BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

There are some occasions we just don't celebrate properly, and Women's History Month is one of them.

It is such a good idea, especially because for so long, women seemed to have no history, and make none. It was as if their feet didn't leave tracks on the planet. Their efforts went ignored, or were wrongly assigned to husbands or brothers. Their names were sanitized by male pseudonyms.

It is a curious story to hand down to our daughters, but an important one. We do it no justice by relegating women's rich stories to female faces on bulletin boards, with discreet lists of dates and accomplishments - the typical response to the month.

That is not how women have acted in the world at all.

They have moved through life and history relationally. They sought connection. Their lives and legacies were not accomplished in bits and pieces. They had the glorious gift the world now seeks - the ability to understand things, and the wisdom to only try to solve things, as a whole.

So when we tell our daughters what women have done, and who they have been, we should tell their stories with emotion and complexity.

For once, let us allow them to be ripe and real, and let us really understand how they made progress in the world, so differently from men.

Start with the family

There is a natural place to start the telling.

The very best thing we could do for our daughters, nieces and grand-daughters this month is to tell them the history of the women in their own families.

These are the women from whom they came, the genes and spirit of which they are formed. So these are the stories that have the most power to shape their lives.

It is a far more powerful thing to know that one's own grandmother ran her own five-and-dime store well, than to know some anonymous woman built an empire.

Our daughters don't need crusaders and pioneers as much as they need real women, who dreamed dreams, kept commitments, loved others and lived bravely.

My daughter has three favorite female ancestors. One is the great-great-grandmother who, as a widow, brought her 12 children from Switzerland to America, all tied together when they came above board, so they wouldn't fall off the boat.

The other favorites are her two great-grandmothers, both widows, who managed to raise their families and hold on to their farms through the height of the Great Depression.

They are the women she sees in family pictures, with faded aprons, gentle eyes and iron wills that come through only in their proud, tired smiles.

She sees something fine in them. And through them, she sees something fine in herself.

That is the wonderful potential in Women's History Month. We can see what women have been, and we can see what they can be.

This year, let's not forget to tell our daughters they can also make history.

And then tell them how.

How to make a mark

Let's tell them to climb more, bounce higher and get dirtier. Let's let them dress in comfortable clothes.

Let's tell them to take more chances, to sign up for the really hard stuff. They can do it.

Let's give them responsibility. Let them do yardwork instead of housework. Make sure they can change batteries, tires, computer discs and best friends without missing a beat.

Let's make sure they know we expect them to hang as tough as their brothers. And that they can be as loud as their brothers and get as mad as their brothers.

But they don't have to be their brothers. We like them just as they are.

And in case they forget, let's remind them who that is. Someone smart, gutsy, creative, funny, outspoken, brave and incidentally pretty and nice.

Let's put their picture up on our bulletin boards this month. Let's list their accomplishments.

And, in their eyes, we'll see history in the making.

Krista Ramsey's column appears in The Enquirer on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.