Strokes your ego or kicks you to the curb?

I don’t believe in absolutes, not viewing the world as black and white but weighing different shades of grey I was open to my daughter’s foray into rushing for a sorority. It wasn’t as though I didn’t have an opinion, I wasn’t crazy about it, yet I didn’t have enough ammunition of my own to burn out the fire. I went to a college that was void of  Greek life and if they did I likely wouldn’t have been a part of it. I prefer to make my own friends and they don’t need to be connected to each other. The herd mentality did not seem to appeal to my daughter in high school but freshman year has been going great with good friends who were all rushing.

She shopped for new clothing and was genuinely excited. I listened and suggested some Google searches in case she wanted to delve more. She was beginning to sound like she was repeating the party line when she advised me to “trust the process.” I was proud; she recounted interviews where she shared her love of photography, art major, high school yearbook skills and work experience. I believed the interviewing stage was a worthwhile endeavor. Disappointment started early, after visiting 12 houses she was asked back to six, some of her friends were asked back to nine and some three houses. She felt she had good conversations with two of the houses and had already developed some favorites. The next step she was asked back by two and she texted me letting me know she was dropping stating,“It’s not worth my time unless I love it.” She did not feel either house suited her. Her friends were continuing on in the process. She seemed fine but I could sense she wasn’t. I personally thought that it may not be for her but she went for it and for that I give her credit.

Now the hard part, she began to question the process, “How could they make a judgment about me after a five minute conversation?” The whole “speed dating” mentality started to bring her down. She questioned her looks, her intelligence – the rejection was a blow to the ego. She was the first one of her five close friends to leave, three more would follow. It was hard for her; the school was abuzz with excitement. College was beginning to feel like high school, where impenetrable groups were the norm. While I believe many women do have wonderful experiences as members of a sorority the process indisputably either strokes your ego or kicks you to the curb. How can women do this to each other? Surely, there has to be a better way. She began to see how superficial it all was. Additionally, girls were advised that it was very rare not to be offered a bid which turned out to be untrue as many girls were left without bids.

Her freshman dorm, morphed overnight into a hotbed of drama, whispering, crying, hysteria as some girls experienced their first rejection. Many pondered what they were lacking or did wrong as the process you are supposed to “trust” does not provide feedback.

So this week, the new sorority sisters at her school ran through the streets and dorms celebrating their bid. The celebratory mood overshadowed bruised egos, strained friendships and for some heartbreak.

While all will fall back to place again and those not chosen will find other paths and those who eventually pledge may find happiness, the process should be questioned by all young women. I found this quote from a wonderful article titled, “Why Sorority Recruitment Is Horrible And Needs To Change” written by a woman who breezed through recruitment just to find out when she was on the other side how debasing recruitment can be:

“…why do we have a selection system that forces such incredible women to judge and reject other women almost arbitrarily? Why do organizations based on sisterhood pick their members in a way that destroys the confidence of so many young women? We should be encouraging and welcoming new women, not sorting them based on high school activities and 20-minute conversations, tossing many out along the way. Sorority recruitment has become a rigid, overly-structured, needlessly stressful numbers game. You can’t explain “quota” and what Nationals expects for your chapter to a PNM who can’t understand why, after what she thought was a great conversation, she wasn’t asked back. We say things like, “…really, don’t take it personally–they don’t know you after one conversation,” but none of it matters to a young woman who feels as if she’s been told, “We don’t want you.” Women are still fighting for equal rights and equal pay in this world–the very last thing college women should do is tear down new college women.”

photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/okiboi/85271515/“>Joe_Focus</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com“>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/“>cc</a>

Being grateful for this year’s conifer

He was there to fix the clogged shower, part of owning a house is you get to know the plumber or electrician. Somehow between talking shower heads and the weather he shared his story. His daughter, a drug addict who just delivered a baby would rehabilitate only to spiral back into addiction. He was burned out from years of providing help which only led to disappointment. When he left he said, “I haven’t had a Christmas tree in three years.” His words washed over me, especially the part about the Christmas tree.

