We got twenty four inches of snow over the weekend. I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it's winter at this point; we've even gone cross country skiing almost every day. When I cross country ski, I almost forget how much I hate winter. I even forget to be melancholy about the gray landscape. But, then, I return to my desk, and I quickly find the angst of writer's block again. The boundaries of this story are expanding on me. I initially believed that I would simply tell my experience with being sexually harassed in my first professional position after college. Now I realize that there are many connected memories of earlier experiences I've had and stories I've been told. All have become necessary prologue. I remember, for example, an alcoholic male member of my immediate family. As I approached adolescence, he repeatedly asked me, "When are you going to go through puberty? Where are your tits?" Worse yet, he often asked, "Has your boyfriend been down your pants yet?" I don't really remember exactly how old I was when these questions started, but I do know that I felt very uncomfortable when he asked them. I knew my uncle should not have asked questions like these. He never missed a chance to corner me somewhere and begin these insulting tirades, but he was always certain to do so when no adults were present. I felt quite upset that my uncle said these things to me; his questions filled me with anxiety. I couldn't understand why he would say such embarrassing things. I felt humiliated, so humiliated I suppose that is the reason I can not remember what my reactions were to his remarks. He always thought these questions and my reactions were hilarious, so I imagine I reacted with shock and disgust, but, again, I can not exactly remember. I can, however, still hear his sinister laughter in the back of my mind as if I have been transported back to the situation. When these questions first occurred, I know that I was too young to have a boyfriend, at least by the standards of that time period, and I was several years away from completing puberty, which made these questions all the more confusing. Often, my uncle pointed out the fact that my breasts had not yet developed; thus, I then began to feel inadequate about my body. His questions created for me an ugly presupposition about being female--I only qualified if I had the physical attributes a woman should exhibit. My silence surrounded these humiliating questions--a silence reflecting my inability to question the position into which I had been placed. The overwhelming shame I felt prevented my telling this secret to anyone in the family, to anyone at all--I thought it was somehow my fault that he said these things to me. Anytime he got out of control during family gatherings, alcohol took the blame, not him, never him. I suppose I surmised that if I told anyone about what he said, the response would have been the same. I believed that he would not be held accountable for his words or actions, but rather his actions and words would be excused. My words would have been hushed into silence. The overwhelming humiliation of his words haunted me for many years; although, of course, I did not initially recognize their long-term effects. I honestly now believe the message I received from him caused me to negatively shape my attitude about myself, about being a woman. These were not the only messages I received about what it meant to be a woman from him. He lived in the country hills of Pennsylvania not far from my Grandma's house. My sister and I used to walk from Grandma's house to his house with my two cousins, his sons, one a year older than me, one the same age. Their dad, my uncle, had a large concrete block garage with all of its walls and ceiling covered with hard core pornography, porn that shaped my initial notions of what a female's role was. I remember when he and the family boys and men built that garage. In spite of my interest in helping them set concrete block and hammer shingles and nails into the roof, I was not allowed to take part in that traditional male activity. Instead, I stood by watching, bored with being a spectator rather than a participant. It now makes perfect sense that I was not involved in this building endeavor. When I consider the disgusting pornography that had been plastered all over the garage's interior walls upon its completion, it is no wonder to me that I have constantly had to fight a self-esteem problem. Paper women in various sexually demeaning poses stared from the ceiling; various sexual parts dissected from the women they belonged to hung from those walls. No women in the family explained what the pictures meant or signified; instead, as young girls, we were warned not to go inside. Whenever my uncle had the opportunity, however, he would coerce me into his garage . . . . Recently, I bought myself a miniature rose bush with pinkish-red blooms. I never had a rose bush in the house before, but I thought it would lighten my mood. The leaves are waxy and bright green, and are in groups of five or three. The roses are not much bigger than a quarter, and yet, they provide a wonderful scent throughout the kitchen. These roses make me think of Mom's rose garden on the side and in back of her house, although her rose bushes were not miniature, but full-size. There were orange, scarlet, and pink roses that we would cut for the vase on the dining room table. Mom and I often worked in the rose and dahlia garden together as I grew up. Aphids and beetles were a chronic problem in this rose garden, but somehow we always managed to get stunning roses anyway. This rosebush causes me to recall a story my mother told me