frail gestures

Got back from Albany at about 11 this morning. Beautiful wedding, even if it was in upstate New York in February. We arrived Friday evening and drove north to Saratoga Springs to discover that power had been out since midday due to a wind storm, a revalation that put in context the awful turbulence we experienced upon landing. So, the four of us essentially camped in our unlit, unheated, fourth-floor hotel rooms, made comfortable by flashlights a la Target and the fact that heat rises. I later read that about 300,000 people were without power. M and I were awoken at 10 a.m. by the buzz of electricity returning, only to be disappointed 20 minutes later when we returned to the Stone Age. It came back for good at 4 p.m.

To give you an idea of the awesome cold that is Albany in February -- clearly my time in the District has spoiled me -- check out the photo. It dropped another 6 degrees that night, and with the windchill it was -1F. (The rest of my photos are on my camera as are some month-old shots of the panda cub. I don't motivate easily on such things.)

While I was there, I bought a sequel of Pride and Prejudice. I love the original, but this one by a modern author reads like a drug-store romance novel. It's called Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and it's by Linda Berdoll. I think I might be killing brain cells, but I need something to balance the book on the evolution of the English language that I'm reading too.

Berdoll seems to be emlulating Jane Austen's writing style, but it often reads like a college freshman trying to sound smart. For the sake of keeping this blog PG, or at least PG-13, take the following passage:

Desperation had begun to make a nasty crease betwitxt his usually unfurrowed brows. Was that not vexation enough, to be confronted in London by an obviously indignant Darcy whilst in lascivious company with the unwed, underage Lydia would have been quite unnerving to any man who valued his bursa virilia. (p. 14)

Um, yeah.

But the power of Jane Austen, to anyone who really loves her, is in the characters a reader grows to love. So Berdoll's novel might not win a National Book Award, but it's worth my while none the less.

Speaking of less-than-fine literature, I picked up a copy of March's Allure magazine, which has a rather astute short essay on being a petite woman. I often say that my personality was compensation for my small size growing up, and it seems I'm not the only one who sees herself that way. The writer, Ayelet Waldman, is 5'. She writes:

That paradoxical sense of empowerment may explain the reputation for a certain Napoleonic, domineering quality that we small women enjoy. It also helps account for the hatefulness of the adjective that is our bane, our kryptonite. Ostensibly a compliment, it serves to upset our precarious balance, to throw off our navigation of the big waves and high winds of the world. Not willowy. Never lissome.
Cute.

Waldman beautifully explains the problem witht he word.:

My four-year-old daughter is cute. Her Hello Kitty lunch box is cute. When our Bernese mountain dog was a puppy, she was very, very cute. But don't call me cute. Cute is powerless; cute is sexless; cute can be dismissed.

Precisely!

I struggled with my size as a child, weighing 40 pounds in the second grade, according to my school records. My first communion dress, worn soon after my eighth birthday might have fit an ordinary five-year-old child. I think I felt as a child that I had to overcome being small, being easily overlooked and trounced in gym class. (I have an occasional recurring dream about having to retake gym.)

As it turned out, I stand a victorious 5'2", a good two inches taller than my mom thought I would likely be. But my personality was formed my body, and it will always reflect my childhood. Somehow, I'm thankful for that.