Another gust, just when I thought it was all over. Tumbling to rest against a fence, I strain to see the neighborhood from whence I came: the Nazareth of Jesus – or 1960s Berkeley; what, really, was the difference?
But I can see; I can smell, and I can never let go. Roots have grown deep into my heart.
But are these my traditionalist roots or my feminist roots, the latter to which is moored my Wiccan spirituality? I don’t have to decide right now, because I love both my yin and my yang. Jeanette and Sam, my dear spectral friends, I know that you’re reading.
Another birthday appears in the rear view mirror of the one who has always been the rebel. Tell me what a girl or a woman must be, and I would fight it. I have bras older than some college students, still in good condition from infrequent use.
That’s my neighborhood, over yonder. How did I end up way over here?
With a nod to old-fashioned euphemism, my hormonal changes over a year ago were relatively smooth from the standpoint of emotions and moods, but the psychological reckoning threw me into an emotional tailspin as if King Kong had swatted a model airplane, upside down, inside out, a pawn and a Queen – taunting me with strange curiosities about that which I ran from.
During springtime of last year [2012], I wrote the following at a newspaper blog:
It’s nothing much; just something light, airy, a little secret and a little silly – and perhaps a voice from a long departed mom left behind in the brainstem of a rebel female thinker.
While the feminist me who grew up in the mid-morning of the women’s movement rejoices in the successes to which she and her sisters cling tenaciously, a deeply traditional side whispers with dampness in her eyes, “don’t forget me.”
I never did.
In the jungle of liberty that knows no ceiling, no floor, and no walls, I find myself occasionally enchanted by a curiously wistful memory of that which we liberated women writhed and shook so furiously to divest ourselves: a simple cage, a life whose worry is limited by its own confinement, to close my eyes and know that the world rests upon someone else’s shoulders.
There still exist small remnants of the country where women are often addressed in formal settings by our husband’s first names – a dissolution of one’s public personal identity that, indeed, this feminist could not long tolerate.
Yet my inner Betty Crocker cannot resist being distantly allured by the world left behind by the departing penumbra of a world that I lived in but, as a child, not quite of. The men of the house earned the bread while we, a.k.a. “the ladies,” got together and worked on a quilt for a while while the hostess enjoyed the honor of serving afternoon tea, and got back home in time to bake a hamburger and corn casserole to palliate our husbands’ hard day’s work.
Donning my apron, I’d dive in.
Then I’d throw a baby shower for the latest of the expectants, remembering always that the soup is to be passed from the left to the right. With intermittent melancholy, I’d remember how I, Mrs. John Smith (good heavens), concealing yet not denying the wanderlust of a race Hemi in my heart, declined my turn under the shower head.
I truly could visit that world for a week, to vacation in its prepared simplicity. But I could not stay; it’s the freedom to choose and to taste that piques my curiosity in the first place. Without that freedom I would suffer, ponder, lament, and incubate discontent; I would peer beyond the bars and initiate the women’s movement all over again.
It’s a beautifully simple world, and I share the beauty in it that women who freely choose that life see for themselves. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the cliche goes, and it ever edifies me to strive to behold.
But before long I could come back home – to my home – but not without packing my doffed apron, my Joy of Cooking handbook, and a boxful of the scent of the chicken liver lyonnaise dinner that I had fried for my husband of a different reality.
I’d remember; I’d smile; and yet I’d be grateful to be back home, and to be me, once again.
A few days later, I went to Barnes & Noble, and it jumped from the bookshelf into my arms begging, “buy me!” “It,” it so happened, was the original 1950 edition of Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, the exact edition from which I made my first dinner for mom and dad when I was a young girl. I leafed through its pages, and Heavens to Retro! There it was! My first Fluffy Meat Loaf! I was reeling. Eyeball squalls. Level me, baby.
Well, 45 years after preparing my first family dinner all on my own, Fluffy Meat Loaf awakened once more from its long dormant slumber to see a new day, prepared beneath a waterfall of happy sentimental tears and served to a surprised and soul-hugged fantasy husband at a properly set and adorned dinner table.
Those were just the beginnings of storms. The emotional buffeting during the following interval is, for the time being, just a little too much information to appear here.
Well, my dear reader, it’s well over a year later, and I keep taking these little vacations. Little? Extended stays.
I have been known to say: if I ever became a Christian, I could really envision myself as an Amish woman. Would I give up my brazen immodesty? Not without a fight. But could I get down with a close-to-the-earth lifestyle with no concern for cosmetics? In an instant, baby.
Exploring this side of me has broadened and enhanced my Pagan walk. Some of the greenest, most Earth- and nature-friendly values are buried deep within conservative tradition. The cookbooks of old relied upon basic staple foods rather than prepared foods, everything made from scratch, and incorporated recycling skills into the art of homemaking. My traditionalist roots, as well as my feminist roots, are excellent fits for my Pagan spirituality.
I will have more to say in this travelogue, so bookmark and stay tuned.
Original appears here: https://theretrowitch.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/travelogue-of-a-tumbleweed-2/