Eulalia Benejam Cobb’s blog

Dear friends and readers,

My blog and I are moving. 
You can find us at mygreenvermont.com 
See you there...and thanks for visiting!

Eulalia (Lali)

I miss dressing up every day. Although I used to work in academia, where down-at-the-heel looks were considered a sign of intellectual rigor, I could never embrace that aspect of the profession. Instead, I used to pay lots of attention to what I wore to work.

Mostly, I dressed up because it was fun, and because it allowed me, first thing in the morning, to accomplish a small creative act in what grew to seem an ever duller workday.

Early Morning Creativity

I never laid out my outfit the night before. In the morning, before opening the closet I would consult 1. the weather, and 2. my mood. Some days called for brilliant hues, others for blacks and greys. Having made that decision, I would pull out a straight skirt, a blouse, and a jacket or sweater. Or I would choose a dress. I owned very few suits, because they limited my options too much. Then came the shoes, with high, high heels. I could climb mountains in high heels in those days--even my bedroom slippers had little heels. The pantyhose, which I ordered by the gross, had to match the skirt and shoes—I'd read somewhere that that “lengthened the line.”

Make-up came next. I would put on foundation, powder, eye-shadow, eye-liner and mascara. I would outline my lips with pencil and fill them in in a lighter shade with lipstick, which I would then blot. (I won't go into the hair-related stuff, which played a major role in my morning routine.) Lastly, I would choose the correct earrings for the outfit, spritz myself with a little perfume, pick the gloves to go with my shoes. If upon checking in the mirror I found myself lacking a little oomph, I would rummage through my scarf drawer until I found something that I could wrap around my neck or drape on my shoulders that would save the look.

Thus arrayed I would set off for campus, about a mile and a half from my house, my heart filled with courage and my mind with principles, my heels tapping authoritatively on the sidewalk. At a time when women's toehold in academia was precarious, dressing up made me feel that whatever victories I earned—tenure, promotion, a seat on some committee or other—I had earned as a woman, or at least as the kind of woman I was.

Now that I live in Vermont, that morning ritual seems insane. These days, I throw a barn jacket over my pajamas and run to feed the chickens, then run back to feed the dogs. I long ago gave away the unopened packages of panty hose, the jackets with shoulder pads, the narrow skirts. If I were to go outside right now in a pair of high heels, I would have to be rescued by the local fire department. In winter I wear jeans and a thick sweater; in summer, jeans and a cotton top. My rubber-soled boots never tap authoritatively on the sidewalk (there is no sidewalk).

Even in Vermont, however, there is an occasional opportunity to dress up. But it's not the same. As with any art, dressing up takes practice, and I am sorely out of it. I need to face it: my dress-up days are gone.

But if that is the price I have to pay for the sound of my rooster at dawn, for empty roads bordered with sheep-dotted fields, for living in Vermont, then someone else can have the high-heeled shoes, the Hermes scarves, and all the rest.

We are encased in ice. All that is mineral or vegetable is covered on every surface with a gorgeous, glittering, deadly coat of ice. The kind of ice that causes cars to crash and people and horses to slip and break bones. The kind of ice that seals doors and gates shut so you can't get where you need to go. The kind of ice that glues buckets to the ground and lurks under a thin disguise of snow so that you slip, etc.

So far the only casualty on our land has been the bottom branches of the perfectly shaped baby apple tree that I planted in the fall. It will bear the scars of its childhood accident for the rest of its life.

Yesterday, however, I thought there would be a more serious casualty of the weather—my sanity. It's strange how something that can feel so good at one point—staying inside as the storm gets going—can be so crazy-making at another—staying inside when the storm is over.

After a snow storm the duty to shovel, if not the desire to make tracks on that virgin whiteness, calls you outside. But after an ice storm there is nothing to shovel, no tracks to make. Disaster awaits on your porch steps. So you stand by the open door and flick salt onto the steps and hope nobody comes by. Then you go inside and wait for the temperature to rise.

That's what I did yesterday, only the temperature didn't rise. That's fine, I thought. I'll just stay in (my chickens' living quarters are attached to our attached garage) and sit by the fire and read and write. This is what winter in Vermont is all about, delving inward, cocooning.

One hour after the sun had gone down (the middle of the afternoon in some latitudes), I was having an existential crisis. Nothing felt right. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't want to write. I didn't even want to read.

The dogs kept giving me meaningful looks: “Well? What amusements have you planned for us today?”

