Women in My Family<br > During the nineteen thirties when I was in high school， my<br > mother went back to college. She had an eight o clock class five<br > mornings a week at the Universit)， of Washington. So did my<br > brother， Watson. He drove to the university in his old 192"5<br > Model T Ford roadster without a top. Since he had t，ery little<br > money for gas， he.figured out a route by which he could coast<br > almost all the way./i om our house on a steep hill to the Engin.<br > eering College on the lower campus about three miles away.<br > A lot depended on the trqffic lights. My mother rode with hiJ)l，<br > but her classes were in the art department on the upper eampus，<br > so she jumped out of the roadster . hen Watson crossed Univer-<br > sity Avenue and turned down toward Engineering. If the light<br > was green on the avenue， she had to make a quick exit so that<br > she would not break the roadster s nTomentum. Watson never<br > slowed down much for her. None o[ us did - my father， my<br > brother， or me. We expected her to kdep up andshe did. "<br > More and more often we found Mother in the basement<br >sculpting instead of in the kitchen cooking. All q/" us" were<br >changing. Watson was home less. My interests ， ere shi~ting<br >from baseball and iee-skating to the school newspaper and<br >yearbook. My father did，tore of the grocery shopping and oJten<br >cooked our dinners. "Your mother，" he explained. "is coming<br >into full bloom."<br > Mother s artistic talents I knew had been recognized when<br >she was a young woman. Her teacher encouraged her to go to<br >Berkeley to study at the University of Cal~brnia， a heady<br >profiteer， she said，.[br a country girl from Idaho. To earn the<br >money to go， she taught school /br several years in the little<br >towns of White Bird and Stvkes.<br > The hard work expected o/ her as the oldest girl between two<br >boys on her father s homestead did not enamor her of rural l~[~.<br >When she could be ，spared she worked for ，，ages， cooking and<br >~eashing dis hes at the few scattered ranches in the mountains<br >