My Cowboy Destiny
Written by Heidi, Golden Valley, MNOne day, our first grade teacher asked us: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Career exploration played no role in our first grade curriculum in the 1960s. The question seemed incongruous, coming from our very stern teacher, who was never off-task; drilling us in our addition and subtraction tables, teaching us to sound out one word at time in our “Sam and Ann” readers, having us practice printing our capital letters on pieces of paper with very wide lines. I suspect our teacher was merely buying time before we headed off to music class. I nearly jumped out of my wooden desk in anticipation of sharing my personal dream with the class.
Our teacher went methodically down each row as the students answered, in turn:
Farmer.
Teacher.
Nurse.
Truck driver.
Secretary.
Teacher.
Work in a store.
Mommy.
Boss.
Nurse.
Pig Farmer.
The responses from the class reflected the reality of life in rural Minnesota and its mid-century opportunities. I squirmed in my seat, waiting to be called on.
“Fly a plane.” I turned my head to look with favor on the boy who dared consider a job less earthbound. (He would, in time, become a crop duster).
“Stewardess,” said another student inspired by the airborne theme.
“Take care of horses,” said my friend Cindy.
It took forever, but finally, the teacher pointed at me. I sat up straight: “I want to be a movie star.” I looked around the class, hoping to see the wonder and respect in their eyes. Finding none, I added, “Or an oceanographer.”
I said “movie star,” but I meant being a TV actor. We had a movie theater in Windom, Minnesota, population 3,781. Sometimes, it ran movies for kids. I saw “Pinocchio” there, and “Snow White”, and “How the West Was Won”, the first movie I ever attended without an adult.
But mostly, I learned about acting from TV. Westerns were a staple of my television diet as a young child. I wanted to be a movie-star cowboy, wearing a ten-gallon hat. I did not want to be a cowboy. I wanted to act like a cowboy. Tender-hearted like Little Joe on “Bonanza”; mysterious and wise like “The Lone Ranger”; brave and just like Marshal Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke”. I owned a black cowboy hat, a holster with a play pistol, a silver badge, and a fringed vest. The Western theme was a Schneider family affair. In our backyard, our dad created a large metal teepee, which our mom decorated with stencils of animal tracks, of bears, rabbits, deer, and coyotes. My sisters and I would rest on the cool grass inside that teepee on summer days. We could spend hours playing with the echoes of our voices within the metal cone: the sounds of bird calls and animal screeches, and our own uncontrollable giggles.
My cowboy acting career was truly launched on family vacations. We often took the Airstream trailer out west. We always visited ghost towns or old West outposts on those trips. There, I could strut on the boardwalk, taking long strides with my skinny legs. Or I would sit on a hitching post and pretend I was galloping on a horse, slapping its haunches to make it go faster. Or I would push my way through swinging saloon doors with defiance and authority. My father obliged my fantasies by taking real Hollywood home movies with an 8 mm, scene after scene of me, impersonating a cowboy.
I was pint-sized, always small for my age. I was manhandled by my classmates and called “Shrimpy”. The cowboy role made me feel big and powerful, a grown-up with purpose and an awe-inspiring uniform.
My destiny as a cowboy movie star was short-lived. Sometime after my public announcement of my career in the first grade, my aspirations clashed with the long arm of the law. My father’s long arm, to be specific.
My family was gathered in the kitchen before supper. My dad, just home from work, was seated at the kitchen table, drinking a dry martini and watching Walter Cronkite on a small black-and-white television. My mom was cooking dinner across the room, her back to the TV and her bourbon Manhattan sitting near the sink. I was standing next to Dad, trying to persuade my mom to allow me to stay up past my way-too-early bedtime, so I could watch a special on TV. Was it a Western? I cannot recall.
My sensible mother said no, it was a school night. No exceptions. I continued to press my case to her, as persuasively as I could.
“It’s just this once, Mommy…”
My father interrupted my argument.
“Listen to your mother. She said NO. She means NO.”
I drew up my tiny self, as tall as I could, planted both feet in a wide stance, and in my best John Wayne voice, I drawled: “Now you, mister, you stay outta this.”
