I've had several chances to journey into my inner-consciousness this past year. Although I've uncovered so very much, I want to focus on that of my title - No More Angles, Only Curves.
This picture has been one of my favorites since it first came out in the New Yorker in May, 2000 (I loved this so much I purchased 5 copies of the magazine, just to have this cover). So rich, and so sad. I wanted to be both! The earth-mother: voluptuous, nurturing, flowing, rich. I also wanted the business woman's life: refined, tight, precise, fitted.
At the time, I saw the business woman looking at the mother with disdain and fear, as if she'd catch whatever she had if she moved any closer - "Ooh, keep those children away from me; I cannot have them getting graham crackers/dirty hands/snot/spit-up on this one-of-a-kind custom-tailored dress." I saw earth-mother looking slyly at the working woman with a sneaking suspicion that she had it better, had more, yet had a sinister secret, "Oh you poor soul, you know you want what I have, I dare you to touch one of my babies."
I was going through boxes of years of files earlier this summer, when this print popped from the folder marked "Articles, 2000," and forced me to pause. Just days before I was decluttering, I was meditating when the thought came to me that I was out of my peaks and canyons, pinched, angled, sharp, cold, business'ed phase, and moving into my curves, rolling hills and voluptuous valleys, softer, cushier, flowing, let-it-be phase.
This May 2024, Ronda saw the picture quite differently than the May 2000, Ronda did. Nurturing, to self and others, the ability to be in two places, live two lives, care for two very distinctly different lifestyles, while yearning for what the other has, knowing the time and season is not theirs.
And with that - I realized I truly have had all the experiences, emotions, roles, encounters I dared to dream I could possibly have. In the early 90's I had a powerful nurturing amazingly talented woman once tell me, as a young mother trying to go to school, build a home, rear children, and save a floundering marriage while also being an active member of the community and church - "You can have it all, Ronda, you just can't have it all right now." I have, loving them equally.
I'm very much looking forward - it's been a tough journey these past 15 years, and while I've given it my all, my very best, in fact - all of me; I'm finished the angles, sharps, pointed, pinching. I've had it with bureaucracy, corporate America, patriarchy, and stereotypes that have served a part of me well and yet closed another part of me right off (more of that later). I'm enjoying the curves, rolls, wanderings, creating my own windy path, choosing who I want to travel with and where I want to go - maybe even pushing a baby carriage (or hitting a golf ball) with a grandchild or ten.
