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The Day After
Apr. 18th, 2005 03:32 pmSunday, after our loved ones headed off to Buffalo, Rowan and I headed out for an Eastern Star event. For those of my gentle readers who do not know, Eastern Star is the feminine version of the Masons (which, if you read popular fiction, is not nearly as sexy as you might think).
Rowan is the rough equivalent in the Eastern Star of someone who used to be a baroness. Yours truly is probably the equivalent of a Lady--not quite nobody, with some royal peers for friends.
So, I joined Eastern Star because they get to wear gowns a couple of times a year, wear gloves, and have high tea, and the rituals are cool. What it's turned out to be, though, is snarky people and business meetings. I find myself paraphrasing the Lady Portia: business meetings, yup, I'm there for the business meetings. Oh course, you can't tell from the words how sarcasm was pouring from her lips.
Sunday was different. It was a tea, and everyone had to wear a hat. So, Rowan and I dressed up, and found ourselves in this lovely room (okay, we drove 2 hours, then found ourselves in the room), with eight beautifully laid out tables. Each table had a hostess who was responsible for decorating her table, and each one was different, but all were lovely. The women, both hostesses and guests, were dressed in spring colors, or red white and blue, or elegant black and white, wearing hats. Lovely, elegant, pretty, silly, Cowboy, portrait, pink straw fedora, jewelled, cloche, flower bedecked, silk scarf banded, spring green, taupe, straw, yellow, red, lavender, dove grey, purple hats. It was beautiful.
There was entertainment, then tea and little sandwiches and conversation. Then there was a speaker, then tea and cookies and conversation. Then awards for best hats, and the drawing raffle, and we were gone. Two hours, absolutely pleasant, charming....
As Ro and I were leaving we talked about how, years ago, life was like that on a regular basis, if you were a middle class housewife. Church lunches, women's groups, the list goes on and on. It was a snapshot of a life we'll never know, but the one that my mother, at least, was raising me for, one I that I made a desperate grab for the year I got out of high school, unaware, at the time, that it was already gone--not through any fault of my own, but because that world was already a memory, except for those already living there.
I don't have many illusions about that life I missed--death, disease, poverty, infidelity, depression, abuse, and despair are not the sole prerogative of the 21st century. I tasted some of its bitterness up close and personal after taking the Armed Forces Battery Test for the Academies. The poor recruiter had to talk to everyone who took the test, even the girls (and the entire class had to take the test). At least he was honest--he said if I was a man he'd be trying to talk me into applying for West Point or Annapolis, with the goal of going into Military Intelligence, but, "the academies don't accept girls. We think that's going to change, but not while you're young enough." I took it stoically [not his fault], but I was pretty miserable--it would have been easier to be told I didn't have the "Right Stuff"--no, I got told I had the Right Stuff, just the wrong package holding it. And it mattered, you see, because I wanted to be an astronaut, and in those days, civilians didn't go into space. So, no, I don't want that life back, intact. I'd go mad if the most I had to look forward to was the new display at the supermarket and whether the zinnias had blossomed yet. I'll take gnashing my teeth over student papers and commiserating with my female friends who are having trouble with the new computer hardware design they're working on over whether the opening on my drapes is too wide or too narrow any day.
But there were touches of grace that we lost when that life vanished, and, to my knowledge, we haven't, as a society, found anything that brings the same kind of "Ah." It's as though we'd replaced the fruit in our diet with vegetables and candy--many of the same elements, but nothing quite the same as the simple sweetness of biting into a sun warmed ripe strawberry, capped with fresh whipped cream. There are other joys today, rich, valuable, but with every step forward we leave something behind, and sometimes, what we leave behind is beautiful. Yesterday, Ro and I got to visit a foreign country. It was a beautiful place--it isn't home, but it was good to be there, if only for an hour or two.
Rowan is the rough equivalent in the Eastern Star of someone who used to be a baroness. Yours truly is probably the equivalent of a Lady--not quite nobody, with some royal peers for friends.
So, I joined Eastern Star because they get to wear gowns a couple of times a year, wear gloves, and have high tea, and the rituals are cool. What it's turned out to be, though, is snarky people and business meetings. I find myself paraphrasing the Lady Portia: business meetings, yup, I'm there for the business meetings. Oh course, you can't tell from the words how sarcasm was pouring from her lips.
Sunday was different. It was a tea, and everyone had to wear a hat. So, Rowan and I dressed up, and found ourselves in this lovely room (okay, we drove 2 hours, then found ourselves in the room), with eight beautifully laid out tables. Each table had a hostess who was responsible for decorating her table, and each one was different, but all were lovely. The women, both hostesses and guests, were dressed in spring colors, or red white and blue, or elegant black and white, wearing hats. Lovely, elegant, pretty, silly, Cowboy, portrait, pink straw fedora, jewelled, cloche, flower bedecked, silk scarf banded, spring green, taupe, straw, yellow, red, lavender, dove grey, purple hats. It was beautiful.
There was entertainment, then tea and little sandwiches and conversation. Then there was a speaker, then tea and cookies and conversation. Then awards for best hats, and the drawing raffle, and we were gone. Two hours, absolutely pleasant, charming....
As Ro and I were leaving we talked about how, years ago, life was like that on a regular basis, if you were a middle class housewife. Church lunches, women's groups, the list goes on and on. It was a snapshot of a life we'll never know, but the one that my mother, at least, was raising me for, one I that I made a desperate grab for the year I got out of high school, unaware, at the time, that it was already gone--not through any fault of my own, but because that world was already a memory, except for those already living there.
I don't have many illusions about that life I missed--death, disease, poverty, infidelity, depression, abuse, and despair are not the sole prerogative of the 21st century. I tasted some of its bitterness up close and personal after taking the Armed Forces Battery Test for the Academies. The poor recruiter had to talk to everyone who took the test, even the girls (and the entire class had to take the test). At least he was honest--he said if I was a man he'd be trying to talk me into applying for West Point or Annapolis, with the goal of going into Military Intelligence, but, "the academies don't accept girls. We think that's going to change, but not while you're young enough." I took it stoically [not his fault], but I was pretty miserable--it would have been easier to be told I didn't have the "Right Stuff"--no, I got told I had the Right Stuff, just the wrong package holding it. And it mattered, you see, because I wanted to be an astronaut, and in those days, civilians didn't go into space. So, no, I don't want that life back, intact. I'd go mad if the most I had to look forward to was the new display at the supermarket and whether the zinnias had blossomed yet. I'll take gnashing my teeth over student papers and commiserating with my female friends who are having trouble with the new computer hardware design they're working on over whether the opening on my drapes is too wide or too narrow any day.
But there were touches of grace that we lost when that life vanished, and, to my knowledge, we haven't, as a society, found anything that brings the same kind of "Ah." It's as though we'd replaced the fruit in our diet with vegetables and candy--many of the same elements, but nothing quite the same as the simple sweetness of biting into a sun warmed ripe strawberry, capped with fresh whipped cream. There are other joys today, rich, valuable, but with every step forward we leave something behind, and sometimes, what we leave behind is beautiful. Yesterday, Ro and I got to visit a foreign country. It was a beautiful place--it isn't home, but it was good to be there, if only for an hour or two.
