“There are two types of southern women,” the TV personality claims, “There is the monogram southern woman. She is the perfectly dressed, coiffed proper lady. And, then, there is the hay-baling southern woman.”
My husband and I are languishing in front of our television this evening watching “The 50 Most Beautiful Southern Women” when we hear this comment. I am struck by the truth of it. I look at my husband and say, “Sorry, you got stuck with the hay-baling type. At least,” I add, “You have a monograming daughter.”
The next day I am running errands when my path crosses that of our farm neighbor and friend, Frank. In the course of conversation we pick up a story thread about his wife, my close friend, Paige. I cannot recall the exact words that brought us to the point of talking about Paige and the day of the birth of her second son, but Frank recounted the story for me as we stood in the lobby of his office.
“The day Collier was born,” he said, “I was there with Paige. You know she never said much or complained at all while she was in labor. She said a few words to me now and then and I chatted with the nurses and the doctor. She didn’t even ask for any medicine. And then all of a sudden Paige said ‘You better go get the nurse’, so I went out into the hallway and her doctor was there. When he came into the room, Collier was practically born already. The doctor just reached down and picked him up. Afterwards the doctor was pretty mad with the nurses. He fussed at them for not coming to get him sooner, but I told him that it was not their fault. You know, Paige had not said a word the whole time, so the nurses didn’t even know.”
I loved hearing Frank fill in this little piece of the Paige puzzel for me. I have known Paige for 14 years now, but there are still stories not yet told. Collier’s birth actually took place 2 days before my life-path crossed Paige’s path. On the weekday two days after Collier’s birth I was in the car line for student drop off at Cherry Hill Montessori School preparing to leave my 2 year old daughter in the Stepping Stones class. My 12 day old son was in the infant seat in the car as well. Life with a 2 year old and a newborn was hectic, so I was pleased to have made it through the dressing, breakfast and car-loading of the morning to make the attempt to get Em to pre-school close to on time.
That school morning the blue suburban in front of me eased into a drop off parking spot as it became available. The woman driving leaned across the front seat and removed her very tiny 2 day old from the infant seat and set him in the crook of her left arm. She emerged from the driver’s side of the truck, opened the back door and with one hand released her 2 year old son from the car seat. She helped him out of the car, held his hand and walked into the classroom.
I sat in my car thinking, “I need to meet that woman. She can definitely shoulder a load of work at one time.” Several weeks later I met Paige for the first time.
In these many years since then I have seen Paige in her old white tennis shoes, blue jeans, turtle neck and down vest carefully stacking a campfire by the pond for a family cookout in September. I have seen her in a Carhaart quilted jumpsuit, rubber waders and a tobagan headed to her horse barn to muck stalls at 9 pm in January. I have worked with her as the Garden Club hostess at the Country Club March when she wears her gray wool slacks, linen blouse and sterling horseshoe necklace.
One of the toughest days I have spent with her was at the YMCA pool lap swimming for exercise. I did not heed the warning of her no-nonsense one piece speedo and joined her in my one piece LLBean lycra beach wear. I was actually pretty pleased with myself when I survived the first 15 minutes lap for lap by gasping for breath at the end of the lane and rotating through side stroke, breast stroke and American Crawl. Just as I thought I had hung on to finish Paige said, “Let’s tread water.”
Even when fatigues I can tread water for a while. It is a leftover skill from the many summer swim lessons of my Florida childhood. “Sure,” I replied.
We set about treading water in the deep end of the pool while chatting about children and schedules. After about 10 minutes Paige, feeling unchallenged, said, “Let’s tread water without using our hands.”
In my soul I knew that this was not a good idea. I do not look for challenges in my life and I’m not stellar at rising to the occasion. Against all sane judgement I said, “Okay,” but it only took me 2 minutes of treading with my legs only to nearly drown and givet it up. I drug myself out of the pool and sat on the edge to watch Paige work.
She said, “I’m going to do this for 15 minutes.” Over the next 5 minutes we chatted. I sat lounging on the tile edge of the pool and watched Paige head above water, arms up in the air, churning her legs underneath the water surface. At the 10 minute mark she was fairly quiet concentrating on her work while glancing occasionally at the clock. The final 2 minutes were hard to watch. Her teeth were clenched, her chin was barely above the surface of the water and her face was white; drained of the last ounce of energy. Only at the 15 minute mark did she drop her arms, rest for a second and glide to the pool edge. Paige had been treading water for 15 minutes using only her legs for “fun.”
Now, years later hearing the story of Collier’s quiet birth I am not one bit surprised. It is typical of the many life challenges, some external and some self-imposed, that Paige has mastered.
Oh, and yes, I have seen her in her farm boots, jeans and tee-shirt following along behind the tractor picking up square bales of hay and tossing them in the hay wagon. Here she is in real life;one of the beautiful, full-blooded firm-shouldered, hard-headed, hay-baling southern women.