It takes effort to put up a Christmas tree, whether artificial or real. A tree is the embodiment of the holiday season for Christians. A shelter for gifts and, though pagan, it serves as a symbol of hope, renewal and celebration. It’s hard to get on that train when you are suffering.

Growing up our family had a year without a Christmas tree. This was the year my mother died and my father declared we wouldn’t have a tree. I held it against him; we were already wrestling with so much loss, and not having a tree set me off on a path of ambivalence about Christmas trees. As fate would have it, I married a man who has to cart home the largest tree in the nursery. Our first year of marriage and pretty much every year thereafter I’ve struggled to fill the tree. I’ve done it all from silk poinsettias to a more sparse look the first years. We’ve now accumulated enough ornaments to trim a large tree. I can now understand my father’s resistance to putting up a tree that year, perhaps he thought it was a symbol of inappropriate celebration or the task was too laborious. The labor part I get, since I’m married we’ve had lots of tree challenged moments like the time we thought the tree was crooked when the stand was defective, we replaced the tree and all its accessories only to find another “leaning tower of tree” or the time we strung lights around a seven foot tree to find we couldn’t plug it in because we were left with the female end. We’ve also had years with “tree blackouts” you know how one light goes out and there goes all the lights or the year the cat found shelter smack center in the middle of the tree and wouldn’t get out.

It’s taken a long time, but our tree has grown into a tradition, well despite the lights, that I look forward to. I treasure childhood ornaments and those that my kids have made through the years. For a long time, I carried that treeless year with me and have learned to appreciate the freedom to celebrate. I’ve learned as life moves on that the unexpected can hit like a ton of bricks but the indefatigable human spirit never ceases to amaze me. All we have to do is read the first few pages of the newspaper to be struck down by despair and we all share heartbreak of some form but somehow there’s always that glimmer of hope, that persists, even when we think it’s not there. So I hope my plumber finds his tree again and I’m going to be more grateful for this year’s conifer, despite what happens to the lights, and what it represents – time with family, faith and enduring hope.

photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/bas68/5250149045/“>Bruce A Stockwell</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com“>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/“>cc</a>

Some of my mothers’ photographs on Flicker have been viewed 5,000 to 8,000 times. The only explanation is that old photos speak to each of us in different ways – whether we admire an era gone by or think of our own loved ones old photographs take us back to wonderful places.

I was thinking about what to write about this week when an old photo of my mother popped up on my Facebook wall. Much to her surprise, my cousin stumbled upon this photo in a Facebook group she follows: Manhattan Before 1990. Rheannone Rocha who blogs at New York City Vintage advised that this photo was one of her most popular posts. She found the photo on Flicker, where my mom, who never saw a computer, has gained a significant fan base thanks to my brother the keeper of photos and memories.

I can’t begin to explain what these photos mean to me, as I search for clues about myself I simultaneously feel she was someone I never knew, since she died so young, and the person who has had the most profound influence on my life. She was strikingly beautiful, resourceful, talented and creative. She made all of the clothes she wore in the photographs. We really aren’t sure who took these photographs, but believe it may have been my grandfather, the master tailor, who taught his girls how to sew. He was an immigrant who came to America with very little and no mastery of the English language. Although a pragmatic man he somehow saw the value in taking photographs.

The documenting of our lives is in a sense an attempt at preserving memories, dreams and our own immortality. Modern day technology allows us to constantly snap away from selfies to everyday events. The need, desire and value of photographing our lives are as pervasive as ever and the ability to share our lives through these images has expanded in ways unimaginable prior to the advent of the internet. Just take a look at Flicker to see the myriad of groups where every day people share their images. My brother is one of them; he’s also a very good photographer starting with a dark room when he was just a teenager. He serves as the family preservationist and catalogs the photos on his Flicker account. At first the photos were posted for family members but surprisingly they have attracted a following and the most viewed photos are of my mother. As a gifted seamstress, her photos often showcase a new outfit. The photos are emblematic of fashion in the 1940s. Prior to 1945, a utilitarian, although chic, look dominated the fashion scene. After the end of WWII, Hollywood’s Golden Age stars influenced fashions. My mother’s fashions are truly a study of the elegance of this time period.

