Whom Do We Thank for Women's Conferences?

Here in this truly no man’s land, all is fair as understood not in terms of Penelope’s false blondness but that which is right and healthy. Where we throw our big hairy legs and bottoms that make any Levi’s cry for air. Hairy too are the faces we acknowledge —some were born that way—or as signs of: the pills we took in, the wombs we threw out, and plain normal aging. Yet ancient graces walk elegantly tall or charmingly petite in celebration pinks and royal indigos . . . as though the earth itself was newly found, the air a discovery. We were not afraid of ideas. Not our own. Not those of others. Along those corridors and in those easy days’ assemblies, apologizing for our being was not on. We were Nobody’s wives or mistresses. No one called us “Mother”: and when some daughters present did, it was with the clearest mandate that they picked the fight where we brought it. We were only ourselves: each alone as when we were born, and shall be, when we died. But living and together, a true power thing that searches researches solving resolving . . . And as always sweetly hopeful as only women can be.