January 25, 2005

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                                                VIVI's   

  
  

  I sat talking through the afternoon on into the evening with my friend.  We'd wisely chosen a buffet, although I'm not sure that second helpings were really supposed to be separated from first by three hours.  We didn't know each other very well, and he asked lots of questions.  After one, where I told about how I was beaten in the gender wars at the State Department and the years it took me to recover, he looked at me, a hint of a smile moving just behind his mustache, eyes kind, and said, "That's how you know you're a pioneer.  You have lots of arrows in your ass."

  
  

  It was such a vivid image, so apropos, so apt, that I wanted to turn around and look at my behind, feeling some pain.  I chuckled, then laughed, then came a huge guffaw, right out of my belly, tearing forever the image of me as the decorous little old lady, although I'd worn my hair long that evening and that also worked against that.  I was pleased to find someone who could, in two sentences, understand then sum up one of the major themes of my life.   I said that.

  
  

  "Oh, it's from a computer pioneer, I didn't think it up myself," he said.

  
  

  "Ah, but you knew it fit, and that's a gift.  Thank you," I replied. 

  
  

  The room was green, a medium green, not clear, a little muddy, and took on a strange feel as evening closed in and artificial lights came on.  There were lots of little tables, one seat against the wall, sort of like booths, marching the length of the room, the other a chair.  As dusk ended, a crowd of young people in their twenties arrived in small groups, arranged themselves along the wall.  One little table was next to ours and it was impossible not to hear the conversation.  They were all Peace Corps returnees, just back from Africa.  This Nigerian restaurant was the closest they could get to the cooking of the country they'd just left. 

  
  

  Three young women were at the table next to ours.  Two got up to visit other friends.  I asked the young woman who remained a question about her experience.  She began to talk.  Over the next half hour we covered small business models and their application in parts of Africa, the flaws that made micro-credit lending not always as good a model as it appeared to be, the expectations of the women in her group and how they differered from those of the men who expected and wanted less from their experience, the implications of western failure to come through on promised antivirals for AIDS/HIV and female genital mutilation.   She was fluent, fluid in the way she moved with ease from one are of discourse to the next.  She was 27.

  
  

  As she spoke with my friend, I thought how different her world was from what I knew at her age, how easily she walked in spaces where I had to fight merely to be present, where there wasn't much air. 

  
  

  She thanked us, the aging hippie sociologist with his grey beard and ponytail, the oldberkeleygirl radical feminist freak, white hair forever to be hidden under Clairol, laughlines strong around the eyes, undefeated, and moved off to talk to young friends.

  
  

  I looked across the table at my friend and said, "You know, she's the reason I was a pioneer."

  
  

  "I know," he said softly,  handing me my coat, "It's written on your face."

  
  

  As we left I wondered briefly if he might understand just how much I wished that had been me.... then quashed that thought and went out into the night.

  
  

   

  
  

  pearlbamboo

  
  

  ©2005 

  • 2:53 am
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