Am I Sexist?
Or do I just have an overinflated estimation of my maternal role?

I am saddened thinking of all the children of the crew lost on the space shuttle Saturday. But I am especially moved when I think that Dr. Laurel Clark left behind an eight year-old son. Perhaps I am laboring under some archaic thought that a mother is the more important parent. Traditionally, it has been accepted for fathers to be in harm’s way as part of their daily occupations. Not that a lost father is of no consequence, but that a lost mother is of deeper consequence.

This isn’t just my imagination at work here. I am thinking of my own father, who lost his mother at the age of seven and was more deeply affected than he may ever have articulated to us. When I was young and unencumbered by family, my father was supportive of any adventurous schemes I had. He was the own who offered and paid for me to have a ride in a glider. (Which, by the way is an awesome experience. And I would recommend it highly to people like my husband who worry so about engine failure in airplanes. There is no engine to fail! And then there is that sublime moment when the lever is pulled to release the tow line - I got to pull the lever! - a deafening snap followed by pure silence........) Anyhoo.....

When I had three small children, my father won a ride in a hot air balloon.
For two. My mother didn’t really want to go. I volunteered. And was rejected. He made it clear that a mother of minor children (you see, my mother was then free to float, though she didn’t savor the opportunity) had priorities greater than flight.

I am thinking of a story I may already have mentioned once before, Dakota Thanksgiving by J. Bottum that was in the November 2002 issue of First Things.

“They did really think they weren’t going to make it,” she answered. “But they had to do it anyway. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t something to be calculated, weighing their lives against their baby’s. They couldn’t choose their own survival against a chance, however small, of his.”

Aunt Eleanor turned to look at me directly, and her face was hard with something I couldn’t quite understand. “And do you see why? It’s because they were parents. And that’s what it means to be a parent. They had already given up their lives for their child’s, from the first moment he existed.”

She sighed again and looked back out at the river. “In that blizzard, the bill finally came due, and they knew they had to pay it—the way you will pay it, when your time comes. The way your mother and father will pay it, when they have to. That’s what I want you to remember the next time you’re angry with them, the next time you want to scream because they won’t let you do something, the next time you feel as though nobody understands how grown up you’ve become.”

What I am wrestling with now, is the question, “Is it more reflexive, more instinctual for a parent to risk her life for her child than to defer her ambitions and stifle her talents for the same cause?” Does ‘the bill’ come due for some of us - women, especially - when we are told to wait on our dreams because someone small needs us?