I find this hilarious. But as I was organizing holiday gifts and listening to Michele McLaughlin’s Christmas piano, I looked up to find the calendar already hanging for the new year, and found myself loving them. I loved that it was a woman running a dog sled. (I can’t very well say “manning a sled,” now can I?) And I loved that my knitting friend was cavalierly sitting atop it all, hands-free. I know from her Facebook page that she just hiked a long-distance trail in Italy all by herself; that she went to Cal Berkeley at the same time I almost went there – and so, briefly, I wonder that our paths might have crossed earlier but for the other lives we ended up living. I know she rode her bike across the country in her twenties, and that she and her husband and kids go to Scotland and routinely conquer the heights there. Other photos on other months have her knitting on mountaintops and in front of canyon arches.
The one running the dogs finally adopted children after years of agony regarding infertility. She taught me a lot about the pain of that as that is the time period in which I knew her. She and her husband were running the dogs then and it is so good to see them still doing it. I love that she found children for herself and I imagine her happy.
Most of all I am bowing in gratitude for how we women DO things. How we handle dogs and snow and long hikes and children. How the very idea of stuffing us back into some kind of Yellow Wallpaper hell – as some men seem to want to do – is just.not.going.to.happen.
I have been reading about the Mexican Revolution, and looked up the wife of the man who ended up leading it. Turns out she was no timid mouse. She was, to quote Wikipedia, “a Mexican politician and activist,” who followed her husband in war and later lived as close to his prison as possible, before he was assassinated. Imagine enduring that! “Being the first lady, Pérez Romero rallied the troops, organized proselytizing acts, held festivals in favor of the victims of the armed movement, assisted at workers’ meetings, and received the organizers of women’s political clubs (such as the Hijas de Cuauhtemoc), and attended committees. She presided over the Club Caridad y Progreso (Charity and Progress Club), and she funded the Cruz Blanca Neutral por la Humanidad (Neutral White Cross for Humanity).[4] Pérez Romero and her husband were the bridesmaid and best man for the wedding of Emiliano Zapata and Josefa Espejo in 1911.”
None of this is in the history book I am reading. I imagine neither of my friends will ever be in history books either. But they are in mine, which is why I am blogging about them in my own way. They inspire me to keep going, every day.