Sunday, September 17, 2023

A yearly repeat, a poem and a post on my father and second chances.

Daily Diary, Day 1112:

Only a brief check in. Yesterday was pretty much a regular day. I finished doing the upstairs cleaning and still had energy to walk. I did spend much of writing time editing what I had written last week, which often happens when I haven’t worked on a manuscript for some days, but this means I should actually get more written today.

I also put up yesterday’s post early that announced the opening up of my daily newsletter to those who would like to do a paid subscription as a form of donation. I confess that this made me anxious, but I did end up with 8 paid subscribers and no massive move to unsubscribe, so over all, a good day yesterday.

This morning I did my usual big cleaning downstairs, so no walk until dinner time is planned. Otherwise, I should be able to work on the novel for the rest of the day.

Today is also my cousin Fran’s birthday, and yesterday I had a lovely phone call with her to catch up, and of course this also reminded me that last year at this time I posted a poem that my father wrote for her and her response, as well as excerpts from a piece I had written in tribute to my father. So, I thought I would simply repost last year’s post, and get back to writing.

CINQUAIN WITH FRAN

To Fran
To love
extremely
so short a name
puts a sweet tall thought
into a great small box

Fran's answer

To be
beloved
makes the path short
for the heart to go
from apart...together

Tribute to my Father

What I want to write about today is the role model my father has been for me, and how he lifts my heart when I think about him.

My father wanted to get a doctorate in sociology and become a college teacher. Instead, after obtaining a masters degree in social work in the late 1940s (as a returning WWII veteran), he joined the corporate world of U. S. Steel in his hometown of Pittsburgh. You see, he had a young daughter to support and a wife who had rheumatic heart disease that required the good health care benefits only corporations like US Steel provided.

He worked for US Steel for nearly 30 years, and he was never happy in that “grey flannel suit.” (The day he retired he vowed never to put on a neck-tie again!) Although there were aspects of his career as a middle manager in the personnel department that he was proud of, he never felt he fit in, and the conservative environment stifled him.

Finally, in the late seventies, when old rust belt industries no longer could compete with other rising industrial centers, US Steel gave him what as called a golden handshake. At the age of 58, he was now retired, but he was not ready to quit working. Until Social Security kicked in, he supplemented his pension by teaching business sociology at a local community college–-and he finally got a taste of the career he had always wanted.

Then, in his early sixties, he retired completely, and he and my mother moved to Florida for her health. There he joined a local poetry group (he had started writing poetry when he left US Steel-and most of it was angry diatribes about corporate America) and he began to win contests and even get some of his work published.

My mother died in 1987, when he was only 66, and a year later he had met, wooed-with his poetry, and married my step-mother, who was a poet herself. The next twelve years or so were wonderful for him. New marriage, productive second career as a poet, and good friends. But then in his early eighties, the confusion, memory loss of early Alzheimer’s, his inability to drive, growing dependence, aches and pains of aging, and an ongoing battle with skin cancer, all began to take its toll. That was when he began to express an anxiety about not having “been successful at doing something important.”

But from my perspective, he had been terribly successful–particularly successful in providing me with a role model that has had much to do with my own successes in life. First of all, while I always understood the economic necessity of his choice to work for US Steel, the message he gave to me, a young woman growing up in the patriarchal expectations for a young middle class girl of the 1950s, was that I should follow a career that fulfilled me.

That support had a lot to do with my willingness to push forward and get a doctorate in history at a time when less than a third of college faculty in any discipline were women. The pride of my parents, particularly my father’s joy, when I got that PhD, more than compensated for all the hard work and deferred economic opportunities.

In 1982, when I went on the job market, the historical profession wasn’t particularly welcoming to women. As late as 1987, only seventeen percent of college history professors were women, and while I did get a tenure track job when I graduated, it was at a university that proved to be a very hostile work environment for a woman. That was one of the reasons I subsequently left, moving to San Diego with my husband and my young daughter. But once again, my father’s experience helped me, when I decided to let go of my dream that I would end up teaching at a small liberal arts college and took a full-time job at San Diego Mesa Community College.

I taught full-time at Mesa for nearly 20 years, had a very stimulating stint at faculty senate leadership, and helped start a women’s studies program. This was the totally fulfilling career my father had wished for me, and I loved that I was following in his footsteps by teaching at a community college.

However, as with my father’s deferred dream of teaching, I had my own deferred dream--to write historical novels. Here my father’s post retirement career as a poet again provided a role model for me. In early posts on this blog I have detailed the obstacles I encountered in achieving this goal and my decision to self-publish. But the point I want to make here is that instead of “giving up” that dream as the years went by, I started to say that, like my father, I would make writing my “second career” when I retired.

So, like my father, I retired when I was in my late fifties, and, like my father, I started on that second career as a writer. Instead of regretting those missed chances to publish earlier, or feeling that I couldn't compete with the young writers who are starting out so at ease with the new technology, or envying the writers my age who have multiple books and a large fan-base to buoy their future sales, I am grateful for this second chance.

And, as I watched my father negotiate the last stage in his life, I saw a man who never gave up his dreams, who took advantage of the second chances life gave him, and who aged with a grace I hope to emulate. —Mary Louisa Locke

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In case you aren’t sure how you got here, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. This is my newsletter reflecting on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. If you aren’t already subscribed but are interested in doing so, you can subscribe for free by clicking the little button below, or you can even upgrade to paid if you are so inclined. If you enjoyed this post, please do click on the little heart and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments!

Here’s a flower from my one rose bush!