifling, I undo the top buttton of my blouse.

I hadn't noticed, she has turned to stone, eyes locked on mine, unmoving.

She reminds me of the medusa, her hair becoming like snakes, hissing violently in my direction. I back-up on my chair.

She is about to use my full name, I can tell. I don't want her to use my shortened name - as that suggests an assumption.

'You leave my options small.' She sighs. Only because she rarely breathes. Half-dead; Un-dead. She's pale as the corpse-bride. Mrs Havisham in cobwebs, not close enough to retirement.

'If I hear of any further incidents between you and your Head of Department I shall recommend disciplinary proceedings to the Head.'

I don't blame your Head of Department if she doesn't want to respond to you now. It's entirely up to you to bridge things - no matter what her reaction. If you fail I have no choice.'

I'm smiling, drifting off to a world with normal rules and expectations. Where spelling mistakes are minor errors and requests that people make a meeting to talk about serious things, in advance, is reasonable.

It feels like one of those bad movies, where an ordinary guy gets caught up in a crime situation, and can only commit a crime to get himself out of it.

I photocopied her notes of our last meeting. Mine and the Head of Department's. I wanted to prepare myself, know what to expect in our third review meeting in two months. I was alone in our staff office, her teaching diary on the table. What had I said that she felt she'd needed to storm out of that meeting? Whatever it was would be used against me and twisted to mean something entirely out of context. I opened her diary at the date, photocopied the pages and locked them away, until I had time to read them and either file them or recycle them. The first complaints had been spelling errors, giving a lax child an effort grade three, to the complaint of her parents, not dressing professionally enough (although there was no present dress-code), asking my Head of Department if she could bring up matters in our Thursday morning meetings rather than during a planning and preparation period, impromptu, when I couldn't get back the time and she still expected reports to have been finished in that time.

I understand the way she looks at me, the gecko - sat there, polar opposite, like an opposing force field.

It's to unnerve me. To make sure I feel the full weight of her status and control. She laughs cooly, disdainfully at my honesty. Not understanding it's purpose.

I tell her, my son is waiting, with respect, I need to go.

My skin is more elastic than hers. I'm reminding her, of her duty of care, my role of importance. I'm reminding her that we need to look after and care for one another, or we become unable to look after our own.

I can see this is beyond her.

'Thanks anyway, for coming.' She says. She feels we have got no further.

I can see she has learned nothing. It is that thick, sound-proof around her. She cannot hear and the cool steam from her mouth creates too much condensation for her to see. I will not take on her wished away minutes, I will keep mine looser in my hand, but treasure it. I know what my lesson is, humility.

I'm happy to wear the suit.

I'm not sure what her lesson is. Perhaps admitting mistakes and being brave enough to apologise.

I am a better than she is.