"Who cares about Beatrice?"

Had she lived long enough, my sister would have been swept in the tremendous energies of this time. And she would have shared equally in the tremendous fun of our lives. Yes, FUN. It is great fun to be married, 33, and free! Unfortunately, my sister was schooled in the traditions of Dante's Beatrice (Oriana Fallaci: Who cares about Beatrice?) and died before she could be free. She was always married, age a deep deep secret, and chained.

I am constantly amazed, continuously delighted, at the seemingly inexhaustible limits of the human personality. One moment, and I am playing mother, enjoying the timeless tactics of my two-year-old girl, a plump little doll with the bitchy precocity her mother never showed until she was 26 and safely over her grand and irresistible passion.

The next moment, and I am woman alone, browsing through the favorite shops which never fail to touch, with a thousand precious little discoveries, my capacity for delight and wonder: an old stone jar blooming with sunny chrysanthemums to warm a cold morning, a lovely old basket filled with statice to last the seasons, soft ruffly dresses and white vampy sandals, a baroque love seat blending with spare director's chairs, yarns of all colors for my embroidery and rugs, and painting upon painting on walls and floors and the exciting prospect of a new frame with the next installment.

One time, and I am active member in the sisterhood of ageless women, lingering over coffee at Grandma's, surrounded by endless talk of improvement and involvement, sharing quiet afternoons with comfortable friends over crafts that busy the hands and please the hearts, laughing at Annie Hall and loving Julia but also feeling for Valentino, meeting free women at every stop and with every call, realizing that the community grows only when each individual, each person, grows, too.

Another time, and I am artist aspiring, caught in the true loneliness of the real ones: of women gliding through the desolate landscapes of an Ingmar Bergman autumn, of Saul Bellow descending the depths of his quiet zone and Hannah Arendt cutting through the political theory of revolution, of Louise Nevelson whose personal drama towers over her bold sculptures.

Perhaps it is being 33 and married that makes me feel so alive and so free. It is age that has cured me of the feeling of intense misery at the small inconsistencies of the human race. It is the support of a man, with a separate identity and a different expertise, that has given me a new comfort in my relationships and a newly discovered energy for my pursuits. Every man I meet now is no longer potential lover nor potential husband, but individual and human, with something essential to say, if not to me, then certainly to somebody else.

I have learned to enjoy the quiet beauty of moments and places--a convivial dinner, the beach overlooking the infinite, moonlight over silvery waters--without investing them with the frenzied intensity of the young, who feel compelled always to search desperately for the keys that will open the mystic passageways to existence and reality. Even my personal agony, when it comes, is less black, less brooding, less brutish, more like a warm and comfortable cloak to wrap around my shoulders on evenings drenched with rain.

There is satisfaction in being able to do the watching, instead of thinking the whole world watches me, on occasions when others prefer to provide blustering and self-conscious entertainment. There is even greater satisfaction in finally being able to tell the truth (Albert Camus: What counts is not poetry. What counts is truth. And I call truth anything that continues.), unconcerned at last with the judgment of the rest: yes, the house took one whole year to build because there were times when money was scarce; yes, I look at the price tag first, and never mind what the salesgirls think; yes, I wear local cottons because, aside from the fact that I love them, I really cannot afford very much else.

And there is true intoxication in being able to do things at 33 that I would have considered atrocious when I was 20, my father's favorite daughter, and convent-school graduate: eating out alone, buying second best, telling my real age, riding in jeeps and buses, wearing costume jewelry (funky, punky, whatever, but I do choose with still old-fashioned taste), waiting for a friend at a basement food center with my needlepoint or a good book.

Life scares, of course. Self-confidence does not mean immortality, and I am afraid: a great many times. The human race will be here for generations more, but I shall be gone some day, who really knows when. I am afraid of having to leave before my children can learn to groove with the rest of the world, as their parents have learned to do. My energies may seem indefatigable today, but for how long? At 33, when I have the time to look over the edge, I suddenly feel afraid that I may not be around to see the people I love through their vulnerable years.

But life, to be trite about it, is a continuing process. And today's anguish is soon washed away in tomorrow's bliss. I console myself, easily. There is, says Joseph Conrad, a solidarity that knits, that "binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn."

It is not death that matters now, but life. And life, at 33, is happy comfort and comfortable fulfillment.

My sister would not have wanted to die early had she foreseen
the fulfillment she could have known as a woman, self-confident and free.

--NBT


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Fina, a local magazine for women, 1978