Ladyship

One of the things I loved most about living in the Seattle area was that it was a good place to live if you were a middle aged chick.  Idiosyncrasy is better than tolerated, menfolk are mostly respectful, and there was more of a live and let live culture than the one I left in the DC suburbs - and make no mistake, you can get away with almost anything in DC's burbs if you can either pay or stay cool while tongues wag.  It was a very prescriptive and judgmental place where anything goes under a thick layer of conformity.  Money, appearance, and affiliation were key.  By "affiliation," I mean membership in a group, well-known if possible, or at least being an aficionado of some pursuit that attracts others.  In the DC burbs I grew up in, if you said you were an aficionado of Civil War reenactments or Japanese floral arrangement, it might be asked where the other aficionados were; validation came from membership in a club of similarly interested persons, whether you were an active participant or not.  Seattle, on the other hand, was more about being than seeming; authenticity was the lingua franca. An esoteric loner could come and go in peace.

It was a comfortable life for a lady like me.

But I have something in Baltimore that doesn't exist in Seattle.  Let me explain.

While I was walking to the bus stop after work, a lady asked me if I was a pastor.  She had seen me walking other days and got that impression.  I thanked her for the compliment and told her I just liked long skirts.  She said, oh no, it wasn’t the clothes; it was how I carried myself.

That surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.  While it was never my intention and I do not live the lifestyle, I am walking under the aegis of the “cutter lady,” a term used by a character on The Wire.  A “colored lady” is usually an older lady who is known for being the strong willed, God-fearing foundation of the family, bearing up under devastating conditions, generation after generation.  When I am allowed to wander too near a card game in an alley or walk through a knot of rough men who actually part for me to pass and excuse themselves when it should be me excusing myself, I am receiving the karma of one of these respected women, my unseemly proximity tolerated much like that of a cow in rural India.

It is a comfortable life for a lady like me.

An INFJ Experience

In a conversation regarding the Myers-Briggs temperament type, someone asked what it's like to be an INFJ.

I only know what it's like to be me.  Like being black, sixty, or anything else, it should not be construed as speaking on behalf of anyone else.

Here was my response.

I could do worse, I guess. Here’s a little bit about my INFJ experience.

Because I am outwardly very accommodating and affable, people sometimes don’t discover the moat until they are wet.

I like my space and if I get to be me, I expect you to be you. Whether I like you or not, authenticity matters and I respect it and hope you feel it in our association. I believe in a clean fight if there must be one. I will answer almost any question you ask, even if it is embarrassing to me.

But even if you are my best pal, you will not be invited inside my head.  You will see the inside of my home infrequently.

To illustrate, a really awesome friend I reconnected with after forty years told me her favorite musician. I didn’t like his music so I looked up the artist’s lyrics and with enormous delight and nostalgia, recognized at once which room in my friend’s soul I was now entering. I had been there before and, even after a 40-year separation, I experienced relief that her essence was intact and we could almost start where we had left off.

This longtime friend has as good a chance as my own children, who know me well, of seeing something like my favorite passages and wandering into my soul.

Yet, as an INFJ, I can assure you that will never be allowed to happen. 

My revolution will not be televised and I will not send out a poison cloud or lethal pulse. What I will absolutely do, however, is go missing in action on anybody who wanders too close to the works.

I'm not sure I can even help it.

What's In A Name?

I responded to a Quora question:  should women take their husband's surname after marriage?  Why, or why not?

It is up to the woman what she wants to be called, just as it is for a man.

I never stopped using my maiden name, although I did hyphenate it with my first husband’s name, which I ultimately felt was just too much name to drag around, so I dropped the hyphenation upon divorce. Since I had always used my name, my children didn’t experience any confusion.

Although I have never particularly liked my name, I do associate taking a man’s name as a sign of ownership and am of an age where people often felt that way in the past. I also did not, and do not, identify with my inlaws, although they were all nice people.

Now that society has changed and people are free to take any name they like, they might see my choice as baggage, and perhaps it is, BUT choices like mine did lead to today’s freer trends. I approve of today’s choices for people to be called whatever they prefer for their own reasons, but it was different for women my age and my right to my name is one thing I decided to stand up for.

Here is a point of view people do not often discuss: I felt that if the law said I was no longer the property of a planter, why should I be the property of a husband? Speaking only for myself, I didn’t see how a husband’s name, taken after slavery, was any better than my birth name. However, now that I am married to a man whose name has never been mixed up in American slavery, I admit it has put some of my old thoughts to the test. Since we are both singular with family dying off or far away, I can now understand how a couple can bond over a common name and, no longer having anyone in close proximity whose opinion matters, I can also understand taking a person’s name just because I like it. But as you were kind enough to ask why, this was my process.