There are so many things I wish I had known earlier in my life. So many decisions I wish I could remake if time and chance permitted. I probably long for that now because I am burdened by the weight of knowing that I will forever be someone’s role model.
To be honest, I was a role model before I even realized it, and I guess I underestimated the impact I had on others. That changed the day my 3-year-old niece found a way to remind me of my influence.
When I finished reading her bedtime story, I told her I was going to miss breakfast the following day, and that I wasn’t going to be home until evening. She asked why, and I told her I would be leaving for work very early and I would spend the whole day there. Her response pierced my heart, “But why would you be going to work? Isn’t it only men who go to work? Your job is to cook, clean and do laundry.”
I remember I froze. I had to find a way to make her realize she was wrong. What bothered me the most is how she had also destined herself to a chore person around the house, and could not see herself beyond that.
I did my best to try to convince her that wasn’t the case, but it’s still hard for me to believe that she drew conclusions on her own by just looking at the society she lived in, particularly her family.
In her defense, her grandmother travelled for work, and so the times my niece would see her grandmother, she would always be home doing house chores. So, she had no evidence that her grandmother was a working woman. Her mother was a full-time housewife, but my niece didn’t realize that it was a choice, not fate.
Then there was me, whom she was used to seeing running around doing chores day in, day out, and she didn’t know it was circumstantial.
The explanations did not really matter because she had come up with her version of the truth. She wasn’t wrong because that was the picture we had painted. What I learned that day is that if we ever wanted her to see a different picture, it was our duty to portray it.
