One last word

...He did, however, have a few suggestions...

...Because, for example, as my great-grandparents and grandparents were immigrants of Irish origin over a century ago, I have always thought of myself as Irish-American, as did my parents, and proudly so...

...Immigrant women cooked and did the laundry in other people's houses, and were often allowed one day to go home to their own children, for a few hours...

...True, a woman might work in the fields beside her husband like today's migratory worker—but she might also be the primary agricultural worker as in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia...

...I will miss the periodic sense of communication with like-minded people and, conversely, the occasional dispute with those who are not...

...I have chosen these examples because I think they may be illustrative of what Rodger Van Allen wrote of my column (Being Catholic: Commonweal from the Seventies to the Nineties [Loyola University Press, 1993]) and what I hope is true: "If there was an overarching theme, it seemed to be a quest for human and religious authenticity...

...And I pointed out, "for ethnicity has a way of suddenly melting away...

...I have blood cousins of Swedish, French (and probably of American Indian), English, Polish, and Italian background...

...It has been a pleasure to do that with Commonweal for these twenty-five years...

...Dear Sister Kate" was a plea that a feminist in her concern for the drastically oppressed should not overlook the less dramatic forms of injustice and work to right them as well...

...But my children are part German...

...I had browsed through old "readers," the anthology-like texts left from my father's teaching days, and found one delight after another...

...My columns in the year following 1975 show me finding my way...

...Part of the value of a columnist," he wrote, "is that he or she dreams up new ideas not dreamed up by me...

...But," as I quoted Father Andrew Greeley, "for most white Americans today outside of certain urban enclaves ethnic identification is a matter of choice...ethnicity is an option, not an obligation...

...This must be true of millions of Americans...

...In "Our Search for Roots," I puzzled over the new ethnicity—a popular movement at the time which has now almost disappeared...

...The first two were "Dear Sister Kate" and "Our Fiction and the Family...

...The purpose of a column, says Roger Rosenblatt in a valedictory of his own, is to provide a place for ruminations on a subject...

...When James O'Gara, then editor of Commonweal, wrote to me in 1974—twenty-five years ago—about my agreement to write a Commonweal column, he gave me a wide latitude in the choice of subjects...

...He also noted that my interests were broad (something I also hope is true) and "included literary as well as social and political commentary...

...They did include two that could be described as being written from a woman's viewpoint, and others that could be called political commentary...

...We would welcome comments from a woman's viewpoint, something we haven't had too much of...

...One of the old Child Life readers, for example, fed a need newer texts seldom do—the need for escape into nonsense and fantasy...

...Our Fictions and the Family" took issue with some then current dire predictions on what effect the woman's movement would have on the family...

...Most women have always worked—and had only spare time left for cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing...

...It is at once a remedy for alienation and the politicization of the powerless...

...my children have cousins of Egyptian and Russian Jewish ancestry...

...The fact that at the time Commonweal had a regular political columnist did not mean, he said, that I was barred from political comment if I wanted to make it...

...Then, too, there is the Washington scene...

...My charge was less specific...

...The effort to share an experience or insight with readers and to illuminate it for them is a habit of mind and one I think I will not lose...

...The editors, for example, found room for Tweedledee's recitation for Alice, "The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done—" Thus, almost anything and everything is grist for the columnist's mill...

...In farewell, I again quote Roger Rosenblatt: "Thanks for reading...

...One of the most common myths about family," I wrote, "is that the historical norm has been the mother who stayed at home, kept house, and took care of the children until they all left home...

...And with your background and interests, I'm sure you won't have any problem once you get started...

...They worked in the textile mills ten and twelve hours a day in New England, and in the sewing lofts of lower New York—and no one cared about them until they formed their own unions...

...As a development it followed so close on the heels of the black-power movement as to be certainly both reaction and imitation...

...I cannot be anything but moderate or marginal in my ethnicity without denying or denigrating people with whom I share a physical heritage...

...This situation has been true only of middle-class women for a comparatively short time in history...

...Some of the literary columns were just sheer fun to write, like "The Moon was Shining Sulkily," included in those 1975 columns...

...To begin with, though, there is the whole feminist business, inside and outside the church...

...In his case, because he was writing for Modern Maturity, he was confined to "the various new directions of body and spirit that a person takes after fifty...