Unsung Keep World Going Women’s History Month A Time To Notice Those Who Toil Quietly For All Of Us
You see them behind the grocery checkout counter and the doctor’s reception desk, at the PTA meeting and in a support group for caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients.
You see them at home laundering and cleaning, at offices filing and phoning, at factories stitching and gluing.
You see them driving buses and tractors, designing bridges and medicines, building office towers and homes.
You see them, but you don’t notice.
They are the women who keep our world going. They are the invisible glue of society, the stick-‘em notes of our conscience, the women who are CEOs of small companies and large families.
The women who make things happen, who raise our children, buy the holiday gifts and cook the big family meals, keep dentist appointments, provide help with homework and feed the elderly relative; who get the car’s tires rotated, take photos at the school play and plan the surprise party for the boss who is retiring.
They are our sisters, daughters, wives, mothers.
You see them, but you don’t notice.
This is Women’s History Month, a time when we are asked to take notice. And we do, by celebrating, with awe and admiration, the grand accomplishments of women who have invented, transformed, piloted, written, acted and painted their way into history - the very same history that, until recently, largely ignored them and excluded them from the textbooks their children read in school.
These are the women who have been inducted to the National Women’s Hall of Fame: civil rights lawyers and politicians, opera singers, doctors, editors and saints, poets, pastors and pilots. Some whose name you may recognize - Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Ella Fitzgerald, Geraldine Ferraro. Others who are less familiar but no less notable - Ann Bancroft, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, Jacqueline Cochran. These are the lead actresses in pioneering times.
But what about the supporting cast, the women whose countless contributions we rarely notice, not even during this particular month? Teachers, nurses, waitresses, mothers, secretaries, baby sitters and crossing guards. Engineers, architects, doctors and lawyers, clerks and maids, seamstresses and hairstylists.
Some may not possess a college degree or own an impressive sculpture or trophy to commemorate their deeds. Their daily lives will not earn them the proverbial 15 minutes of fame. They will not win a Nobel or a Grammy or a Pulitzer.
They will not sing at the Met or perform with the Miami City Ballet. They will not discover a cure for AIDS or a breakthrough gene. They will neither appear on “Oprah!” nor be interviewed by Larry King, nor end up honored by the Women’s Hall of Fame.
Yet we need these everyday women:
The grandmother who raised six children of her own, then two grandchildren, and in her 60s started taking in foster kids because, as she told me during an interview, “somebody’s got to do it.”
The mother who helped her second-grader stencil in letters on a posterboard after dinner though she was bone tired from working all day at the office and had had it up-to-here with a boss who doesn’t understand why she needs the morning off to visit the pediatrician.
The volunteer who spoon-feeds an octogenarian who has forgotten his name and his family but was lucky enough to be her husband’s hospital mate. The very same volunteer who turned 78 the other day and has no close relatives, only a tight-knit circle of widows just like her.
A teacher who remains enthusiastic and demanding even when parents don’t come in for meetings, when children fall asleep in class, when colleagues urge her to transfer to a “nicer” school where they say students at least speak the language.
The retired neighbor who teaches kids on the block the essentials: how to fly a kite, use a bicycle tire pump, do a french braid - and say “please” and “thank you” and “yes, sir.”
We see them, all right, these unsung heroes.
It’s time we notice them, too, in March as well as in December and May and every day.