Gloria Steinem Dies In The Middle Of Her Life, At 92

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

She admits that she didn’t coin the phrase.  But she probably did more to popularize it (and its paraphrase, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”)

I am talking, of course, about the one and only Gloria Steinem.  Please indulge me that one cliche: She was not only one-of-a-kind; I truly believe that it’s simply not possible for this world, let alone the human race, to produce anyone else like her.

Yesterday she passed away, age 92.

I remember my disbelief when hearing that she was 80 years old. She seemed to be as much in the middle of her life as she was decades earlier. Perhaps it came from living and working for the causes she championed  with the knowledge that even when a policy changed, a new law passed or people (some, anyway) changed the way they thought, her work would never end. She clearly never forgot the struggles she faced while growing up (her father died when she was 11) or as a young woman trying to make her way in male-dominated spheres.

Her body has ceased to function. But her legacy hasn’t, in spite of Trump’s (and his allies’) attempts to destroy it. That is why she will always be in the middle of her life: the only possible, let alone proper, way to remember her.

This Light, That Color

 A downpour in the early hours. Rain until late morning. Then this:

I have never seen such a sky early in the afternoon in this part of the world.

I am not Vincent Van Gogh who, I believe, experienced colors as energies and balanced (especially violet and yellow) rather than merely contrasted or complemented them, as someone like me, who can only see colors, would. Nor am I Claude Monet, who sensed light as a tapestry of colors and textures woven into a moment. But I do perceive and remember moments, events and people by the light around them. 

I believe I will recall early this afternoon—an otherwise ordinary time—by the light of that sky, unlike any other I have seen. Does it convey some energy I can’t yet, and perhaps never will be able to, explain?