Girlfriends: Janet

Janet: Art

Janet and I went to high school together, and to the same church. She was lighthearted and fun, and people took us for sisters. We double-dated. Ate lunch together with our crowd. We were not "A" listers--not cheerleaders, nor "brains." We were fun enough that some of the A listers drifted in and out of our parties and participation in our service club. And we were smart enough, solid B students.

Janet was a painter of amazing talent. Her portraits were loose, light and captured the essence of the subject. Her brother was a friend of the painter Jamie Wyeth, and Janet admired his work immensely. It showed.

I loved art class, and had an aptitude for it. But Janet's gift outshone mine, and everyone else's. Years later, when I was working at the university, one of her professors told me Janet was one of the most talented students she'd ever had.

At university, we were in the same math class, struggling to pass. Our graduate assistant lacked an aptitude for teaching, and of the many sections enrolled that semester, ours had the lowest grades. Janet drew a caricature of Mr. D___, during an especially frustrating class--ripple-soled shoes, slide rule dangling from his belt, toupee awry, at the blackboard saying, "Oh my, I have too many y's here..." A refreshing moment on the way to an F in the class.

When we shared an apartment, she drew a silverpoint portrait of me on a small oval plaque. It was for one of her class assignments. She told me it was a challenging assignment. The portrait was beautiful and delicate.

I came home one day and she was working on a plaster body cast, ala George Segal. When it was finished, we had a life-size sculpture of Janet, in workshirt and jeans, permanently inhabiting a corner of our living room. It was great fun.

(To be continued...)

It's Never Too Late

Born in 1950, the middle of the 20th Century, I've become a woman of a certain age. I'm past the shock of looking in the mirror one morning to discover I'd acquired my mother's thighs (age 24). I'm over the appearance of a dramatic bit of natural white hair (27) and the grocery boy calling me "ma'am" (29). Well beyond the pleasant surprise of surviving beyond my 30th birthday, too.

That last surprise, the 30th birthday, was the result of growing up in the 50's. Baby Boomers joke about the "Duck and Cover" exercises we did in elementary school, where we practiced hiding under our desks as if that was all we needed to do to survive a nuclear attack. But I grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. And I was in possession of all the facts, thanks to an article in Look magazine that described what would happen if the Russians dropped a bomb on the Pentagon. I'd be vaporized before the alarm went off.

So I've always regarded the years past 30 as something of an unexpected bonus.

Don't get me wrong--I'm no Pollyanna. I've taken my share of lumps and setbacks. I've been stripped bare by some of them, including an episode of depression nearly four years ago that left me seeing how tentative my sense of who I am can be. I've tried to learn what there was to be learned.

And as I'm aging, I'm learning more about what it takes to stay flexible, agile, engaged and alive. And that's what I plan to write about.