The American spirit is stronger than ever, even though the road to economic recovery has been slow. Former President Bill Clinton said in his speech to the Democratic convention last night (09/05/2012), that Obama inherited a wreck of an economy and acknowledged that people were not yet feeling a positive change. Clinton then pointed out that not one of his predecessors, including himself, could have fixed this mess in four years. Americans have had to adjust their lifestyle as a result of a job loss, the loss of a home, or health issues. The burning question of this election is, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
He drives to work at the break of dawn to a job that he hates. The job is below his pay grade but it’s a job so he holds his head high and increases the volume on the radio. He and his wife always laughed at the traffic reports of congestion on the highway at 5:00 am and wondered who those predawn travelers were and where they were going. He used to leave for work at 7:00 am. She used to leave for work at 8:30 am, after the kids got on the school bus. Now, she returns home after walking them to the bus stop. She embraces the positive side of having more time in the morning and not having to wear high heels! But she endures the stress of her effort to keep the sparkle in her children’s eyes, a roof over their heads, and food on the table. She thinks about her husband’s morning commute on the dark highway and knows that he is tired even before he begins his workday. So she works even harder at home and applies her managerial skills to stretch the food budget, cook healthy meals and keep the house clean so it is pleasant when her husband returns. Her female friends chide her about assuming all the household chores and setting the “cause” back twenty years. She responds that her family is her cause and that it is not she who is driving during the predawn hours. Reconsidering her opinion of the 1960’s TV moms, she doesn’t feel that keeping the “home hearth” is beneath her pay grade. She prepares inexpensive yet healthy meals from recipes in the cookbooks that she never had time to read when take-out was affordable and more convenient and when the children thought that pizza was the greatest dinner on earth. Instead, she feels relieved that the cable was disconnected and that her children now converse with one another at the dinner table as they eat a home cooked meal. As the weeks turn into months, she accepts the fact that her life may never be what it was and at the same time she questions if she would want it to be that way again. She is surprisingly content from the simple pleasures of family and home and is no longer fueled by the need to construct her life in the image of a preconceived notion, like trying to assemble a puzzle with fragmented pieces. However, with those fragmented pieces, she moves forward with fortitude and creativity and redefines her life in the image of all who struggled before her and finally realizes that to have the freedom to do this, she is after all, living the American dream.
(c) 2012 Linda Stone Cohen All Rights Reserved
Remember that no amount of money can purchase grace, wisdom and humility. Until tomorrow…
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