Wonder Women

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

When I was in my mid-thirties, my sister gave me the perfect birthday gift. It was a clear acrylic cutting board on which she had painted a remarkably detailed image of the cartoon character Wonder Woman. I loved that cutting board. I used it till the paint had faded into shadows and the edges became cracked and peeling. In a nice twist of fate, last month my kids rented a small movie theater and invited family and friends (20 total because of social distancing) to view Wonder Woman 1984 as a celebration of my retirement from the Jordan District Board of Education. It seemed fitting that there were a dozen “wonder women” there to laugh with me at the impossible antics of a superwoman who never had a clue what it meant to fail. (Oh, and the audience also included several of my rowdy sons who pelted each other with popcorn. Sigh.)

At one time or another, the women I loved in the audience that day had battled societal expectations of what it meant to be successful and productive. Some were moms, some weren’t; some had fancy degrees, some didn’t. Some had powerful jobs; some struggled every day to raise a family alone. But all of them would agree with the poet John Ciardi who once said, “The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.”

Unlike the film hero, I’ve had some pretty memorable failures over the years. One involved Daughter #2’s first child who was born on the 3^rd of January. I knew what good mothers do to prepare for a new grandchild—they crochet. When I expected a new baby (which was quite often actually), my mother always provided me with at least one or two sweet little receiving blankets, all edged with intricate crocheted borders.

So, I went to the fabric store and bought a precut set of flannel blanket and bibs for the impending bundle of joy. Picking out a matching spool of thread and a couple of crochet hooks, and I began to stitch. There were only one or two problems. Problem #1: the last time I had done any fancy handwork had not gone well. I remembered it quite clearly. I was pre-pubescent. My age group in Primary was called the Home Builder Girls in those days, and part of our regular curriculum was learning to be do all the basic arts required of an “accomplished” woman—shades of Pride and Prejudice.

The Primary teacher and I had a number of sessions together. Then my mom sat with me for hours helping me get the dainty little stiches even. Hers looked like they had been produced for an instruction manual. Mine did not. I ripped out yards and yards of thread and tried again. Eventually, the Primary teacher and my mother agreed that perhaps I needed to learn to knit—the yarn was easier to manipulate, and I might handle two needles better than one hook. I did manage to produce one slipper which–if you ignored the random length of some of the rows–was sort of wearable.  My mother, who was not without a sense of irony, bought a clear plastic container in which to enshroud the slipper and kept it on display for years. (In case a handsome prince happened by with my slipper’s mate, I assume.)

Problem #2  was that my mother lived a very long distance away when I began my “grandmotherly” responsibility to my coming grandson. But I had a college degree, and I had learned some patience over the years. I knew I could do it. I dove into the project with enthusiasm.

By the time school was out for the holidays, I had only finished one side of the blanket, but I had two weeks before the baby came–plenty of time. Proudly, I showed my partially completed gift to Daughter #2. She narrowed her eyes and studied the work so far. Finally, she took a deep breath and said brightly, “Mom, I love to crochet. Why don’t I just finish this for you?” And she began ripping stitches out to begin again. The baby didn’t seem to mine who made his blanket. He dragged it around until it shredded.

Then there was my lifetime fascination with watercolors. My grandfather had become a noted artist in his retirement years, and when my dad was stationed far away from home and family, my mom took up oil painting as a soothing pastime. Turned out, she was gifted. Plus, my sister had a dual degree in art and biology. I took those circumstances to foresee a serendipitous future with a palate and paint. If nothing else, it would provide a change of pace from creating lesson plans and grading essays.

I talked a friend into signing up for an after school community class: two hours a week at Cottonwood High. Our teacher believed in painting the season–which in this case was winter. We were supposed to take pictures of the world around us and then use a photo as the inspiration for our first watercolor. Dead winter in Utah can be fairly grim:  gray skies, leafless trees with gray branches, and gray melting snow, if we’re lucky. I washed the background of my painting with a light gray as instructed and then began to add details—shrubs sans leaves, trees sans leaves, sky sans even clouds. I decided my painting needed a little cheering up. I added a snowman. Not a strong artistic choice, apparently. The teacher, a long-time friend from my neighborhood, studied my work and suggested gently that time and practice would help. My painting partner developed a pleasing style and went on to paint several paintings worth hanging in her home. I did not.

On the other hand, I liked splashing paint around enough that I took two semesters of the class. Finally, one spring afternoon, our teacher stopped next to my easel, studied my current interpretation of nature, and whispered in my ear, “Janice, I think you’d be better off sticking to writing.”

I started reading Wonder Woman comic books when I was a kid, and in all the intervening years, the superwoman’s never failed to solve every problem with which she was confronted, usually in some kind of spectacular manner. Real Wonder Women–like my friends in the theater–fail all the time. It’s the getting up and starting over that’s the super-hero part.