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These friends didn’t take away my resolve to succeed as I’d feared. They made me stronger.
I credited Papa for bringing me to this scintillating threshold of education and curiosity.
Although our family library contained many books—Papa believed that it was everyone’s duty to become educated, even if his or her upbringing, like his own, did not provide a formal education—I returned to this collection of folk and fairy tales over and over.
Mama loved me and wanted the best for me, even if her vision of the best didn’t comport with my own.
“We will get her the education that her fine mind deserves. And I will teach her an iron will and the discipline of mind. It will be her armor.”
For my entire life, I’d heard his admonitions that I had a responsibility to nurture my intellect.
I wanted to fold into his arms and be little Mitza again instead of the strong and independent person I’d had to become.
Albert was quiet. “Would you mind if I listed only my name as the author? I’m hoping that if Professor Weber reads it and becomes as impressed as I think he will, he will offer me a permanent job.”
The thought of being expunged from the paper’s authorship bothered me; we had worked on it as equals. But if he was only showing it to the new Professor Weber to impress him and if we’d later submit it to journals with both our names, I could agree. Anything to speed along Albert’s ability to secure a permanent job.
“Did you share our paper with the Winterthur Professor Weber?” I emphasized our paper; I wanted Albert to remember that I had given permission to remove my name from its authorship, but for this purpose only.
He knew that all my professional dreams were lost the minute I became pregnant; failing the exams was a secondary defeat.
How could I have faith in a man who couldn’t even take a short train ride to meet me in Stein am Rhein when I’d traveled across countries to see him?
All the housework that Papa had shielded me from as he urged me on toward a professional life, a life of the mind and not the life of a housewife, I learned for the first time as a twenty-four-year-old woman.
Her quietude was not weakness; it was an ardent watchfulness that would be replaced by a roar when required.
Cooking, cleaning, shopping, and mending filled my days, the work Papa had barricaded me from as he urged me toward a life of the mind.
Perhaps God had a rule He wanted me to find. Perhaps there was a purpose for my devastation. After all, Romans 8:18 said, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
Time was relative to space. Time was not absolute. Not when there is motion.
“You are a genius at everything but the human heart.”
A life of housework and the blank eyes of other housewives, women who found us odd and too academic for their household cares.
There wasn’t anything else left of value in me, he’d have me believe.
But I wonder why you never returned to work. Your mind must be so active, so full of science. How can you squander it on the home?”
“You and I are not so different except in the choices we’ve made.” She chortled. “And the husbands we chose, of course.”
“Remember my words, Mileva, when you withdraw into the deadening cycle of home. You and I are not so different except in the choices we’ve made. And remind yourself that a new choice is always possible.”
Still, I clung. Why, sometimes I didn’t know. Was it because I’d sacrificed so much for him that the idea of losing him felt like losing everything?
Tears welled up in my eyes at her sympathy; I was unused to compassion these days.
I wanted to protest that all was well enough, the mantra I’d been uttering to myself for years, the rationale I’d offered over and over to Mama and Papa, but my true feelings bubbled to the surface.
Was he truly so self-focused that he believed I withdrew my affections first? That my self-protection and the recent strengthening of my resolve happened before he cheated on me and bled me dry of my scientific ambitions? That I pushed him into Elsa’s waiting arms? It was so ridiculous that I didn’t bother to fashion a response. It would be like arguing with a madman. One made powerful by his popularity, at that.
Her story was, in many ways, the story of many intelligent, educated women whose own aspirations were marginalized in favor of their spouses.
