Free Grace and Grit by Lilly Ledbetter

famously declared, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” His ranting and raving reminded me too much of Papa for him to get my vote. When politics came up for discussion at the Sunday dinner table, I kept my thoughts to myself to keep the peace. My parents’ voice was not my voice, as segregation seemed like a grave injustice to me.
    When I opened a bank account to prove to Charles that he was being unfair, I made no conscious connection with the bra-burning feminists. At the same time, I felt a yearning so many women like me at all levels of society were feeling. I was determined to find a new path. I’d learned early on not to take no for an answer, and in the end I got my way by working. My daily path was no longer confined to trips to the grocery store and church. Charles and I also no longer worried about how to pay for speech therapy. Charles had initially dismissed Dr. Luther’s concern over Phillip, saying he’d come around in his own time, but when he saw Phillip’s progress, he seemed relieved. As Phillip improved by leaps and bounds each week at therapy, I was overwhelmed with joy. Now I could even treat him to ice cream afterward.
    A S GRATEFUL as I was for the new challenges and the freedom more money gave me, many days I came close to giving up. I was unprepared for how tired I was working full-time—a feeling more debilitating than that leaden fatigue I’d experienced in the first trimester of pregnancy. I often wondered if I had the stamina to keep the pace up.
    I’ll never forget the late afternoon I found Vickie and Phillip sitting on the curb outside Mrs. Harris’s house waiting for me in the descending darkness. Driving up to the house, I saw themhuddled together, alone, in the dusk. Mrs. Harris had somewhere to go and had left them when I was running late. I was saturated with guilt. I hated that feeling of giving up my most important job—caring for my children—to someone else. I even felt jealous when Edna or Charles’s sister took care of the children.
    One cool fall evening when I was making Hamburger Helper, Vickie asked me if she could help me cook. (Mixing a meal from a box and opening two cans of sweet peas wasn’t Edna’s definition of preparing a meal, but it was quick.) I let her pop open the soft can of Pillsbury crescent rolls by pressing it with the back of a spoon. As she folded the sticky dough on the pan she asked, “Can we make doughnuts after dinner?” At least once a week before I’d started at H&R Block, we made doughnuts together as a family, creating our own assembly line.
    I opened a cabinet to see if we had the ingredients (even though I knew we didn’t) before I said, “We’re out of yeast and powdered sugar.”
    Vickie sighed. “But we haven’t cooked them in such a long time.”
    “I haven’t had time to go to the grocery store,” I replied too harshly. Noticing the dust balls by Vickie’s feet, I thought,
I haven’t had time to vacuum, scrub the toilets, or wash a month’s worth of laundry, either
. Vickie’s simple request irritated me because it highlighted my inability to get everything done; still, I was ashamed of my own irritation.
    Hearing Vickie’s frustrated tone, I felt like the worst mother in the world. In the frenetic mornings getting ready for school and work, I yelled at the children when they didn’t deserve it. Watching Phillip scramble into my car, his shoes untied, I wanted to rewind and start the morning over, attending to everyone’s last little need. Instead, I was frazzled. Every morning as Vickie rushed out the door I frantically tried to brush her knotted hair. I watched her traipse into school wearing a mismatched outfit she’d proudly chosen herself, her blond hair still tangled in the back from hertossing in her sleep. The other little girls in her class walked by with perfect ponytails their mothers had lovingly fixed. No matter how much planning and organizing I did, I had to live with