Life Story

It was a liberated marriage
 We shared the household chores, of course
 We understood each other's feelings
 Right down to the day of our sensible divorce
 I didn't ask him for a penny
 I'd had my liberated training
 So off he went with his hair up bronze
 To find a life like Kalil Gibran's
 I got my rest from the drugs he did
 He got his quest, I got the kid
 And, oh, I'm not complaining
 So I set off to be a writer
 A modern mother on her own
 I wrote up happenings at galleries
 Turned down jobs with salaries
 Stayed freelance and alone
 I fought the battles of the sixties
 Which you recall were rather draining
 When men were thick I hit the fray
 Became a prick, Got equal pay
 I faced down chauvinistic slobs
 I won the fights, improved the jobs
 And, oh, I'm not complaining
 My husband found himself his ashram
 Lost forty pounds and went through hell
 Then one day he came back from limbo
 Found himself some bimbo
 And moved to New Rochelle
 I raised my son and I had lovers
 My choices sometimes take explaining
 I'd meet some jock, my friends would scoff
 He'd stay awhile, I'd write him off
 I kept my space, preserved my turf
 Six months I'd send him back to surf
 And, oh, I was not complaining
 So now my son's halfway through college
 I pay tuition like a fine
 I'm still this feisty freelance writer
 Resume well honed
 At a well-toned forty-nine
 I find that getting work is harder
 Each job I want takes more campaigning
 And those sweet young things who hire me now
 Those MBAs making fifty thou
 Who smile and ask what I have done
 When they got their jobs from the fights I won
 Ah, they should all stay home and have babies
 But I'm not complaining
 And in the evening at my window
 As I watch Jersey growing dim
 I feel a troubling emotion
 Summed up in this notion
 "I wish I'd stayed with him"
 Lord knows each day with him was madness
 As I have spent my life maintaining
 But more and more I recall the joy
 My golden dreamer, My lost boy
 Our life was life in The Twilight Zone
 But no worse than a life alone
 And, oh,
 Well I chose my way
 And I'm not complaining