writing on the wall

Last night Aeryn and I went to our local library to see a two-woman play called We Can Do It, about notable female figures in American history. It was a little heavy-handed at times, but it had its moments, especially in their portrayal of Susan B. Anthony, who did a lot of pissed-off hopping around and bitching that her amendment extending voting rights to women didn’t pass until forty-two years after her death. Elizabeth Cady Stanton replied, rather archly, “Yes, but you were the only woman to ever be on American currency. I got a stamp.”

Then there was the dialogue between contemporaries Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross, and Elizabeth Van Lew, who was a spy for the Union during the Civil War. The take on Van Lew was very funny – she did a lot of slinking about onstage and saying mysteriously, “I might be… or I might not!” Clara Barton was an effective straight man to Van Lew’s outrageousness.*

During the play, the actors pointed out the quotes written on the walls of the set – from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to the aforementioned Clara Barton to Eleanor Roosevelt. And towards the end, they started talking about what their own contributions to the world would be.

Specifically, one asked, “What will you write on the wall?”

A chill crept up my back.

The other looked at her partner with wide eyes and said, “Uh. Er. That’s a huge question. I have no idea!” Which I thought was a damned honest answer.

The first actor said, “Well, you don’t have to answer now, do you? Many of these women didn’t come into their own until later in life, after they’d lived and learned and experienced so much in the world.” She went on to note that Clara Barton founded the Red Cross when she was sixty. Sojourner Truth delivered the “Ain’t I A Woman” speech when she was fifty-four. And Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t publish Little House on the Prairie until she was sixty-five years old.

See, I don’t want to cover the wall. I just want a little square inch that shows people transcending what they believe to be their essential dichotomies and differences, through couragelovetrustcompassionhonestyimagination. You know, that shit.

And I want to raise my daughter so that she uses her extraordinary emotional intelligence and charisma to make the world a better place. To write her own message on the wall.

I’ll be forty in December. The point was obvious, even to me: It’s not too late to write on the wall. It never is.