Читать книгу Edge of the Map. The Mountain Life of Christine Boskoff онлайн

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Joyce and her husband, Robin, saw to it that their children went through confirmation and were properly educated. The loving parents told their kids repeatedly that they could pursue whatever they wanted. All four were sent off to college with strong Midwestern values and the drive to squeeze as much as they could out of life. Joyce pressed particularly hard for Chris to go to college “since Mama didn’t get to go.” The decision to stay home and raise four children had fit with the times, yet Joyce was adventurous by nature. In the 1950s, she trained to be a beautician and worked for a spell at a local department store, but ultimately she felt her calling was at home with her three sons and Chris.

For a time, it looked like the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh would become Chris’s home for the next four years. Robin had a fierce work ethic, which his daughter emulated, resulting in high school grades that would allow her the freedom to be selective with her education and career choices. A career in nursing sounded promising and would be a choice her parents could understand. But Chris changed her mind at the last minute. Instead of pursuing a nursing degree at Oshkosh, she decided on engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, an hour farther from Appleton than Oshkosh. A daughter going to school in engineering seemed an ocean apart from anything Joyce had known. Never mind, she thought. Chrissy will do more in her life than I’ve done in mine. As with many a mother and daughter, their differences seemed stark, though similarities would arise with time.