Finding My Place

Monday, May 23, 2022

Juan graduated from the University of Chicago in June 1972. I was living in Chicago at that time, working in the women’s movement. We were already serious enough that his mother and I went to the graduation ceremony together. I recalled this as part of my history with her at her memorial service. We had seen that moment in the family pictures we had been poring through in preparation for the slideshow he made for the service.

Over the last few days, we have been walking down a part of that memory lane again, at his 50th class reunion. There were as many people in that class as in my high school graduating class (although far fewer than the equivalent at my university), and yet U of C has managed to keep a core of them active to the point that some people actually knew each other 50 years later. We are part of that group because of a woman friend in the next class along who has actively kept in touch, with each other and with us, over the years.

What was interesting to me, as someone who was not a U of C grad, was the context of the time, 1968-1972. Occupying the University of Chicago administration building was an important memory for many. When one of the organizers lamented the paucity of pictures for the pre-dinner slide show, Juan quipped, “Did you check with the FBI?”

In particular, the substantive session the class offered took me back to what I was doing then. The organizing group for the 1972 reunion had decided to tell the story of a group called the “Janes” — a set of courageous women, including some Chicago students, who were facilitating and doing abortions in 1971 and 1972, in the years before Roe v Wade. The imminent overturn of Roe made this topic extremely relevant this weekend. They showed a preview of an HBO film on the group.*

Here’s my part of the story: I finished my coursework at Michigan State in December 1971. Over the holidays, debating with myself what to do next, I decided to go to Chicago and “work in the women’s movement.” I was clear at the time that there was something big going on and I did not want my granddaughters to ask, “Where were you when the movement was happening?” and have to answer that I was not involved.

The tug of war in my head was over the fact that Juan was there. Was I going there because of him? I convinced myself not. In retrospect….

So I moved to Chicago and got myself a part-time job at Wieboldt’s, one of the local department stores, in the collections department, sending out standard-form dunning letters (a computer would do that job now) and talking to people on the telephone to resolve their issues. And I looked for somewhere to volunteer in the women’s movement. What I found was the Illinois Women’s Abortion Coalition, a group working for Women’s Right to Choose.

I’m afraid I can’t remember much that I actually did with them. I probably did anything they needed to support marches and rallies — on the phone or on paper, since this time was pre-Internet let alone pre-social media. I met other feminists in the area, sharing an apartment with one for a while. The one exception that I remember was that they asked me to be their speaker at a rally and I disappeared for several days to write my speech, only to discover when I re-appeared that what I had written was way too intellectual to rouse the crowd at a rally. Oh, well — it’s a problem I am still having, too much in my head, not enough in my gut.

I guess the FBI has pictures of me giving the speech.

The women’s movement in 1972 — we had read Lenin on the ownership inherent in patriarchal family structures. We were determined to be our own people, keep our own names, take care of ourselves. The “Janes” gave out copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves. My first conversation at the first reunion event we went to was with another woman about keeping our names and passing them on to our daughters. It was a time that gave lots of room for my determination to start on the larger project of changing the world with my own life.

But here’s the tough part. I have never really shared all that with either my daughter or granddaughters, as I imagined. My daughter is a feminist in the Cozzens family tradition that started at least with my mother, and probably before that — strong women, doing their own work competently, standing our ground, helping open up opportunities for other women. She is also an activist — life has given her a different set of issues to be active on, but she would give a better speech at a rally than her mother did.

But when she got married, she added her husband’s name to the two last names she already had, Juan’s and mine. She explained to me that it was important to Richard and not to her, and I’m happy now that the six of them have a shared family name. But I had clearly failed to share with her that aversion to ownership that led so many of us in an earlier generation to keep names we got from our fathers as ours.

And I have also failed with my granddaughters to share what a liberation movement felt like. I’m glad to recognize that failure now, so that I can start listening to their experiences, as they emerge into the ages when the issues will arise. Maybe it’s time to share.

At my retirement party, Lisa said a few words about me, including being proud of having a strong woman as an example for her three daughters. I in turn noted how wonderful it had been to see her emerge as “the feminist I always knew she was.”

Back to abortion rights and Roe v Wade, I will continue to support Women’s Right to Choose, but it is no longer the issue on which I will spend much time. Writing this makes me realize that I do need to send some money, watch judicial elections carefully, and fight for sex education in schools. The opposition is still demanding control over our lives, and it is just as important as ever that we make our choices for ourselves.

Postscript, July 9, 2022. Today I marched in a local parade with candidates for state offices. Our group included a dozen post-Roe young people chanting “Our Bodies — Our Choice. Our Bodies — Our Choice.” I joined them and found myself hopelessly choked up that fifty years later I should be chanting for that same damned issue. I can only hope that my granddaughters, who watched me marched by, will not be doing the same fifty years hence.

[* It turns out that I am actually in the HBO film on “The Janes,” being interviewed by local media on the IWAC rally’s demands: repeal all laws limiting abortion; repeal all laws limiting contraception; and end forced sterilization. Check for my ten seconds of glory at 59:47.]