My dad rose from his seat without a word, grabbed my arm with one hand, and landed a strong spanking on my bottom with the other. I was sent to my room, banished from dinner.
I crawled up onto my top bunk bed and contemplated in earnest the limits of my cowboy persona. It just wasn’t convincing. I couldn’t hide that I was a child, a girl, a shrimp, powerless. That evening, I retired my holster and my silver badge for good.
I think back with awe at my first-grade self. How my hand shot into the air, begging to be recognized. My confidence that I could be anything—a movie star, an oceanographer, a cowboy actor. My ambition to stand out. My conviction that my small size would never deter me from being as brave and just and tender-hearted as a cowboy. I wonder at the little girl, who talked back like John Wayne to her dad. If she had been my child, I would have fought back my laugher, tears welling up in my eyes with the strain of keeping a straight face. I hope my parents, too, shared a smile at my bravado when I was out of the room.
I also think about that feisty child, and how she started to disappear that John Wayne-night until she vanished into thin air by the time she reached the eighth grade. She never became a movie star or an oceanographer. She became a good girl, an obedient daughter, deferential, nice.
Who is responsible for this readjustment of expectations? Perhaps it was the society I grew up in. In television and magazine advertising, for example, white women were pictured as housekeepers who worried about which laundry detergent best removed stubborn stains (and Black women were not pictured at all). Perhaps it was my dad, who encouraged me to be anything I wanted, and then discouraged me, perhaps rightly, from becoming an oceanographer or astronomer because I didn’t love studying mathematics in school. Or perhaps it was my mother, who got a business administration degree in college, but gave up her job to get married and have children. She always modeled that raising children was the most important job of a mother. Perhaps it was my husband, who supported my career and who slaved long hours to get ahead in his professional life. But he could not and did not want to step back to co-parent our children in an equal way. Perhaps it was having children and myself being unable to make a career as a lawyer and a parent compatible with one another. Perhaps it was my employer, who penalized those people who did not maintain their billable hours. Perhaps it was our government which failed to provide anything like universal childcare to allow both parents of young children to work full-time.
There are as many possible answers as there are questions to how my cowboy dreams disappeared. I left my legal career, shortly after the birth of my second child, thinking I would return in five years, after my husband became a partner and had more control of his life. After five years, both my little ones would be launched in school full-time. I thought, at first, that it would be easy to step back in to my law practice. But after five years at home, I discovered I had waited too long outside the workforce, especially during a digital revolution that changed the way the office functioned and law was practiced. Returning to law practice was daunting after five years away, and I further persuaded myself that my kids needed me at home for another year. And then another.
In the meantime, I became a volunteer, where I shared my skill set and graduate degree education for free. And I continue to do so today. I devote myself, gratis, to organizations I love and causes I have a passion for. My kids are almost grown and fully independent. They are young adults that will surely make the world a better place. My husband is highly successful in his career. We have stayed married for almost 30 years. I am grateful for the good life we are living together.
Sometimes I become angry when I think about what I let go of: my advanced degree, my dreams of being a judge or a partner in a law firm or running my own business. And when I regret what I left behind and how I failed to “lean in,” according to Sheryl Sandberg’s popular admonition, I remind myself to forgive. Forgive my government, my employers, my parents, my husband, my children, forgive all of them for their individual roles in holding me back, a little or a lot. But mostly, I need to forgive myself. For disliking math. For setting unrealistic expectations and thinking I could do it all. For procrastinating. For failing to stand up for myself. For limiting my imagination and my goals. For growing older. For being human. For being a woman.
I need to forgive myself for losing that feisty little girl somewhere along my life’s journey. For saying to myself: Now you stay outta this, when I should have said: Yes, you can. You’ve got this.
If that little first grade girl had been able to see the future, she would have told her class:
“When I grow up, I’m going to be a:
Receptionist.
Secretary.
Work in a shop.
Actor.
Director.
Teacher.
Lawyer.
Community organizer.
Mommy.”
Mostly a mommy. A grateful mommy, who plays a leading role at home and in her community, but not on television; who uses her words instead of a gun in a holster; and who strives daily to be forgiving, of herself and others.