The women of the greatest generation

The women who came of age before and during World War II were a different breed -- or so it seemed to a Baby Boomer who was steeped in the feminist-atheist version of truth that has reigned in our culture since the '60s. Indeed, one of my biggest regrets is that I let Betty Friedan and her radical feminist comrades turn me away from thinking like what's expressed in the poem below, written in the 1940s by my mom (pictured above with my Granny, on a beach in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin). 

To think that I once scoffed at women who lived without benefit of Betty's "wisdom" and her husband-free, children-free, money-packed solution for a happy life. I don't think many have had as blessed a life as the women of my mother's generation.
 
LEGACY

My grandma was little,
Demure and blue-eyed,
She left me a message
The day that she died.
 
"To my only grandchild --
To lead a good life, 
You must be a lady,
You should be a wife.
 
"Be quick to request
But slow to command.
Wear your heart on your sleeve
and gloves on your hand.

"Two things you must have
But hide well," she wrote.
"A brain that is swift
And a starched petticoat."
 
And when I met you,
The world sang with the birds.
T'was then I remembered
My grandmother's words.
 
And it worked! She was right!
My grandmother knew!
I did as she said,
And I'm married to you!
 
-- Ethel Boehm Foth