Among the young

I was invited to speak as part of a panel discussion for Women's History Month at a high school on March 10.

There were 10 women on the panel: two aldermen, a television news reporter, an editor, educators, a banker, a police officer, a reality television star and me. Age ranges? I would guess 35 to 65.

Our audience ranged in age from about 15 to 18. 

Me, 18

We were asked to name a personal female hero.

I went first, remembering that my friend, Kristen Ziman, was a member of the panel the year before.

"Does anyone remember Commander Ziman from last year?" I asked. A good number of hands went up. "Do you know what she is doing now? She is the police chief of the second largest city in Illinois! She is my hero not only because of how hard she worked to become the first female chief of our city, but because of her beauty -- inside and out -- and her compassion.

Kristen Ziman

Pretty good answer, I thought.

But the three or four women who answered after me all said their personal hero was their mother. 

I thought of my own mom. I gave her a card, once, that said she was my hero. She had been fighting cancer at least 15 years by then. I saw her as the strongest person in the world, and I wanted to be that strong.

She didn't come to my mind first during the panel discussion, because she died 22 years ago. Since then, there have been many strong women in my life. 

But one thing that made her heroic to me was she told me if i did my best, it would be good enough. It made some of my failures easier to accept. It made me seek help when my first college physics class was about to do me in. It's what gave me the strength to make hard decisions. I think some young women go through life never feeling good enough. Hey, we're not all math whizzes or tall, lanky beauties. Not our fault! But if we are the best we can be, it's enough.

Right, mom?

Edith Virginia Austin Fischer

 

 

 
 

March Moodiness

Beside the chilly Fox River in Aurora, Illinois

March in northern Illinois means always knowing where your sweats -- and shorts -- are.

While the temps at the beginning of the month hovered in the teens, highs by April 7 were topping out at 72.

So the answer to March's moody weather is to dress in layers. 

Start with jeans and a sweet Pink Floyd "T" and then layer on a shirt, sweater, denim jacket and scarf, like this!

How many layers? I'm not counting.

Shop the look:
flag infinity scarf
KUT Catherine Boyfriend jeans
Loft Denim Jacket 
You can barely see it, but I was wearing this cool Pink Floyd T
Twist-front high-low sweater, similar 
Dingo boots from a Nashville trip a few years back

Same look without denim jacket

Beautiful men

There is a show on The Learning Channel called "Long Lost Family."

Ancestry.com is behind it, and the hosts help people find their birth parents. 

One woman on the show had given up her little boy for adoption when he was just a few days old. She promised him that someday she would find him.

More than 30 years later, with the help of the Ancestry researchers, she did. And he agreed to meet her.

You know what the first words out of her mouth were when she saw him? 

"You're beautiful!"

He was a nice looking man, no doubt. But she wasn't looking at his curly dark hair or bushy beard. She was looking directly into the sweet eyes that she hadn't seen since he was a newborn. Beautiful.


I saw someone I hadn't seen in probably two decades over the weekend, and although I didn't tell him he was beautiful, it crossed my mind that he looked exactly the same as I remembered.

I saw him at the memorial service for a beautiful man who passed away on Feb. 26, 2016. We were all coworkers at the same newspaper back in the day.

What made our coworker Dan beautiful? His quiet, compassionate demeanor.  I never heard him say a disparaging word against another human being. 

Perhaps when men are born it's OK to call them beautiful. And when they die.

As a group of newsmen stood around sharing memories outside the church sanctuary after the service, one piped up after examining my friend Tom's hair. "You dye your hair, don't you?"

Tom is over 50, but his thick hair is so dark that not one, but two men declared that he must dye it.

"Wait," I interjected. None of you accused me of dyeing my hair. Why not? 

These men of many (written) words didn't know exactly what to say. One finally admitted that it was pure jealousy to see that this man's hair would have looked at home on a 20-year-old's head while his own hair (what was left of it) was gray. 


Our departed journalist friend Dan, who by then was interviewing angels, probably never thought much about his hair. Especially during the months after his cancer diagnosis.

What he did think about was continuing to be the best person he could be. To him, that meant being the even-keeled editor that he always was. He worked right up until the end. How, I don't know.

The pastor who conducted the memorial service said something amazingly insightful that brought tears to many eyes.

He said he had posted information about the memorial service to his Facebook page that morning, and unfortunately had spelled Dan's last name incorrectly.

He quickly pressed the "edit" button to correct his mistake. And when he finished, the words he saw described our friend's situation to a tee.

"Done editing."

And to that, I will add these words: "Well done, beautiful man. Well done."



 

Our innate craving for beauty

Yesterday dawned a cool, breezy, cloudy day. It also was the day of my first photo shoot for this blog, so I figured I would be posing in the studio all afternoon.

But, come to find out, it was a beautiful day to shoot photos outside. The light was perfect, according to my photographer Donnell. So, out we went. It was actually a good way to illustrate one of my favorite fashion mantras: layer, layer, layer. (Especially as winter slowly creeps toward spring.)

What made the day beautiful for photography? Surprisingly, it was the lack of light and the chilly breeze that tousled my hair.

It wasn't a pretty day by any account, but it was a beautiful day for photography.

That got me thinking about the word "beauty," and the fact that we are drawn to it.

I have never heard a parent say about his or her newborn baby: "He is so pretty." A parent says, "He is so beautiful." Pretty, we save for expertly decorated cupcakes or little girls in Easter dresses.

Beautiful is a sunset or a mountain or that perfect, innocent new life.

That craving for beauty is the reason behind the colors and patterns we use to decorate our homes. It's why we spend hours cultivating a flower garden or walking along a beach for hours looking for a perfect seashell. It's why we vacation to places like Hawaii or Paris or White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

That's why I went with "Pretty Over 50" instead of "Beautiful over 50." 

Human beings are born beautiful. Yes, that's you, and that's me. I was born beautiful and have spent a lot of my life trying to layer on the pretty. 

What I hope to share on this blog is how to use that craving for beauty to your advantage. Some of us try to replicate what we did in our 20s or 30s to enhance what God gave us in the first place.

But as we get older, those things don't work like they used to. 

First tip: Don't try to draw black lines under your eyes. We just can't see close-up as well as we used to, so the lines tend to be too thick and wavy. And then the eyeliner runs into those tiny wrinkles under our eyes. Not beautiful. Not pretty. You might feel naked at first without it, but you'll get used to it. And because you are not weighing down your eyes, you will actually look fresher.

One thing I need help with is lipstick! I have never worn it. Ever. I actually was going to stop and get some at Walgreens before the photo shoot, but I ran out of time. 

What's your lipstick go-to color? I'm thinking a blushy kind of pink would be best, but then I see women with apple-red lips or bright coral and I think maybe I should try that.

Beauty. It may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's also a craving we will never be able to kick. So embrace it and search for it. And when you find it in someone else, tell her.   

True beauty