"Big Sweets"

my first glimpse of another way to be

photo by kenny eliason via unsplash

“Act like a ladyee!”

On occasion, I can still hear my grandmother’s voice, though messages like that one have largely been vanquished.

me, left, not acting like a lady

I’m certain my mother heard that same admonition, maybe daily, until she married my father and left her parents’ home.

My mother obeyed. She always acts like a lady. Even when no one is watching. She is the ideal of what was, in the early 1960s, the perfect wife and mother: a modest, quiet, gentle, demure, polite, kind, every-Sunday-church-going, non-smoking, nearly tee-totaling Lady who always deferred to her husband and never raised her voice to her children. Six of them in nine years. Six stair-step daughters. I am the first. A seventh baby came several years later. Also a girl.

My grandmother, with whom I spent a lot of time as a child, was pretty much the same, though with a bit more fire. All Irish, that one, but still possessed all those stellar qualities I listed in my mother, above. I did, however, hear her raise her voice a few times. She used to say I was a '“Fresh thing. Oh, that sassy mouth!”.

I knew by the time I was about six that it was going to be very, very difficult for me to be that “good” all the time and sit still in church besides! My father tells me (often) that as a toddler, the family pediatrician told my mother that I had a “very negativistic attitude”. Old biddy. I was stubborn, too bad. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to check all those “act like a lady” boxes! I was already beginning to be “too”. Too opinionated, too loud, too hot-tempered, too impatient, too direct. The list grew as I did.

me, being sullen and uncooperative

And then one day, I met an entirely different kind of female human and a big, beautiful world of different future selves became possible for me.

I met “Big Sweets”.

I was nine-ish, spending the weekend , as I often did, with my grandparents at their “up in the country” home in upstate NY. There were almost always visitors, sometimes for the whole weekend, but most often for Sunday afternoons and dinners.

That particular weekend, my mother’s sister, my Godmother, whom I adored and admired and still do, and her husband, my beloved Uncle were there. They are both artists, very creative types, and I wished I could be as cool as they were. When my husband first met them, he asked if I was sure they weren’t my real parents.

a painting by my uncle, John Madden

Along with them that day came my uncle’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Madden (as I child, I was not privy to first names). I vaguely remember the Mr., but, oh, the Mrs.!

She wore lipstick, and not the barely-there pinky kind. She wore a very fashionable, floaty, large print, caftan-type thing (it was the 60s) . She wore a fabulous ring bigger than I’d ever seen and dangly earrings. My mother only wore very dainty jewelry befitting her small personage on special occasions. My grandmother donned those screw-on earrings that looked like pearls for mass on Sunday: All this style was new to me and I loved it. It seemed very theatrical when I didn’t even know what that meant. Like in a Rosalind-Russell-as-Auntie-Mame kind of way, or maybe a Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire. She smoked cigarettes! She spoke her mind and talked right along with the men! She laughed out loud, like, really laughed. And I’m pretty sure she had a serious cocktail in hand. She didn’t seem to behave in the same ways my mother and grandmother did. All I knew was that she was “too”. Just like me! Just like what felt so natural to me, but I had to keep under tight wraps.

Big Sweets was my kind of girl!

I never had any direct conversation with “Big Sweets”, as her husband and sons called her. I certainly didn’t know her in any meaningful way at all, but that first impression has stayed with me for nearly 50 years. It may have been the first “A-HA!” moment of my life. I saw for the first time that there were other ways to be and I didn’t have to be the same kind of woman as those who were indoctrinating me to be a subservient member of the patriarchy raising me.

The Cliff, by by aunt, Kathleen Madden

Don’t get me wrong: they are (my mom) and were (my grandma) lovely women who nurtured and loved and cared for me, and taught me in the best way they knew how. I just couldn’t fit in that skin, though I spent many more years trying.

I did not pursue an arts education, even though it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, because it wasn’t practical. After a brief off-the-rails interlude, I dutifully married and had children and went to church every Sunday, and upheld the family values as the eldest child so often does, but the skin never fit. It was tight and itchy as woolen winter underwear. Eventually, I knew I had to go big and be my own “too” self or die trying. I know I disappointed and shamed Mom and Grandma when I shed that skin for good. I’m sorry/not sorry.

Big Sweets planted a seed in me.

Soon after meeting Big Sweets, I became curious about other ways of being a woman in this world. I watched my friends’ mothers, my aunts, my teachers, and later, women I worked with, learning from each traits and behaviors that felt like they fit me, and leaving the rest behind. I’m grateful to each of them for the lessons they showed me along the way, but Big Sweets will always have a special place in my heart.