26 Women, Chapter 1-3
Stacey Anne Lebeau Harrison
It all started with her
Jeany & Betty Slotski
Charged with cleaning the house and raise the kid while you're at it.
She was born into the depression. After growing up in the City, she went to one of the lesser-known colleges in the state. The campus is located in the most rural area you could imagine.
Since her parents couldn't afford to send her to college, the only way she was going to go is if she got a scholarship. The only reason she got the scholarship is the admissions official saw the applicant was S. A. Lebeau, with a GPA through the roof, from a well thought of high school in the City. They offered Lebau a full-ride scholarship for four years. Of course, they thought they were getting a male student. When they found out the student was a female, they couldn't back out.
Stacey Anne Lebeau quickly made them feel more comfortable as she steamrolled through her first two years with a 4.0 Grade Point Average. For the administration, it was more than concerning when Stacey declared for a mechanical engineering degree. Ah, they thought. They knew she had overreached. She'll go down in flames. And it's too bad; she might have turned out to be an acceptable teacher of young children or a nurse.
It was 1940 in America. Stacey graduated with honors, married her boyfriend of two years, and six months later gave birth to Richard Harrison. Me.
Mom was frustrated by life. Stacey didn't care. Jim Harrison could try to be anything he wanted, but she was going to be a woman who worked. Odds were against her. It was enough that she wanted to be a working mom. She wanted to be employed in a profession thought to be for men only.
With Jim's salary as an accountant and hers, should she get a job would be more than enough for them to hire a full-time nanny to raise their child? Did I feel abandoned because my mother worked? No. It also wasn't difficult to see that neither of my parents was excited about raising me. Over the years, I heard both of them say numerous times how relieved they were they didn't have any more children.
Stacey Anne gave me some desirable characteristics. I like to finish the tasks I take on. I have a natural tendency for organization and planning. I may have learned this from observation, or maybe it was an inherited trait. Still, I assure you it wasn't taught in any deliberate fashion.
Jim passed on what many fathers pass on, a love for the sports teams, our minor league baseball club, and the state university football and basketball teams. Beyond that, he and I didn't have a lot in common. Where you might think as I got older, we might connect more; it didn't work that way with Jim. I was fourteen when he attempted to have the "talk" with me. He was more embarrassed than I was and certainly didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
They both moved in their respective professional circles and overlapped with a few friends. No one ever became a close friend of Stacey Anne. Jim limited his close friends to a couple of old Army buddies. Nobody who wasn't over there could understand what they saw was the way Jim explained it to me.
Two things happened to our family when the Japanese bombed our naval base in Pearl Harbor. Over Stacey's strenuous objections, Jim enlisted in the Navy and left the family before my second birthday. Stacey got a job as an engineer because the men were being sent overseas.
When I was older, she was belatedly trying to catch up with our relationship, since she pretty much ignored me as I grew up.
It was then during an attempt to treat me like an adult, she reluctantly admitted that she might have never got a job if the War hadn't created the opportunity. What she was proudest of was after the War was over, society thought that the women who worked the jobs that provided our men with the tools they needed to win the War, would go back in the kitchen and leave the jobs for the returning vets. Stacey had no intention of quitting and, given her value to the company, and no one was going to force the issue.
Dad came home, and it was almost as if he had never left. Betty, my nanny, and my mother's maid fixed a special Jim homecoming dinner. I knew what the special occasion was, but it took a cake with the message Welcome Home written in frosting before either Jim or Stacey got it. It surprised him, but he was no more surprised than Stacey since she would have never thought to do something like that for him.
When I describe my parents to others over the years, some of them remark that I'm hard on my parents.
"How could they be so cold and distant, You are a warm and caring person."
I credit the Slotski Sisters, Jeany, and Betty. They raised me until I started Highschool. Jeany came to work for us when she graduated from high school. I was almost two years old. Before Jeany got the position, I don't know how many tried and failed to meet my mother's standards. Jeany was both my nanny and our housekeeper until I was eight.
When Jeany quit to marry her boyfriend, who we now refer to as my" Uncle," Dennis, her sister Betty took over. She remained with us until I went to college. For most of that time, Betty served as housekeeper and afternoon wine drinking friend for my mother, since at this point, Stacey had driven away anyone who might have become a friend.
These two women bought me up in a sense I learned how to behave, stay out of trouble, respect my elders, and have empathy for others in pain. You name any trait I have, and it came from the patient rearing by these two young ladies.
Betty is the one that explained the birds and bees to me. She did it very matter of factly with no embarrassment or baby words, vaginas were vaginas, and a penis was a penis. How women and men, coupled, was demonstrated with books checked out of the library. What happened when they did have sex was explained to me as natural and right. The joy of sex was left out for me to discover by myself, but at least I knew how babies are made and had a general idea where the erogenous zones of the human body are located
There you have it. The first three women who made a difference in my life, but there were more. If you want to know about me, you should know them.
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