Tonight when I was working with Laura, practicing my turning kick against a Slammer, I glanced over at the pictures on the wall of the dojang, and felt a stab of envy: two young, smiling women in one of the photos. They were both posing for their "New Member" photo --my club rents space in a church-- and they were all nicely made up and dressed and coiffed and, most importantly, still. And I was jealous of their stillness.
I felt like I was putting forth all this effort and getting all sweaty and still not having much success in getting the same amount of power out of my ball-of-the-foot turning kick as I get with my flatfoot turning kick, and they just got to stand there, flat against the wall looking pretty, and that was enough. I wanted to be them. Well, that photo of them anyway.
I mentioned this to Laura but she couldn't relate. I figure you've either felt that way before or you haven't and obviously she hadn't so I dropped it. Maybe I am alone in envying people in pictures? But then I also envy live women who look good and do nothing, and while I was thinking about this (and still sucking at my turning kick), I remembered this group of Japanese women I saw years ago in the parking lot at the Juan de Fuca trailhead. They were dressed very beautifully, but completely inappropriately for hiking. They even had trouble navigating the gravelly parking lot in their high heels.
I was carrying 9-month-old Rara on my back, and about ten additional pounds of hiking/camping gear. It was my first backcountry camping trip and I was the opposite of thrilled. I longed to swap places with one of those women, force her into my ugly boots and out onto the muddy trail while I slipped on her shiny dress, took three or four steps around the parking lot, then got back into a cozy, warm Acura to chat with the other women while the men took photos of the trees. These men who seemed so happy and satisfied, not at all disgusted at the women's helplessness and obvious lack of backwoods experience. I wanted to be able to be that action-less and get away with it. To never have to use a pit toilet or get broken blood vessels on my shoulders from the weight of my pack. I wanted my spouse's expectations of me to be as low as those Japanese men's expectations of their women.
And I knew all about the flip side of that, the waiting up until all hours for their spouses to come home from the "office" (hostess club) and being expected to cook their dinner for them, even if they arrived home at 1am, and then up at 7am to cook their breakfast every damn day. I saw all that action when I stayed at my friend's place in Chofu City, pitied his mom, and always thought Oh that poor woman. But that day at the trailhead I would have traded places gladly. Looked forward to a lovely candlelit dinner in a warm and elegant restaurant rather than KD out of a plastic bowl sitting on a tarp.
I think the main reason I've never felt that is because when I was a kid, all my friends had single mothers who were working their asses off. The more candlelit dinners they'd had, the poorer they were now. So it's not that I didn't want the relief, it's that I always thought it was a trap.
Here's what I have fantasized about: breaking my leg so that everyone would still know I was a super-hero, but not actually expect me to do any work for a little while. Very close to the same thing.
Posted by: Jessie | August 21, 2008 at 06:09 AM