by Julie Benesh

Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity- Sigmund Freud

 

Boys only want one thing, said Mom, with the killer breasts

that eventually killed her. (They couldn’t help it; she didn’t blame

them, the boys or the breasts.) Crushes will crush you: you will get pregnant,

drop out of school, be a single mother. (She dropped out but only to get married;

I didn’t come along for years.)

 

I told Dad that when I grew up I’d have a job I liked and he said jobs

were what someone would pay me for, and what anyone liked was called a hobby.

Outlast the bad bosses and I’d be fine. He called me a Jill of all trades

and mistress of none; said if he messed up at work, airplanes

could fall from the sky; who could possibly like that?

 

She wanted me to be a boss, and mistress of myself. He wanted me to join the army

and study technology, not throw away my education studying the ever-lovin’ humanities.

 

A half century later they are both not not right:

it’s an everyday miracle that anyone is born,

falls in love, or enjoys their career; that planes

stay in the sky, or that breasts remain attached.