Gravity

Photo by American Jael on Unsplash

Our Elders, Part 2

Dear Seized Readers,

Who are your role models?

With the arrival of Mother’s Day, I’m thinking of my female stars. My mother expressed a fiercely independent spirit in her outspokenness and tomboy nature. She is the subject of my post, “People & Places of the Heart” and my poem, “Look in the Trees.”

Mrs. Jeannette Dean was another source of feminine strength. From 2016 through 2018, I served as one of her three caregivers. The edema in her legs caused her misery, confined her to a wheelchair. I cursed this hateful health condition, but I loved my days with Jenny. She was colorful in her use of expressions such as “Live and learn; die and forget it all” and “slower than a seven-year itch at fly time.” Jenny warned me to avoid “close communion” with her thin doorways as I wheeled her around her house.

Much like the case of my client Bern (“Paying Homage to Our Elders”; poem “Story Reaper”), it is debatable as to who took the most care of whom: Jenny insisted on making her lunches and offered sound advice on many matters to her female caretakers. She was sensible counsel of the been there and learned type. Many of our conversations took place as we watched MeTV in the afternoons. The lineup was always Diagnosis Murder at lunch, then The Big Valley, Gunsmoke, and The Andy Griffith Show. She reminded me of the matriarch, Victoria Barkley, in The Big Valley: confident, clear-eyed, a woman of integrity and action.

Photo of Jeannette Dean by Diana Ewell Engel

Jenny is the only person I’ve known well who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and the struggles for Civil and Women’s Rights. She shared her stories of rationing, bomb drills, black-outs, and protest marches.

I listened, fascinated by her personal history.

However, what I found most admirable was not how she and her family endured challenging events. Instead, I was in awe of her grit and forthrightness as she handled infuriating situations with male employers. Jenny’s work life began at the age of eighteen in 1946 as a secretary at Cashwell’s Incorporated, then a branch of Dixie Belle Textiles.

As you read my poem, “Ricochet,” keep the date of 1946 in mind. World War II was over, but women were far from landing plum positions or being treated as equals in the workplace.

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

Ricochet                                                  
    for Mrs. Jeannette Dean on her 90th birthday

“Enough is enough,/
and more than enough/ 
is a dog’s breakfast,”/
Mrs. Jeannette Dean says,/
as I wheel her/ 
into the living room./
Jenny explains how scraps/ 
were tossed/ 
to farm dogs.

She can make any man/ 
“run like a scalded cat,”/
an apt description 
of the red convertible/
she owned/ 
in her early twenties/ 
and drove in second gear.

Photo by Omer Haktan Bulut on Unsplash

Jenny tells me/ 
of a pewter life/
hammered as a child/ 
by the Depression,/ 
World War,/ 
pocked by big deal bosses,/ 
“all hat and no cattle.”/  
She hand-cranks/ 
the colloquial/ 
in every breath/
like the copies 
and address labels/ 
she made 
for Cashwell Incorporated.

Once,/ 
Mr. Cashwell 
ignored/ 
her request/ 
for a new office chair,/ 
going on ten days./
Opening the doors/ 
down the deep corridor,/
Jenny sent 
the broken chair/ 
on a ricochet ride/
banging/ 
the wall,/
shouted/ 
“I damn well better/ 
have a new chair/ 
by Monday or/
I’m out of here.”

Photo by runnyrem on Unsplash

                  *

On a late summer day/
as we sit 
in the front room—/
the air conditioner 
laboring—/
I tell her/ 
she is cement paving/
a smoother road/ 
for women/
to travel,/ 
gravity/ 
in this 21st century/
when enough is never/ 
enough.

-Diana Ewell Engel

Photo by Anastasiia Pyvovarova on Unsplash

Share your questions and comments about “Ricochet.”

What are you reading and/or writing these days?