“Amusements? “ I replied testily. “Why should I provide amusements? You're dogs-- think doggy thoughts, chew a bone, meditate, but stop looking at me that way!”

I went to bed feeling unsettled and dissatisfied, like I was wearing an itchy sweater next to my skin (which in fact I was). And as I lay in the dark I realized that I was experiencing the first assault of the 2008-2009 cabin fever season.

I'll have to learn to hibernate all over again. I have made myself a solemn promise to go outside every day, no matter what the weather. I have arranged with a friend to hold monthly salons. But the fact remains that this is going to be mostly an indoor time, a solitary time.

I was an only child, often lonely amidst adult company, and when I complained of being bored my father would say “How can you be bored? Intelligent people are never bored. Think!”

O.k., I'll think. Thinking has been, after all, humankind's principal resource in bad weather until recently. Surely I can recapture that capacity. Surely spring will come early .

Winter Cat

The weatherman today announced the first real snow storm of the season. Five inches, plus ice and anticipated power outages. The indoors time is upon us.

I took the dogs out into the field for their exercise while the flakes were still sparse, and they seemed to feel the coming hoopla, running at each other and play-growling and leaping about. When I got everyone back inside I laid a fire in the stove and prepared to enjoy that snowbound feeling that is so delicious in December and so maddening in March.

And then I realized that I was out of books to read. In a house with seven bookcases, there was not a single page I either hadn't read before or had no interest in reading.

I got in the car and drove to the next village, the snow falling thickly. I didn't go to the grocery store for bread or milk or coffee. I didn't go to the feed store for laying mash or kibble. I went to the library.

There I wandered through the stacks unable to recall the name of a single author or the title of a single book I wanted to read. This always happens to me. I walk into a library and my mind goes blank. George Eliot? Who's that? And it doesn't help that 85% of the books in the local libraries are mysteries.

Eventually, I found two books by Margaret Drabble. One sounded wonderful, but upon opening it it rang a vaguely familiar bell. So I checked out the other one, which may well ring a bell later. Then I remembered hearing a wonderful review on NPR of John Crowley's Little, Big. But the library didn't have that one, so I checked out something by the same author called Lord Byron's Novel—The Evening Land. This had better be good, as I'm not as a rule fond of historical fiction.

I also got a book by Tana French, The Likeness, because the NY Times Book Review referred to the “lyrical ferocity” of her first novel, In The Woods. We'll see how lyrically ferocious The Likeness is. Also decided to give Kim Edwards's The Memory Keeper's Daughter a try, though I'm suspicious of the title: there seem to be a lot of novels with “somebody's daughter” in the title of late. And finally I took something called None Of Your Business, by Valerie Block, that I've already decided was a mistake. I read 25 pages and found it annoying.

So, five books. One by a man. My usual stack is all women. I'm still trying to make up for my grad school reading lists in French Lit, which included only two (17^th century) women writers.

The best part of this trip to the library was an encounter with the new Library Cat, a gorgeous long-haired calico who found me in the stacks and made overtures, then followed me to the table where I sat down and jumped into my lap and purred imperiously. So what could I do? I sat there and petted her until the snow got really thick, and then I got up, picked up my books, and went home.

Six Loaves, No Fishes

Every morning for breakfast I eat a slice of rhubarb or zucchini bread. I've been making the stuff for years, six loaves at a time, from a recipe I cut out of the back of a flour bag. The recipe has variations for zucchini, apple, pumpkin and carrot loaves. Because I get large amounts of rhubarb and zucchini in my garden, that is what my bread usually consists of.

I made a batch of the rhubarb kind this morning, and even though I know the recipe by heart, I pulled it out because I wanted to check how far I have come from the original.

My first modification, when I still had small children at home, was to triple the recipe, which made only two loaves.  I was in industrial production mode in those years, and wouldn't turn on the oven unless there was a substantial amount of food to bake. But all I did was to multiply each ingredient by three and note that carefully on the margin. At the time, I firmly believed that if one worked hard and observed the rules, things would work out and life would make sense.

The history of my later adjustments parallels the history of dietary fads in America. In the 70s it was all about unrefined flours and fiber, so I replaced white flour with whole-wheat and added a cup of oat bran for good measure. The resulting bread was a little less dessert-like than the original, but nobody complained.

When sugar was revealed as the source of all evil, I cut the amount the recipe called for by half. In a household whose members were denied sugar except on major holidays, half the amount was better than none, so again, there were no complaints.

