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Gift Guide: Alice Borodkin publishes memoir

CHANUKAH EDITION 5776
SECTION D PAGE 5

WHEN I was nine, I took dance classes four times a week and danced in the St. Louis Civic Ballet. It was exciting but exhausting. Then there were piano lessons with Mrs. Evans on Delmar, a claustrophobic space that gave me migraines.

I also dived on the swimming team. My graceful form and pointed toes drew oohs and ahs until I began repeatedly — intentionally? — scraping my body on the board on my way down.

And I wrote, late into the evenings. Writing was mine, and I loved it.

I was the perfect child, the answer to parental regrets and missed opportunities. This absurd burden kicked off my ensuing rebellion, which didn’t find a voice until college.

That’s why Caught Between the Bettys, Alice Borodkin’s journey through the imposed boundaries of being the perfect daughter to owning her inner power, resonates with me.

The two Bettys referenced in the title are Betty Crocker, the elegant icon every housewife emulated in the 1940s and ‘50s, and feminist leader Betty Friedan.

Borodkin, who is Jewish, was caught between these two antithetical cultural forces for a long time — and she wasn’t alone.

Women reading the memoir, regardless of their age, will discover familiar insights in this delightful, often plaintive narrative. (Their husbands may also have several epiphanies.)

Daughter of a beautiful American mother and a handsome father of Syrian descent, the burgeoning feminist, future pilot, newspaper editor and Colorado State legislator was trained to embody the female agenda of her era.

All her preparations and accomplishments prepared her for marriage — until the rebel took charge.

BORODKIN WAS working in her father’s hosiery shop when she encountered her first Rosie the Riveter, the appellation given to thousands of women working in male occupations during WW II. Borodkin’s Rosie bought hosiery with money she earned doing factory work. Borodkin was hooked.

“I have a feeling that many of these women found it difficult to go back to their early lives after the war, now that they had tasted the freedom and the independence and the paycheck at the end of the week,” she writes. “It took a war.”

Once the war ended, “for so many of us, it continued to be all about marriage, children, perfect home,” writes Borodkin. “Wonderful cook, excellent hostess. Support the man and his career.

“But the seeds of dissatisfaction had been sown.”

In Caught Between the Bettys, Borodkin writes about keeping her silence even when contrary emotions exploded inside her. As a new wife and mother hosting family gatherings, a central fixture in the memoir, she held her tongue — until it was no longer possible.

Beautiful, intelligent and curious, she found discreet ways to break the traditional mold along the road.

Whether it was fiercely defending her decision to adopt a child or using her own name on thank you notes instead of her husband’s, she already possessed her unique DNA.

But it was all rather daunting until she actually did it — again and again and again.

COOKING WAS the one passion she cultivated for herself. Creating delicious food remains a source of pure pleasure for Borodkin, who weaves it like a connective leitmotif in almost every chapter.

Certain scents recall grandparents, her parents, two children, moments in time. Cooking stabilizes her in extreme situations, like her daughter Julie’s disabling depression.

Learning to pilot a plane gave Borodkin an immense sense of confidence and freedom. Describing her experiences in amusing flashbacks and fitful stops and starts, she quotes Leonardo da Vinci to capture the essence of flying:

“For once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been and there you long to return . . .”

At 66, having served on numerous committees, agencies and the City Council, Borodkin ran for the Colorado House of Representatives in 2002 and won.

For the next eight years, her legislation focused on helping women.

“What drove me to the legislature were the women,” she writes. “Feeling their pain and longing, I wanted to see women move forward and it was the one reason I chose to run for office . . .

“I couldn’t fix the world, so for the time being I focused on those issues at hand in my state — domestic violence, the wage gap, women’s health and reproductive rights, sex and age discrimination, and human trafficking.”

Borodkin’s House Bill 1143, creating the interagency task force on human trafficking, passed in 2005. She also was the House sponsor of SB 201, which makes trafficking in humans a felony.

“I was doing something important at last,” she writes.

Borodkin was married to Howard Borodkin for 47 years until his death. She unexpectedly found love again with husband Arnold Brodsky.

Borodkin’s feminism never disdained marriage or children. Quite the contrary, she is a devoted wife, mother and grandmother. Ladies, she seems to say, you can have it all — but the choice is yours. That’s the defining difference and ultimate expression of feminism.

Caught Between the Bettys is an honest, funny and poignant photograph of one woman’s journey toward self-realization.

As da Vinci said, “For there you have been and there you long to return . . . ”

Borodkin’s journey, like ours, is far from over.

Andrea Jacobs may be reached at [email protected].

Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News



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IJN Senior Writer | [email protected]


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