Karen went back to school, and we ate a lot of donuts when we lived in a New England college town in the mid-sixties. Amherst had a large number of faculty wives who became interested in a new movement known as “women’s liberation.” In 1963, Betty Freidan had published her book, The Feminine Mystique, which stimulated discussions among many of our friends, both male and female. Women, who once thought only their husbands could be part of the academic world, realized that they, too, had roles within the professorial profession.
Several of our female friends left the Faculty Wives Club and began attending meetings at the Women’s Center. Karen went to several sessions, but, when she discovered that a major activity for this new group was actually “husband bashing,” she decided she had other ways to pursue these new issues. She did not continue to attend their meetings even though we retained a social interaction with many who did.
Rather than being part of the Women’s Center, Karen decided to enter graduate school, where she earned a master’s degree in the department of Speech and Communication Studies.
Since, as an undergraduate, she had been an English major with a history minor, her choice seemed appropriate; besides we knew several couples who were associated with this Department at UMA. She was offered a position as a teaching assistant and, being a faculty wife, had a partial tuition reimbursement. Her academic studies would cost more in her time and effort than in any financial burden. Our three kids were in middle school or high school so that her efforts in child-rearing were minimized. Nevertheless, she felt she still needed to continue to be a housewife and mother around our home. There was no reason for me to object to this combination! When I did try to help around the house, some of our discussions became more intense than I would have preferred.
The only problem I really had was how to spend my “spare time” in the evenings. I continued to read and engage in my hobby as a gardener. On the other hand, there was a limitation to the time I wanted to spend reading as well as the time allowed by the weather for planting and weeding. Karen had to study in the evenings, when I no longer had the need nor desire to follow suit. I had done enough studying during my own graduate-student years. Now I wanted time after the workday to relax with my spouse.
The result: we began our “donut drives.” We were fortunate that the kids were now of an age they could be left unsupervised while we left the house for an hour. Our next-door neighbors, the Kilmers, were aware of our almost-daily journeys, in the event that an emergency might occur. Only once did that happen during the two-plus years Karen was a graduate student.
As usual, we parents were in the wrong, since we had never said that Ken could not carve wooden figures while we were gone. Jenny Kilmer and Deb did stop the bleeding until we had returned and could take him to the clinic for a few stitches in his hand. We did not give up our “donut drives”; we merely changed the rules for what could and could not be done during our absences.
Even with the possibility that accidents might occur while we were away from the house, our after-dinner drives remained to be essential for our life as a couple. In a short time, we learned about the quality of the coffee and of the pastry in every small diner within five miles of home. On a weekend, we would extend our milage to include drives along the Connecticut River as far as Greenfield to the North and Springfield in the South.
There was ample time to be a young man and woman and not merely a husband and wife, or a father and a mother. Our conversations did not focus on our roles within the family. Instead, they included enjoyable academic topics relating to Karen’s new life as a student involved in Colonial American history and literature. I learned a lot about rhetoric and conspiracy theory: subjects which proved valuable to my later interests in theology and political science. Karen had a particular fascination with Salem and its witch trials, along with Cotton Mather and the University’s archives of the Northampton gazettes she perused on microfilms.
Our “donut drives” involved more than physical eating and drinking; they also fed our minds and thoughts. They allowed us to be both individuals and a happily married couple.