once when I was a young adult and we were working in her rose garden. This story she told makes me again understand that my untold story of sexual harassment has wider boundaries surrounding it. The terrain of my story is intermeshed with my grandmother's experiences, my mother's experiences, and my childhood and adolescent experiences. This story is like a spider's web; it is spun slowly, and in more than one direction. While my mother attended college, in order to pay for her education she worked full-time in a grocery store. She worked in the meat department as a butcher's assistant. The butcher, Adam, wore heavy cologne, Old Spice, Mom said. He wore it so heavily that the smell of the cologne juxtaposed with the smell of the meat would permeate the room and make Mom nauseated. Adam was a young and pudgy man who always wore gray short-sleeved tee shirts that caused his extremely hairy and fat arms to show. He was married and had seven children, three boys and four girls. After she worked there for a short time, Adam started telling her that she looked like "a woman who would be good in bed" and that she could "come and get it from him anytime she wanted to." The butcher said all sorts of other crude things that my mother never did elaborate on with me. She told me that after it had gone on for two months, she finally discussed with her mother what had been happening. My grandmother told her to say to him, "What if someone like you was talking like this to your daughter? How would you like that? After she did so, the man never bothered her again. I have no dahlias to look at, no roses to smell; all there is outside is the cold smell of winter. There is a sharpness to the air, a deep smell of almost nothing alive--instead, the snow and ice seems to block my olfactory sense. Even my miniature rose bush has no flowers or buds left; the winter sun provides little warmth for such things. It is a dismal day. I stare at one paragraph on the otherwise blank screen of my computer. The prose seems almost as lifeless as the wintry scene outside my window; yet, I'll plod along and continue my attempts at telling this unhappy tale. After I graduated from college in 1988, I found my first full-time position working as a District Manager for a Fortune 500 company. I was pretty excited about getting hired in this company because Jim, the man who hired me, assured me that I would eventually be able to transfer from the circulation department to the journalism department where I could pursue my real career interest, writing. Jim had been involved in launching the circulation of this publication, and clearly believed in his own self-importance at this organization. A short, bald, and well-dressed man in his 50s, Jim appeared to be somewhat arrogant, yet professional. He was very frank in his disclosure that I had been offered a position not only because I was qualified, but also because I was the only person in his 25-year career who sent a thank-you letter after being interviewed. The first week of my job involved training-in-the-field with Jim and another District Manager. After the first day of a thirteen-hour training session, I was finally relaxing in my hotel room when my phone rang. I answered, and Jim said, "I'm just calling to let you know the schedule for tomorrow--we'll meet for a breakfast discussion at 7:00 a.m., then we'll hit Fred's territory at 8:00. What are you doing right now?" I responded, "Well, I'm relaxing a bit before I try to get some sleep." Jim said, "Well, you know I'm just down the hall if you need anything. I'm just sitting around in my underwear without a thing to do. You want to come relax with me? This room has a jacuzzi. You'll really enjoy it, I promise." Frankly, at that point, I was appalled and disgusted. I could not remotely understand what the motivation of his comments were. He had really gone outside of the boundaries of professionalism here, and I pondered how I needed to react. Since he was my superior and I was new to the position, I did not want to respond harshly. So I replied, "No, thanks. I just want to get some sleep. I'll see you at breakfast." After his comments, I found it hard to sleep, and I also dreaded what might happen next. Okay. Finally a beginning. Yet, the silence still surrounds the rest . . . . We went to look at the lake this afternoon because it was very windy, and David loves to see the waves break on the ice. The water did not look inviting; rather, its blackness reflected the blackness of my mood. Thick blue ice formed heavy barriers for the waves to crash up against. David wanted to go down to the beach to get a closer look, and when we started out, we quickly sunk thigh-deep into the snow. This did not seem to bother David; however, I returned to the warm car while he tromped around. I found myself annoyed with the intensity of winter's wrath. I had written drudgingly for an hour before we had gone to the lake, but the silence had still surrounded me. Although there were words on the page that I had produced, the words seemed flat and dull. The flatness of the words did not really convey the emotional discord, the dissonance involved in working daily with a sexual harasser. I wondered if I would ever be able to adequately address in writing the extreme discomfort into which I was placed. It was easy to recall the innuendoes, the slimy comments about what I could gain in promotions if I gave in to his sexual demands; yet, it was, is, next to impossible to adequately recreate these experiences on the page. My supervisor's behavior and comments, in retrospect, seemed to echo my uncle's, the school boy harasser of my Grandmother, and the butcher's of my Mom.