Remember in the 80s, when fat, any fat, was thought to be a killer? Emboldened by the success of my previous modifications, I decreased the amount of oil by a third. At this point, I began to wonder whether the loaves would cook properly. I was, after all, messing with some pretty significant ingredients. But the bread held together well, though it tasted even more Spartan than before.

Then came the emphasis on eating more fruits and vegetables, which happily coincided with my having, once again, a garden. So I increased the amount of fruit from six cups to ten. Surely, I thought, the loaves will fall apart now. They didn't. In fact, the big increase in fruit made them moister and tastier.

Then one time I was making the rhubarb recipe, which calls for grated lemon peel, and I didn't have a lemon. I threw in some lemon extract instead, again expecting disaster, but the bread tasted fine. Now I use lemon extract all the time, and ignore the voice inside me (whose voice, I wonder?) that tells me that this just isn't right.

The recipe also calls for the use of an electric beater, but since there is no way all that dough is going to fit in my mixer, I use the biggest spoon I have, and sort of stir and beat until my arm starts getting tired. The loaves rise all the same.

This leads me to two conclusions:

1. that I have stumbled on the world's most flexible and forgiving recipe, and

2. ( an important lesson for a Catholic school girl like me) that taking liberties with the rules is not always a bad thing.

The word “gloom” is onomatopoeic, like “crash” or “bump.” Just listen to that nauseous initial “gl,” followed by the prolonged mournful “oo.” And no sooner are you over that than “m” closes down like a trap, sealing you in a dingy space from which there is no escape.

Gloom lacks the nobility of sorrow, the romanticism of melancholy. It is often paired with “doom,” to reinforce the essence of all bad moods, which is to seem inescapable and eternal.

Gloom is the predominant color of this season, even in places where the sun shines year-round, like Florida and California. The entire planet is swimming in a soup of gloom. I would not be surprised if astronauts looking earthward saw, instead of that bright blue marble, a lump the color of dirty snow.

Gloom in the news, gloom in our hearts. I don't remember a period of such pervasive, national gloom. I missed the Great Depression and WWII, but I was fully present during the assassinations of the 60s. There was sorrow then, lots of it, and fear. And during the Vietnam war there was anger, succeeded by the disgust of the Watergate years. And then there were the enormous sorrow and fear caused by 9/11, not to mention the outrage felt by many towards the political scene. But it was different from the gloom of now, the gloom of all.

Perhaps it's because few things touch us as intimately, as directly as money--that's a gloomy thought right there. If there is someone who hasn't been affected by the state of the economy, I don't know who it is.

But I have cheerful news: it could be worse. We could be in a civil war!

I know because my parents—my mother was in her teens, my father in his early 20s-- lived through the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). My father lived with his family in Barcelona, my mother with hers in the country (they didn't meet until years after the end of the war). When the war began they were plunged into instant poverty, cold, hunger (though my mother escaped the hunger part--she lived on a farm), and terror. My father drank quarts of water before going to bed, to assuage hunger pangs. My mother remembers rushing out in the middle of the night to hide in a nearby creek to escape bombing raids. She and her siblings wore a small stick on a string around their necks to put between their teeth when the bombs fell, to keep their teeth from shattering. My father did not go outside his parents' apartment for three years, to avoid execution for having belonged to a Catholic youth group.

With the end of the war came the end of the terror, but the lack of food, electricity and infrastructure went on for years. Yet in the midst of that grey, gloomy time, my parents found each other, fell in love, got married, and produced me. They were poor, but so was everybody, and in comparison with the time of bombs and midnight executions, life was good.

In comparison with my parents' war years, my present life is idyllic. Things will have to get immeasurably worse before they can begin to match what they endured. In the end, economic woes can always be remedied by human kindness--you give your neighbor an egg and tomorrow she gives you a ride. But when human bonds dissolve, as they do in civil war, then it truly is hell on earth.

So when the days of gloom are upon us, I put my hopes on kindness and fellow-feeling, and trust that as long that holds, we can deal with whatever comes.

The question came up in conversation the other day about what I would do if I had lots of money. And for a while, I couldn't come up with anything. Does that mean that I have attained perfect happiness? Maybe. But what it really means is that I live in Vermont. And because I live here, money for travel means nothing, for who would want to leave this place? A fancy car? The only thing you need in a car in Vermont is all-wheel drive. Otherwise, all cars look the same under a thick coat of mud and road salt. Gorgeous clothes? The only requirement is warmth, otherwise the same answer applies as to cars. And so on.

