STEPFORD SISTER-WIFE

I only meant to tune in briefly.  Just a glimpse.  I knew I wouldn't like what I'd hear.  But curiosity overcame common sense.  And I am practicing equanimity.  I thought this might be a good test.

There she was, Ann Romney, resplendent in patriotic red.  Matching lipstick.  Perfectly coiffed blonde hair.  She talked about the early days of their head-over-heels-in-love courtship and of how they just couldn't wait to get married.  They moved into a basement apartment and used a door on sawhorses for a desk and an ironing board for a dinner table.  Who can't relate to those kinds of "we were just a couple of crazy kids" tales?

It went on....and on....and on....the humble beginnings, the hard work, the rise to prominence.  She said her husband had never been handed success.  Unless you count the help they got from Mitt's daddy, who "ran a car company".  (Not exactly the Ford dealership on the edge of town, however; more like American Motor Company in Detroit).  I guess Mitt and Ann were The American Dream come true.

Just like us.  My dad worked in a textile factory for 40 years, dying cloth to exacting color specifications, often coming home with the after-effects of chemical exposure that created respiratory issues most of his life.  My mom worked as a seamstress in a factory making Formfit bras (rows and rows of women at sewing machines) until she was able to go to beauty school and open a little shop in a converted porch in our home.  Hub's parents were schoolteachers in the Lutheran Parochial School system, serving at "God's calling" for His love, certainly not money.  I went to work in an office just out of high school, not going to college until I was 23 years old and then only part-time while I worked to support us as Hub continued his education.  Hub worked his way through college loading and driving moving vans on weekends and school vacations.  We grew up and started our married life humble and struggling, just like the Romney's.

"Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time," Ann Romney said in an interview with the Boston Globe when Mr. Romney was running for the Senate.  "We had no income except the stock we were chipping away at.  We were living on the edge, not entertaining."  (She didn't mention this hardship in her convention speech.)

So, while the "facts" of her marriage biography may be subject to investigation, she did come across as a woman who at least knew how to relate (pander, some said) to other women. She did raise all those boys (with help, no doubt, and money, and status and private schools....) and seemed to at least be conversant with the joys and sorrows a mom experiences.   So I listened and tried to keep an open mind with a compassionate heart.

Ann Romney is doing what she was raised to do:  be a wife, a mother, a grandmother, hold the family together, support her husband, work tirelessly for her Mormon faith, look good, love her country, and assume success is a "given" for everyone who tries hard.  She is who she is.  I accept that.  (And she says one of her favorite TV shows is "Modern Family"!  Mine too!  I bet her favorite characters are the gay couple, Mitchell and Cam and their little girl Lily!  I'm sure she sees in this portrayal that allowing real couples/parents like them to marry would be the only loving and sensible thing to do!)

After the speech, I turned the TV off and thought no more about any of the Republicans at their convention.

But I woke up the next day full of enthusiastic energy for homemaking!!!!  This is a VERY uncharacteristic thing for me to do.  Hub does 95% of the cooking around our house.  I haven't baked anything in over 2 years.  I have been crocheting lately, but mostly so I don't feel so badly about watching TV; it's OK if I'm multi-tasking.  But the day after the speech, I got up and made a batch of blueberry muffins (FROM SCRATCH!), a bowl of egg salad, and 6 pints of raspberry freezer jam -- by 10:30 a.m.!  Then I cleaned off my desk, paid a stack of bills, balanced my checkbook, did a couple loads of laundry, learned a new crochet stitch by making a 10" x 10" dishcloth, prepared supper, took muffins and jam to Son-One's family, came home and finished a scarf that had been in the bottom of my yarn basket since last winter, and watched a little TV with Hub before going to bed at 10:00.  WHAT??????

A friend suggested there was but one wifely duty still to be performed....Let's just say Hub is in a state of shock and wonders where he can get his hands on a DVD of that speech.

As for me...a warning:  DO NOT LOOK INTO ANN ROMNEY'S EYES!  She will take possession of your soul and turn you into a perfectly groomed, muffin-bakin', jam-makin' Stepford Sister-Wife! (Mitt?  Noooooo.......)

At least, that's the view from here....©