Looks Like a Girl (But She’s a Flame)
Carson,
The most wonderful experience happened to me at work this week. A few days ago, a woman came into the store with her daughter. Nothing out of the ordinary, just perusing the color palettes on display at my counter. The girl looked bored, probably like you would have been in the same scenario, and became distracted by a nearby display case. I continued retrieving various shades of lipstick for the woman to examine as the girl meandered back to her mother’s side.
Out of nowhere, the girl squeals and I jerk up in surprise to look at her and what was happening. She’s pulling on her mother’s pea coat, practically bouncing with excitement. Carse- she recognized me! Turns out she became fascinated with the League and her favorite team is the Peaches! The woman was able to dial down her daughter’s excitement without snuffing it out completely. She apologized for the sudden outburst and quickly introduced themselves as Grace Lenehan and her daughter, Betty. She then continued to explain that she had listened to every game she could on the radio. She’s collected newspaper articles and photos for months in an old hat box of her mother’s.
It was difficult to read Mrs. Lenehan’s expression to fully grasp if she was supportive of her daughter’s enthusiasm. One one hand she wasn’t pulling the girl by the arm out of the store, but she did keep her tucked quite close to her until they departed. That brings us to this afternoon when in walks Mrs. Lenehan along with three girls of relatively the same age in tow. She explained that as soon as they went home the other day Betty had rushed off to find her friends, Doris and Evelyn, in the apartment building they all live in. The three of them had done nothing but talk about the Peaches, the championship games, and me for the rest of the evening. They begged Betty’s mother to bring them all to the department store on her next visit in hopes of meeting me. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Apparently Mrs. Lenehan, Grace, is quite supportive, having grown up on a dairy farm and found entertainment in climbing trees and playing outside with her brothers as a young girl. I was able to take my lunch break and sat with them while they told me really delightful stories of them playing baseball. There’s an alley near the apartment building surrounded by brick walls of adjacent structures they go to after school or during the summer where they throw the ball and bat trying to hit the brick wall at the far end. I was engrossed in the tales, as it paralleled memories of Jo and me. Similarly, most of the boys don’t let them play at the park, unless they are short players. Betty says they are just jealous, as Doris can out hit them and both she and Evelyn can out run them. God, what I would have done to have a mother who backed my aspirations instead of stifling every spark of joy I found. As I was heading back in for the rest of my shift, they asked me to sign a baseball and a couple newspaper photographs.
This experience couldn’t have been more moving, until I was almost out of earshot. Grace had turned to the trio at the corner of the building and said, “see girls, you can do anything you want to in a man’s world. You just have to look the part and be confident.” Never in my life have I come across a mother and adult woman that encouraged young girls to be anything more than a prim and polite specimen being groomed into a wife. Could you imagine growing up being told anything we could envision for yourself was a possibility? That just because we are women, being successful could be measured outside how prosperous our husband happened to be, how well kept he was by us as his wife, or how many children we bore for him. What if we weren’t taught to be so limited? Carson, I want to be limitless.
Please join me,
Greta