Susan Fenn - Scout & Guide Camp. International Jamboree. 1950's
Into my sleepy world tumbled a vibrant noisy young lady navigating the female journey in her own way. Self righteous & arrogant but sincerely searching for answers.
It started with a protest at school about the prescribed minimum length of skirt and the debate about school uniform modesty, respectful functional practicality and male desire. I hadn't felt the need to resist any of this myself but was quickly made aware that young school girls in 2021 are. I just did what I was told and got on with it. I never questioned the required length of my school uniform skirt.
I was hanging out the washing when she told me that she had finally had her first bleed. Over a year later than her peers. Something no teenage girl should have to carry without a mother. But here we were, navigating the weird circumstances that placed us together. She at the very beginning of her experience of the monthly cycle. Me feeling relieved but also sad about being at the end of my own journey. Relieved that she was finally healthy enough to carry life and sad that after decades I had been denied the same privilege.
This set me thinking and reflecting recently on all things feminine. What it means to be a woman. How I feel about feminism. How to prepare those under my care for puberty and periods. How to handle my own emotional baggage wrapped around finishing my monthly cycle and entering menopause.
Photo Credit - Jamie Beck
With the arrival of my niece Arabella I have been thinking about little girls and pink dresses and flowers. I want her to enjoy being female and not male. To be strong and confident and capable without feeling the need to question her feminine identity or carry a victim mentality. She may not like wearing dresses and she may not like the colour pink. Fortunately in todays society she will have the freedom to make her own choices. But that does not mean I need to apologise for my own delight in all things soft and feminine.
As I think about the role of a mother I can't help but reflect on my own mother. Hence the black and white photo I posted above. She would have been a young teenager in this photo. Loving the outdoors, chopping wood and camping with the Guides somewhere up in the Surrey Hills. As a child who grew up in the crowded suburbs of London these woods would have been a magical escape for her from the grey housing of Richmond. No wonder she chose to find a home in this area to settle with her family later on in life. She returned to a place she was happy and that held precious memories.
In the photo above I see a young woman enjoying her freedom. Wearing shorts & swinging an axe. Was she aware of her beauty? I think so. Was she aware of her blossoming figure and big eyes? Of course. What makes a pair of shorts practical and accepted where a short skirt is considered risqué? Is it the cut across the thigh which certainly is also achieved by a pair of shorts? Ironically within a couple of miles of where this photo was taken lives Mary Quant - the fashion designer who famously invented the mini skirt by slashing her skirt designs from knee length to thigh height! Oh the rebellious 60's. Everything goes in cycles. Here we are again questioning and rebelling and fighting for healthy freedom and female emancipation.
As I think more about my mother, I think of a woman who trained as a nurse, an acceptable and accepted role for a woman. Todays women might disapprove of putting a woman in the submissive and oppressive role of primary care giver but in my mother's eyes she was a liberated woman earning her own salary and with her own career, something her own mother did not have. She never expected to earn the same money as a male contemporary.
I don't think my grandmother Kathleen studied beyond the age of 16 and I don't know much about her life before marriage. But losing her husband relatively early left Nanna Fenn financially vulnerable. Hence she took in lodgers to help cover the cost of running her own home.
It could be argued that this little fact was actually the key to my existence. If Kathleen had never taken in those lodgers, my father would never have met my mother. He was lodging at 18 Arlington Road when he fell in love with the landladies daughter.
In so many ways I am a replica of my mother. I look like her, I sound like her and I'm also a lover of the outdoors and shorts!
I was out for a stroll at dusk earlier on this week. Walking home through fields of thigh high deep pasture grass just as the heat of the day faded and the magic of evening fell like a soft cloak. I stopped on the footpath, looked out across the valley at sheep grazing in a deep green field on the other side. I admired the rose hues that were deepening in the sky above as the clouds tinged pink with the last rays of sunlight. I saw the moon appear from behind the clouds. Huge and ripe with a sliver eaten out of its side. It seemed bigger and brighter than normal. So much so that I stood admiring it for about 5 minutes. Enjoying the magic of the quiet pasture settling down for the night after a day of frenetic activity. There were no dog walkers, no-one else out but me and the birds, the grazing sheep and a few deer.
I found out later that what I was viewing was the precursor to a Strawberry Super Moon and is named by the Americans for the strawberry harvest at this time of year. I was a day early in my viewing of this phenomenon.
As I returned home to Loseley I caught this image just as the moon rose over the house. A strawberry tinged moon. Big, fat, pink and beautiful.
I didn't know what to write about June. But it feels like the theme developed as I wrote. June is about strawberries and cream. A picture of the elegant creamy sweet summer and delicious warmth. The eating of strawberries at Wimbledon which starts next week. June roses. Women - Life givers, nurturers, community builders, home makers. The glossy red of strawberries, the soft sweet bite of pink flesh. The feminine shape and form. Soft, sweet and ripe.
Too much imagery? Blame nature. It is all around us. Fertility. Fecundity. Fruitfulness. Male and female.
So I will leave this narrative partially resolved ... thinking about flesh, rose petals, about the colour pink and the bright red of fresh healthy blood. About the moon and its waxing and waning and how full & ripe and big it is at the moment. Pondering on how the moon pulls on a womans internal workings and impacts her monthly cycle. How the moon draws the sea tides higher and lower through out the year. The moon, a swollen pearl, looking like a pregnant woman - full and ripe and heavy when it is a super moon. Drawing blood out of a woman's body and babies out of the womb.
JUNE is dedicated to the strawberry super moon and my nieces and a young vibrant teenager who is entering the fragile delicate & messy beauty of being a young woman.
Opmerkingen