I’ve ambled through what by now I can safely say is most of my life blissfully ignorant of gender; convinced I could do anything anyone else could, male or female, as long as I dedicated myself to that goal.  I’m the second of three girls in my family.  The only boy pulled up the rear allowing my parents seven years to hone their skills on a gaggle of girls before they needed to ponder if a boy warranted a different approach.  From my point of view, though my siblings may have another perspective, my parents raised four independent, confident individuals primed for the no-holds-barred world lying just outside our front door.

Despite my parents’ efforts to direct us away from pre-defined roles, in my early teens I did take a brief detour from the path. Back in the day, I wanted to be a stewardess.  Not a flight attendant, mind you, after all this was the sixties.  In response to handwritten letters to each of the major airlines, I received a treasure trove of brochures.  The glossy pages teamed with tall, slim-hipped, immaculately coifed young ladies.  Nirvana for that summer was my vision of a future under a sky blue Pan Am pillbox hat.  Thankfully, I survived that nearly fateful descent into a socially acceptable, stereotypical feminine role–there were no male flight attendants in the 1960s.  I graduated from high school and, without missing a beat, completed four years of college (attending college was not optional in our home nor was excelling at our chosen fields—but that’s another story), then graduate school, and finally entered the business world.

At various times during my thirty-year career in the heady, male-dominated field of corporate finance, I worked alongside, for, as a boss, and as a mentor to a number of male cohorts.  I never gave a second thought to the fact that I was a woman and they were men.  I didn’t moan about the “glass ceiling” or decry the lack of balance in my life.  No, in fact, I rarely lifted my head to catch my breath.  Instead, I focused on the insurmountable hours of work before me, memos and project plans and research all insisting on being completed, flawlessly, on time, and on budget.

Now retired, or rather in my second career, and with time to look around, I’ve rediscovered gender.  Perhaps gender has always been there, just below the surface, silent, sleeping like a virus until in a weakened moment body and soul succumb. Perhaps, my feminine half wove its way into my life over the years, adding layer on layer as an oyster builds a pearl.  Or, maybe it broke glass as it came crashing through the front door?  I don’t know.  When I put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboards, though, my writing is the product of a woman’s eye, and ear, and heart.  I write of women’s issues in articles, short stories, and book-length manuscripts best categorized as women’s fiction.

I wonder how different my life might have been had I been cast in a traditional woman’s role.  I don’t know the answer, though I have a few theories.  Still, I have no regrets and believe that I am stronger for having the experience of the complexity of the two halves.  I look ahead, wanting only to make a difference in the still boundless world outside my door, one peopled with men and women in equal doses.

Rona Simmons juggles her dueling personas, binging for days on end to capture works of mother nature through her lens, then swearing off photography for writing, pounding her keyboard to describe the nuances of human nature.  Her photographs have appeared in Minerva Rising and the Conifer Quarterly, her articles and essays in local and national magazines, and on internet radio.  She has published one novel and a collection of short stories, ghost written a prominent Atlanta businessman’s biography, and is at work on a second novel and a cookbook.

Contact info:

email:  rona_simmons@bellsouth.net

phone:  404 606 8911

website:  www.ronasimmons.com

blog: www.womenatword.wordpress.com