I did eventually come up with something, though. I would fence-in the front field. And why would I do that? Because in that field I would put... a donkey. Not just any donkey, but a Miniature Mediterranean Donkey (MMD). Or rather, two--donkeys are herd animals and are happier with a friend. I want a couple of MMDs because they are tiny (36” or less at the withers), friendly, and adorable.

And because they remind me of Spain. When I was growing up there in the 50s, you could still see them all over the countryside. They were the poor man's horse, eating little and working hard. During the long summer evenings I used to stand in front of my grandparents' farm house and watch the little old women, dressed in black, black kerchiefs on their heads, riding their donkey back to the village. They sat bareback and sideways, as confidently as if he were a kitchen chair, and on his croup they balanced a large basket filled with grass, to feed the rabbits that would in turn feed their families. The women nodded as they passed by, “Bona nit!” The little donkeys quickened their pace at the smell of the approaching village. And I wished that my grandparents were poor, and kept a donkey.

Heading Home

Now I wish I were rich, and could afford one. I can see myself riding it to the village store for the NY Times. I would dress in black, scarf and all. I would save gas...

But my simple life would get more complicated. There would be farrier appointments, a worming schedule, hay to shop for, grain to buy, brushing and grooming to be done, and quality time to be spent, plus training, of course. I can see myself, on a cold, snowy night like tonight, having delivered a hot dish to the hens, trudging across the yard to the shed with a bucket full of steaming water, spreading hay for extra bedding, hading out extra grain, and for my reward, the gratitude in those dark, liquid eyes.

I think I might be running an industrial egg farm. It hasn't been going on for long, but who knows when it will end?

Here are the circumstances that led to my conversion from cuddly and compassionate, quasi-organic chicken keeper to steely-eyed factory-egg producer. A couple of weeks ago, my nine hens stopped laying. They had plenty of good excuses:

The weather turned extra-cold extra-early.

These are the darkest, cloudiest, shortest days of the year, and chickens need daylight to lay. (Right, I don't feel like doing much on cloudy days either.)

They are not as young as they used to be. (Neither am I.)

Some of them are molting. This is a natural process whereby birds lose their feathers and replace them with new ones. A molting hen does not lay. (Having experienced a number of “molts” in my own life, I can empathize.)

Chilly Chicken

My empathy notwithstanding, I needed eggs, and I wasn't getting any. Meanwhile, the chickens were consuming extra-large rations of expensive laying pellets along with smashed apples, old pumpkins and other tidbits.

There is a magic bullet for getting hens to lay in winter: turning on the lights in the henhouse. Battery hens are kept under lights round the clock, year round. And as a result of this unnatural regime, by their second year they are spent, and slaughtered. I had read plenty of lyrical exhortations to let hens follow the rhythms of nature, wax and wane with the seasons, and so on. If there is one who is fervent about following the rhythms of nature, it's me. Let the hens sleep the winter away, I used to think, let me not interfere with the hibernation that the season imposes, to a greater or lesser degree, on all of us.

On the other hand, I don't keep my chickens as pets, not quite. I have chickens because I want my own source of protein, and manure for the garden. Their affectionate nature and quirky personality notwithstanding, it makes no sense to feed nine hens and a rooster all winter if we're not getting eggs. I had tried all the low-key methods I knew to keep them comfortable. I closed their door at sundown. I employed the “deep litter” bedding method, which means that rather than cleaning out the coop periodically, I keep adding hay and wood shavings. This covers up the droppings and keeps the smells away. Most importantly, as the stuff begins to compost, it generates a certain amount of heat. I also plugged in a heated waterer so they would have access to liquid (as opposed to a chunk of ice) around the clock.

But that was not enough to keep them laying. So I capitulated and decided to go the industrial farming way. I installed an energy-saving bulb and turned it on for a couple of hours in the evening, confident that it would return my hens to reasonable laying rates.

To my surprise, it didn't. I was still having eggless days. One frozen evening, after turning on the lights I stuck around to watch the chickens. There was water in the water bowl, plenty of laying mash in the feeder, freshly smashed apples all over the floor. What more could they want? And then it hit me—these chickens were cold. They stood about with their shoulders hunched and one leg hidden in their feathers. They pecked around half-heartedly at the food, but soon returned to their hunched positions, like wind-blown pedestrians waiting for a bus.

