Queen for a day

 I remember, one year, being cheerful audience at our local quilt guild’s big quilt show.  They presented the Quilt Most Likely to Knock Your Eyes Out  to a wonderful piece of work: elegant, complex and demanding in design and stitchery, an exquisite and masterful blending of color and whimsy.  I was wowed. 

They called the quilter up for her award, and that’s where the dislocation began: the woman who waddled up the aisle was alarmingly huge, so big and ungainly, her lumpy tree trunk legs couldn’t quite support her; she had to walk with a stick.  She also had to be helped sideways up the stairs to the stage by a fair-sized posse.  Her face, round as a balloon at the top of a shapeless tent of a floral housedress, was middle-aged and flushed—she wore cat’s eye glasses, and she had short blond popcorn hair.  When she accepted the award, her speech was neither charming or whimsical—she spoke bluntly about the design.  Even her voice was rough.

And as I watched her, I realized that I felt a little shocked.  She was not what I had expected to see.

And yet, without question, she was the maker of that fabulous quilt.

That’s when I realized that all my life, I had expected beauty to come from the obviously beautiful.  I should have known better; I’d been a quilter for years.  We quilters are a motley lot, showing up to work in everything from rumpled, oversized scrubs to neat-as-a-pin grandma outfits with clever little appliqués of forest animals on the shirts.  The quilts we make often don’t look a thing like us.

But I guess, conditioned by decades of television,  I’d just kind of missed  this deep flaw in my purvue.

It’s pretty obvious that, over the last fifty or sixty years, the western world has become, more and more, cheerleaders for the Whole Package: beauty first (which assumes cutting edge), sexual allure second (or reverse those maybe), and then talent.  And way after all of that – usefulness and goodness.

With the award lady, I guess I can be a little excused; there was nothing about her that suggested any actual sense of “taste,” artistic or visual.   Or of attention to detail.  Or even of self-discipline. It’s still  hard, in fact, for me to reconcile the quilt and its maker—the outside of the clam and the inside of the clam.

Years ago, when I first started collecting horses, a friend warned me: “My sister,” he wrote, “has horses.  She and her husband built a magnificent barn for them—everything gleaming, clean, all things with a place, and put there.  But my sister and her family live in a trailer they have set up beside the barn.”  Meaning, horse people put the horses first.

Yeah, well – when I think about myself, I realize that I define myself by what I’m doing, what I’ve done – “me” has very little to do with what I’m wearing or how I look.  Which is probably why I get such a jolt of horror every time I happen to catch myself in a mirror.

And all of this is in my mind today because of Susan Boyle.  Susan Boyle, the aging, spinster, plain faced, anything-but-elegant bit of sass who has garnered over a hundred million YouTube hits in the last week or two.  And why?  Because everybody took one look at her as she walked out on that stage and expected her to be a joke.  She was intruding into the realm of young, nubile and fame-hungry folk, people allowed to have dreams, the kind of people who dress hot for the occasion.  How could a forty seven year old apology of a woman who lives with cats possibly be recognized in any country as True Beauty?  How could an elegant, rich, passionate voice come out of a plain face? (Or a Son of God out of Bethlehem?)

But the real question is —how could everybody on the planet be so flaming stupid?

If I were Susan Boyle, I’m afraid delight in my conquest would definitely be tarnished by the constant press: “How could a loser like this win like this?” 

How could anyone read paragraphs about themselves like the one I just wrote about Susan (a few up)  without feeling really bad?  Did Susan go through her life, I wonder, thinking of herself as plain and unkissed and a Person Least Likely to Succeed?  Or is she just now finding this out about herself, thank you to an adoring and still patronizing public?

What I really like about her is her spunk.  At forty seven, she still has sass and a sense of humor.  Character.  Compare her to the entire cadre of American Idle contestants—which one would you rather go to dinner with?  The funny, spirited lady with grit?  Or some cardboard glam kid whose Whole Dream is to have the world worship her for her body and her style?

It’s the triumph of the real people over the Mean Girls.  It’s honest humanity over the fashion of angst and self-obsession.  Susan tells us: it’s better to be who you really are.  And she also reminds us that beauty doesn’t arise out of cultural edge; it’s a cultivated gift – from God to the artist, from the artist to anybody who needs it.  If it takes half a life time of practicing in your room to perfect your gift, then so be it.

Sex sells.  But what do you get when you buy it?

Spunk evidently still sells too, and when you fork over for that, you get delight.

Good things come in unspectacular packages.  Actually, I think that’s true almost all of the time.  Babies come from birth, which is painful, messy, urgent and stressful.  Songs come from joy, faith, heartbreak – all of which tear at every heart.  Love can be inspired by dogs that drool on you.  Hope by the angry face of a worried father, come to find you.  Glory in a simple, unvarnished sunrise.

Susan loved it when the people clapped for her.  When they spoke glowingly—hopefully, she didn’t hear all of the nasty qualifications.  What I really hope is that she will only sing now as she evidently always has:  because she loves to do it.  May she never changes her style, even if she ends up with money because of this (they don’t pay you per YouTube hit).  May she stay gutsy and surprised and un-influenced in a world and business that can’t resist re-telling your story with a star that looks way better than you.

Huzzah for Susan, I say.  And for me.  And for you.  And for Sophe.  Hurrah for real life.  And for our one gutsy moment of self-revelation: may they all turn out well.