According to my brother, “For a girl who never left the Bronx, her photos have gone everywhere: background for a PBS film, British Craft Magazine, logo for a Dutch Vintage Jewelry Store, YouTube music videos, Mother’s Day ad campaigns, and even the image for an urban renewal project in Covington, Georgia, and countless blogs. Sometimes I get letters from people who tell me they saw her; they recognized the dress. Dressmakers have copied her clothes and ask me for permission/advice. There is something special about these photographs from the 1940’s — an enthusiasm for life that seems to slowly disappear in the late 50’s and 60’s. Her photos are by far my most popular, especially in terms of referrers. I find them on lots of blogs; often in very funny juxtapositions, my mom and Marilyn Monroe, for instance. I often wonder what she would have thought of my publication of her photos. Our lives back then were lived on such a small stage: the kitchen, the living room, the backyard, the parish church and the neighborhood. That was it. Sometimes on weekends the one telephone, upstairs in my grandfather’s house, would ring, but he was rarely in the house to answer it. Always out in the garden. No one else dared touch it. So much for the whole wide world.”

My cousin Joann, walking in a 5K seven months after finishing treatment.

We Need To Keep Fighting The Fight

I just couldn’t let October slip away without paying homage to Breast Cancer Awareness Month. None of us should take for granted the advocacy spurred by medical professionals and ordinary citizens. There are very few of us whose lives have not been affected by this insidious disease and though detection and treatments have improved there is still no cure. My mother died of breast cancer in 1975, when the medical industry was just waking up to the fact that mammography screening could save lives.

My experience with breast cancer illustrates how far we’ve advanced and how pivotal awareness is. When my mother was diagnosed in 1973, my family considered it a death sentence. She died within two years and was treated with I’m sure deadly doses of radiation. I recall seeing deep purple bruises running down her back as though she’d been beaten with a strap. I was nine years old and living under a shroud of silence. I had no idea what cancer was and did not discover my mother had cancer until years later. It may be hard to comprehend but cancer was not a household word in the 70s and secrecy was a coping mechanism. There was minimal support for patients and families, no 5K fundraisers with women sprinting across finish lines and an entire month dedicated to awareness was unheard of. I’m not minimizing the suffering of those after my mother, alternatively I’m praising awareness and the significant strides that have been made to help patients and families – but it’s still not enough.

My mother early 1950s.

My mother’s diagnosis followed the trajectory of the disease in the United States, it wasn’t until the late 70s that breast cancer came out of the closet thanks to pioneers such as Dr. Philip Strax, galvanized by the loss of his young wife he was a tireless advocate for mammography screening. Though not perfect, this screening has saved lives but more work is necessary for detecting breast cancer in younger women.

Through the support of family and friends, I honored my mother one year by walking in the Susan G. Komen “Race For The Cure” raising $5,000. Yet, none of us should remain complacent. A beautiful friend of mine passed away at 40 years old, suffering from breast cancer for 10 years, and will miss out on the beautiful gift of watching her children grow up. Though awareness, research and fundraising has taken us far, her fate was as tragic as my mother’s.

Though the mortality rate has declined, according to the American Cancer Society statistics for 2014:

• About 1 in 8 (12%) women in the US will develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetime.
• About 232,670 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women.
• About 62,570 new cases of carcinoma in situ (CIS) will be diagnosed (CIS is non-invasive and is the earliest form of breast cancer).
• About 40,000 women will die from breast cancer.

I am grateful to new technologies, having undergone two biopsies myself and fortunately received good news but I worry about my daughter and little girls everywhere. How many more years do we have to wait for a cure? I can only imagine what my mother would think, nearly 40 years later and still no cure.

Last week I saw a photo of my cousin, my mother’s godchild, who has three young children and is battling breast cancer walking in a 5K race. She looked radiant and vibrant and coincidentally happened to be born on the same day as my mother, 35 years apart. As beautiful as the photo was, it was a sobering reminder that we are still fighting the fight.