(495) My prof

I have a Computer lecturer whom I respected. One day we were talking about the difference between American and Chinese culture in the use of married and maiden name. Upon marriage, my college friend changed her bank account and driver's license to her husband's family name. Whereas I would retain my father's family name in my passport, driver's license and any legal ID. And I asked if her surname was her ex-husband's or her father's.

Apparently she kept her husband's name until her younger child was twenty one. Then she reverted to her father's name. It was interesting that her divorce was amicable. She just got to the point she could not go on as an appendage of her ex. She chose marriage and children. Yet she did not give up working. It was not easy to survive in the IT field. As soon as she obtained her Master's, she opted for college teaching. That eliminated overtime and traveling on business. All the while she was married, she kept immaculate house and cooked like the ladies in Woman's Weekly. Being a serious lecturer who gives her best, having no household help and being a hands-on mother as well as a good wife who entertains to further her husband's ambition, she had hardly a moment to call her own.

She laughed when she related how she used to chew her sandwich in the car and used her lunch hour to scrub her Master bedroom toilet and bath so as to ensure her husband had a clean and dry bathroom to use at all times. I could not believe my ears: that seemed so unlike what I expected from an American woman. Now that I have been married a quarter of a century, I do see childhood friends who would do anything to keep their married state.

It is sad that the more a woman bends to suit her husband, the more her man seems to demand. My lecturer reached a stage where if she continue to bend, she would either lose her sanity or her identity and become her husband's slave. She stopped, applied for sabbatical and took her children to her place of research for the summer. After having some leisure and a stock-take of her busy life, she talked her ex into a no fault divorce. They have joint custody of the children, she kept them during term time and he kept them during the holidays, at least until he remarried and begot other children. He actually remarried as soon as the divorce was final. That makes me wonder if he had been cheating his wife on the side. My lecturer was still single when I met her. It was refreshing that there was no bitterness in her. She was grateful that her marriage to that man produced two lovely off springs. She felt that her life was full and she had no regrets.