Page 71 of Woman on the Verge

Anyway, all this is going into my dissertation. I suppose the best dissertations attempt to clarify or articulate something for the betterment of academic society (or, if one is ambitious or arrogant enough, society at large). Perhaps all I’m doing is clarifying and articulating something for myself. I can accept that. I have done so little for myself in the past three years.

Also inThe Feminine Mystique, Friedan writes of the daily grind of a wife and mother who is afraid to ask herself a single haunting question: Is this all?

I am not afraid to ask the question. I ask it all the time.

Is this all?

Is this all?

Is this all?

I have been having this fantasy lately about attending a PhD program.

The other night, I dared to mention it to Rob.

“It would just be four or five years. We can have a nanny to help with Nicole. It’ll be good for her to see her mother do this.”

His eyes bugged out as I was talking. I could see the entirety of the irises, surrounded by white. Hewasn’t angry. He was flummoxed. He had no idea what to do with this desire of mine.

“Sweetheart, I want you to be happy, but I don’t think it’s the right time. Maybe we can discuss it again when Nikki’s older, when the practice is more established?”

I couldn’t muster up a response, but the disappointment on my face must have been obvious.

“You could start back part time when Nikki goes to elementary school,” he added.

Elementary school felt like a hundred years away.

The thing is, I could apply. Just to see. Rob doesn’t have to know. I’ve always kept some cash from Mother in an envelope, my just-in-case fund. I can pay any application fees from that fund.

Princeton.

Yale.

Harvard.

Brown.

Cornell.

University of Pennsylvania.

I was at the top of my class in undergrad. I have the grades.

Of course, what if I get in?

I wouldn’t go. Couldn’t go. Rob spelled out the reasons why.

But maybe the high of an acceptance letter would sustain me for months to come. Years, even. Maybe I just need to know what’s possible, even if I remain in my usual life.

It makes me happy to think about.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in a letter to a male cousin in 1855: “Did it ever enter into the mind ofman that woman too had an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of her individual happiness?”

No. I do not think this ever has entered into the mind of man.

It would be fun to do this just for me. It would infuse me with pride and confidence. It would remind me of my separateness.

I might just do it.