Barbie Griffiths

Barbie Griffiths

In the 1988 rom-com Working Girl,  Melanie Griffith played Tess McGill, a secretary working for a difficult boss.  It was an era of big-shouldered suits for women, and big hair with up-swept bangs.  I guess together, they were protection as you pushed your way through the glass ceiling.

Barbie has long since made it to the top of the corporate ladder but will never forget the climb.

After I was born, my mother became a stay-at-home mother.   Years later,  she went back to work as a bookkeeper in another branch of the same department store chain where I'd sold lingerie.  She loved working and she really, really loved payday.

She showed me the bankbook for the joint account she shared with my father.  Beside every deposit she made, there was a tick mark to indicate that that was her money.  Dad observed glumly that only the deposits had tick marks, not the withdrawals.