Women of the Greatest Generation

The women born before World War II were a different breed, or so it seems to a Baby Boomer who was steeped in the feminist atheist version of truth that reigned in the '60s and beyond. 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 this poem, written by my mom in the '40s. 

To think that I once scoffed at the generations of 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 women have had as blessed a life as my mother had.
 
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

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