Now what is the nicest thing someone who loves you can do when you're chilled to the bone? Offer you something hot to drink, that's what! Hot cocoa, hot chicken soup (forsooth!), hot coffee, hot tea with milk or a little brandy....

I ran inside and heated a quart of water in the microwave. I shook a bunch of powdered milk into a bowl, added some long-forgotten Farina for good measure, and when the water was good and hot mixed it all together and took it out to the coop. I poured the steaming mixture into one of the chickens' rubber dishes, threw in some laying mash, and presented it.

They clustered round like filings around a magnet. The boss hen tried it first, shook her beak, dipped it again and drank deeply. Her friends followed suit, and so did the rooster Charlemagne. By lights-out the bowl was empty.

Next morning, there were two lovely brown eggs in the nest.

And that's how I've been getting my two eggs a day every since. Ag-center types will say that it's the extra protein that does the trick, or the extra warmth. Perhaps. But I think that my hens realize that they've been listened to and understood, and they are rewarding me in the only way they know.

Animals, and plants too, have a way of responding to kind intentions. If you have experienced this (or the opposite!) I'd like to hear from you.

The first thing my father bought upon arriving in Birmingham, Alabama, was a radio. A classical musician, he was a passionate jazz aficionado, and assumed that, since Birmingham was in the heart of Dixie, there would be non-stop fabulous jazz programming on the radio. Instead, all he found was gospel music, and rock'n roll.

“I can't stand these boy singers with their adenoidal voices. And those eternal triplets in the accompaniment--da, da, da...da, da, da--drive me crazy. Take the radio,” he said to me, “but turn it down low and keep your bedroom door closed.”

So the radio came to live in my room, and with it Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Brenda Lee, and Elvis Presley. I didn't understand their songs, but I loved the mysterious world they alluded to.

One of the first songs I remember is Buddy Holly's “Raining In My Heart.” (In the versions below, “blah” designates the parts I didn't understand.)

Blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah,

he doesn't know

you've gone away

and it's raining, raining in my heart.

Oh, misery, misery...

This is where things began to deteriorate. When Buddy sang “misery,” I thought he was saying “Missouri.” He was sad because his beloved had gone away to Missouri, which I knew was a state named after an important river of North America. The rest of the song made no sense, as there were no further allusions to the state, plans for the singer to go there, etc.

There was also “Donna,” by Ritchie Valens. His voice was so nasal, and he was so often flat, that he could have been any of the boys in my school, singing on the way to the cafeteria. I had come to the US after a few years in Latin America, where popular songs were sung by grown men with mustaches, who sang lines like ”Woman, if you can speak with God, ask Him if I've ever stopped adoring you...”

But in my bedroom in Birmingham, Alabama, Ritchie stated with adorable simplicity,

I had a girl

Donna was her name

blah, blah, blah

blah, blah, blah

Oh, Donna, Oh, Donna...

What kind of a name was Donna, I wondered? Was there a Saint Donna, and when was her feast day? It must be an exotic, wonderful name, since it inspired such longing in Ritchie Valens.

From the first time I heard him, I found Elvis irresistible. He didn't sound at all like the boys in my class, but he said weird things all the same, as in the song “Stuck On You”:

Blah, blah, blah,

Hide in the kitchen! Hide in the hall!

Ain't gonna do you no good at all [what was this girl doing alone in the house with Elvis? Where was her mother?]

Cause when I catch you and the kissin' starts

Blah, blah, blah [WHAT is going to happen when the kissin' starts?]

blah, blah, blah

I'm gonna stick like glue [what is glue?]

Stick! Because I'm stuck on you!

In this case, I learned, “stick” was not a piece of wood, but a verb, which appeared again in the form “stuck.” From Elvis's tone and panting breaths, I deduced that being “stuck” on someone meant liking him or her very much.

By my sophomore year I had made some progress, and could understand most of the first stanza when Brenda Lee shrieked:

My baby whispers in my ear

Mmmm, sweet nothings...

He knows the things I like to hear

Mmmm, sweet nothings...

Thanks to Brenda, I realized that in English, unlike Spanish, the noun “nothing” could be pluralized. I liked Brenda's unsentimental, assertive take on the things she liked and felt entitled to, a rare thing in those days.

Finally, there was Johnny Mathis's maddening “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” I couldn't make any sense of it. Were the lovers at a barbecue? Were they caught in a forest fire? It didn't help that every time the song came on the car radio my father would make me turn it off. “Listen to that vibrato. That man,” he would say, “sounds like a goat in heat.”

