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... I disappeared into the guts of Langley and, family and friends thought, became a failure.
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Next to the “My how you’ve grown,” adult comment, the what-you-want-to-be one has got to be top of a child’s disgust list. How can a kid decide?
I wanted to try everything. The trick, it seemed, was to find a job with maximum mobility. That was my starting point. An adventure book on India, which included members of the American embassy as characters, gave me an eureka moment. I was ten years old. The next time a teacher asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I had an answer. "A diplomat."
Seldom did I waiver and, then, only briefly. There was another career that gave a person endless choices, writing. Writers have to know something about everything. Writers can interview race drivers and take a turn behind the wheel of a formula car. Writers go to war zones, flip pancakes in a greasy spoon, walk along the Left Bank in a Paris rain, meet Maria Callas, dine on escargot and truffles, jump out of airplanes. The idea of inventing worlds and living them through imaginary characters sounded like almost as much fun as busting out of Wyoming. Writing also seemed the easiest, but my efforts were pretty miserable. So bad that diplomacy became the better option ... nevermind that in the 1960's women didn't become diplomats. Even the college of my choice informed me in words of one syllable that they didn't accept women.
That was a reality check. So, too, the family resources. The University of Oregon became my undergraduate default, and, thanks to a generous scholarship from the Wolcott folks and to George Washington University and its international relations program, a masters degree became part of my future.
Here the arrow-straight progress toward diplomacy took a left-hand turn. The Foreign Service actually did have a disinclination to accept those of the female persuasion, or so I perceived it and as later court rulings verified. My father’s senator friend, however, thought he could twist the arm of the CIA severely enough to gain my admittance to their junior officer training program. Which is what he did. “You can be both spy and diplomat," he said.
Such an offer.
There's more to the story, of course, but you’ll have to read my memoirs to hear it.
The senator died (an unrelated death), and I disappeared into the guts of Langley and, family and friends thought, became a failure. “When’s Pat ever going to hold down a job for more than two years at a time?” my old friends asked. “Last year she was working for the Army. Then she got some sort of vague job as a what? A secretary? Now, she gave me this office telephone number, which I called, but they didn’t even know her name.”
You have to stop caring what people think, which was the least of my problems. The Agency, it turned out, didn’t want women as spies anymore than the Foreign Service wanted them as diplomats. This was not a surprise. Male or female, though, the Agency provided excessive opportunities for moving around and trying just about everything (except homosexuality and drugs) at least once. It also demanded a high tolerance to ambiguity and an amazing amount of flexibility. In return I got the Chinese curse: an interesting life.
But, they cheated. The case officer business is for young people, leaving an entire lifetime ahead for something new and different. “What are you going to do when you grow up?” That old question came back.
Well, duh! I could write. Write and breed horses, creatures whose beauty constantly amazes and delights me.
“What are you going to do when you grow up?”
I’m doing it.
