My Brown-Eyed Girl

I wear reading glasses, and have had the requisite cataract surgeries,   yet over the years I haven’t given much thought to my eyeglasses or to my changing vision.   But I have thought about the color of my eyes.

In Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical masterpiece Carousel, the carnival barker Billy Bigelow soliloquizes about his unborn baby,

“My boy Bill,  he’ll be tall / And as tough as a tree / Will Bill!”

And like Billy Bigelow,  and all expectant parents I’m sure,  when I was pregnant I thought about what my baby would look like.  My woman’s intuition told me she’d be a girl,  and she’d have dark curls like mine when I was an infant,  and of course my brown eyes.   (Although my husband Danny has blue eyes,  I remembered from bio class that the blue eye gene is recessive.)

And in memory of Danny’s late father Naftali we decided we’d name her Nina, and since in Spanish – my husband’s first language –  “nina”  means little girl,  we thought it a perfect name for our new daughter!

As Danny drove me to the hospital on the morning I went into labor,  we reviewed what we’d learned in Lamaze class,   and were excited about the prospect of giving me and the baby the benefit of a natural childbirth.   As we arrived at the hospital I sang to my soon-to-be little Nina,

“My brown-eyed girl / And you,  my brown-eyed girl!”

But things don’t always go according to plan.

In the labor room the doctor told me the baby was in breech position and hadn’t turned,   and thus I’d need a Cesarian.  I was wheeled to the OR,  the anesthesiologist put me out,  and I have no memory of the delivery.   But thankfully at 8 lb 3 oz the baby was healthy and bouncing,  and that’s all that counts!

By the way,  it was a boy,  we named him Noah,  and his eyes are blue.   (See Cookies and Milk)

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

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The Dinner Party

I’ve written about my mother Jessie before and some of the things she’s told me – among them how to approach difficult tasks,  and how to rectify mistakes made – and I try to heed her words.   (See  My Game Mother, Elbow Grease   and Art Imitates Life)

Jessie was a high school art teacher,   and she painted in both oil and water color.   Not interested in selling her work,  she never exhibited,  but gave her paintings to friends and family,  many whom sat for her,  portraiture being a favorite genre.  (See Still Life)

She was also an avid museum-goer with eclectic taste in art,  and we went to many memorable art exhibits together.   One was Judy Chicago’s multi-media installation The Dinner Party that first opened in San Francisco in 1979 and a year later came to New York’s Brooklyn Museum where Jessie and I saw it.

My mother greatly admired Judy Chicago,  the contemporary American artist,  who is now still active in her 80s.   As you may know The Dinner Party Is considered the first epic feminist work of art.   To create it Chicago built a massive,  48 foot long triangular table with 39 place settings,  each with a dinner plate bearing the name of a prominent woman either from history or myth with designs or symbols denoting the woman’s life and accomplishments –   Sappho,  Queen Elizabeth I,  Sacajawea,  Sojourner Truth,  Susan B Anthony,  Margaret Sanger,  Emily Dickinson,  and Georgia O’Keeffe among them.

Each place setting also boasted ceramic cutlery,  a chalice,  and a richly embroidered napkin,  and throughout the work the artist drew vulva-like images leading some detractors to label the work pornographic.  “Too many vaginas!”  said one.

But of course the artist’s mission in creating The Dinner Party was to celebrate women who for too long had been relegated to the back pages of human history.  Critics hailed it as an important and brilliantly conceived feminist manifesto.

In 2007 The Dinner Party became part of the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collection,  and how I would have loved to see it there once again with my mother!   But it wasn’t to be,  several years earlier,  after a brief hospitalization my mother had died.   (See Moonlight Sonata)

During those final heart-wrenching days I wept at her bedside and she chided me.

“Don’t cry,”   she said to me days before she died,    “I’ve had a full and very happy life.” 

That was over 20 years ago,  and those words –  the last my mother told me – comfort me still.

Jessie

–Dana Susan Lehrman