What Women Have Taught Me

Part Two

There are 104 countries which celebrate Mother’s Day; 77 of them (including the U.S. and Mexico) celebrate the day in May. It is a good thing to do, but I have always felt that the day should also include honoring the various women in our lives who have made a significant impact on us. In this two-part series, I want to do exactly that by telling you the stories of six women through prose and verse who were, in effect, my mentors. I honor them, and so many more!

THE ACTIVIST

When she was a child she could run with the best of them. There was no indication of the rare, progressive disease which would – by the time she died at the age of 40 – cause her to be nearly completely immobile; cause her inability to breathe without a respirator; cause her to slur her words; cause her face to be severely distorted. Although Linda’s wheelchair allowed her to get around, she had to have someone push it. And yet, neither her mind nor spirit was ever “immobile” or “challenged.” She had a keen intellect. Her master’s degree written at her computer keyboard by holding an implement in her mouth showed how wrong her detractors were. Her subject championed civil rights for persons living with physical challenges. “I feel accepted by Unitarians; other churches were judgmental,” she told me, laboring to articulate the words while the respirator attached to her wheelchair breathed for her. Linda became a regular attendee on Sunday mornings. She organized a service where other physically challenged people talked of their lives – of how some people perceive them, of how they think of themselves. “We just want to be thought of as human beings,” was the dominant theme of the day. Linda was the quintessential activist and probably would have been, no matter her physical condition. She won many awards for her fervent endeavors and became nationally prominent. She took me into her world and modeled what it means to rise to the challenge; to persevere against great odds; to rail against injustice. Ironically, she was killed in a car accident, shortly after her 40th birthday. That she lived to be 40 was a miracle. That she lived so magnificently an activist’s life was even more miraculous.

TO LINDA

Your alter ego breathes in measured rhythm

Attached to your less-than-winged steed.

Together, your respirator, your chair on wheels and you

(All 87 pounds of you if that much)

Weigh over a thousand pounds.

But you are not your encumbrance,

You are your fierceness flashing at those who don’t comprehend

That you are a person

Not an object to be pitied.

That you have feelings – and a mind.

Your fire is ignited

By those who don’t comprehend –

That we all are the same

Even when

Our limbs refuse to move;

Our eyes don’t see;

Our ears don’t hear;

Our mouths don’t speak.

You are the goddess of justice

With the computer as your avenger.

Cutting a path for the rest of us;

Helping to create the laws that will serve us all.

You did not live in vain.

*****

THE ARTIST

Your ego is writ large – perhaps, necessarily so. Too large for a so-called “personal” life – although you did dance with Hemingway and the bunch in those halcyon days of Paris during the flapper era. And you told me that Joseph Campbell – “Joe” to you – proposed marriage – or something. You were bohemian, Angela, after all! And now you are an eighty-something-year-old, full-bodied figure. But with an air about you that speaks of humid French nights strolling with a lover along the banks of the Seine. Still, uptown you were, right from the start. Rich, little southern girl, spoiled beyond the stereotype. You were taught that you were special. A New Orleanian belle of the ball. And you were – but you needed the romance of the Left Bank and that Parisian artist (what WAS his name) to show you that you could be a wonderful sculptor. You needed the distance and the time away from the debutante balls. And after all, you were totally Unitarian, descended from New England founders. So Unitarian that you have a photograph of yourself as a baby sitting on the lap of that Unitarian, President William Howard Taft (now there was a “muscular” figure). And so, you became a sculptor who loved to create the human form in larger-than-life relief. Your discipline became your life; your work became your family and friends. All else was subservient to your creative need. And when your days and nights weren’t spent fashioning your clay children, you imagined them – how they could be, how they might attain perfection. You never stopped working – as seen by your prodigious production: your mammoth, classic sculptures throughout the city of New Orleans. And, how you hated old age. It was a nuisance. It meant that you had only so much time left to create.

TO ANGELA

Those who create –

Leaving something of themselves behind:

Clay fashioned into form, evocative of myth and legend;

Of human struggle and victory –

Will be remembered when they have become part of the earth themselves.

Whatever passion within –

Causing them to lead the artist’s life;

Setting them apart from the rest of us;

Absorbing their individuality;

Melding them in the kiln of a refiner’s fire –

Has as its source: divinity;

And speaks of sacrifice;

Beauty;

And eternity.

NOTE: Don Beaudreau has written 12 books, the last one, a satiric comedy, is a novel set on Cape Cod, MA. His works are available on AMAZON Books in hard copy and Kindle editions.