The bleatings of Johnny Mathis, the pantings of Elvis, the adenoidal laments of Ritchie, the shrieks of Brenda--they were all pure magic to me. It wasn't so much the music that was magical, as the words that I didn't understand, because I didn't understand them. They pointed towards a world that was utterly foreign and desirable to me, a world I was making my way into step by clumsy step. Rock'n roll was poetic in the way that only the unknown can be poetic, and I poured into the “blah blah”places, the spots I didn't understand, all the contents of my fevered teenage imagination.

These days, entire “oldies” stations are devoted to these songs, and my American husband loves to listen to them. But now that I can understand the words, the songs are a disappointment. They are shallow, repetitious (arms/charms, hand/understand) and unimaginative. They were so much better when I didn't understand them, when they were just a vessel for my passion.

I have a CD of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert's “Travels in Winter” in German. The CD comes with a complete translation of the poems on which the songs are based. I have only a smattering of German, but I refuse to look at the translation. It's much better if I don't quite know what Dietrich is saying. It makes the snow, and the sadness, more real.

Newly arrived in the US, I spent my high school freshman year drowning in a soup of cultural and linguistic confusion. I was the only foreign student in the school, and was left pretty much to fend for myself. Able to speak only a little English, understanding even less, I lived in a perpetual panic that I would miss some crucial piece of information, commit a major gaffe, or otherwise disgrace myself.

I was especially scared in Home Ec class. Sister Dorothy, who suffered no fools, was teaching us to use the sewing machine. Not knowing what the words “spool,” “bobbin,” or “zipper foot” meant, I was making slow progress. When Sister would come over to explain for the umpteenth time how to pull up the bobbin thread, I would break into a sweat, and my ears would start ringing.

Not only did I not understand English, but I looked hopelessly different from my fellow students. I showed up for the first day of school in a knee-length dress with a gathered skirt and a top that, having no darts and no give, crushed my womanly attributes against my rib cage. And the dress, to my eternal embarrassment, featured a bow tied at the back.. This was a time when girls wore wine-dark lipstick, little scarves tied around their necks, cashmere sweaters over pointy bras, and long narrow skirts. To me they looked like movie stars.

One afternoon at dismissal time I was told to report to Sister Dorothy. My head swam. Had I broken the sewing machine? Had she sat on a pin I had dropped? In the Home Ec room SisterDorothy, robed in the full Benedictine habit, was waiting for me. “I want you to try these clothes on,” she said, handing me some things. “You can dress in my office.”

I was, as usual, disconcerted. Since when did nuns make people try on clothes after school? I'd been going to nuns' schools all my life in a couple of different countries, and not once had I been asked to try on clothes. But I untied my bow and took off my dress and put on a long straight wool skirt with a slit in the back and a green cashmere V-necked sweater with elbow-length sleeves. I walked back into the classroom and Sister Dorothy nodded. “They fit you fine,” she said. “You can take them if you want.”

“I can take them?” Since when did nuns in medieval habits give people tight skirts and clinging sweaters?

“Yes, yes, take them!” said Sister Dorothy impatiently. “And now go home and do your homework.”

I sneaked into my room and changed into the new clothes, and went to show my mother. “Most Holy Queen of Heaven!” she said, “what's happened to you?”

“One of the nuns gave me these.”

“But you can't wear these clothes! They make you look twenty-five, at least! They're inappropriate for a girl your age.”

There it was again, my mother's idea of what was appropriate for a girl my age: no lipstick, no fingernail polish, no stockings, no form-fitting anythings, and dresses with bows in the back. It was my own personal calvary, from which I prayed for deliverance every night.

But now Sister Dorothy, of all people, had handed me a weapon against my mother. “You can't say they're inappropriate, if a nun gave them to me,” I said.

“I don't know. I guess it would be impolite not to wear them.... But I never knew you had such slender hips.”

And the next day I showed up at school looking, except for the absence of lipstick (that particular battle with my mother would rage for another two years), like a regular American teenager.

Me Before And After Sister Dorothy's Intervention

Sister Dorothy's act of mercy wasn't as drastic as clothing the naked. But is was equivalent in terms of the difference it made in my life. Whereas my parents thought I should be proud of being different, Sister Dorothy understood the longing to fit in that consumed my fourteen-year-old soul, and decided to help me out.