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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

I luv Ruby
My love smoldered in the margins of great books.
By Stephen J. Lyons
[04/13/00]

Ethan is on the front porch, reading
I turn away, so my dyslexic son won't see my tears.
By Virginia Tubeck-Drozd
[04/12/00]

From household saint to social pariah
In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart let it slip that the real reason she's leaving Westport, Conn., is because she's lonely.
By Kate Moses
[04/11/00]

Gift rage
Damn the silverware, smash the crystal. I can't take the accouterments of middle-class marriage.
By Mary Valle
[04/11/00]

Image-conscious
We want your photos -- just the best ones, please -- for our new feature.

[04/10/00]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

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We are all in love with you and would like to marry you but we can't, because we're not of the blood royal. Tib especially would like to marry you because she has a white accordion-pleated dress.

These girls had guts! They knew their chances were slim, but they took a shot anyway. Though I was not particularly interested in falling in love with anyone myself, I knew chutzpah when I read it. There I was, living in the big city, and all I did was traipse back and forth to school every day. It had never even occurred to me to fall in love with a prince, much less a king. But after reading about these girls' ambitious plans, I vowed to think big. My world had expanded irreversibly.

Ballet Shoes By Noel Streatfield Random House Fiction Little House on the Prairie By Laura Ingalls Wilder Harper Collins, 335 pages Fiction Betsy and Tacy By Maud Hart Lovelace Harper Trophy, 144 pages Fiction Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill By Maud Hart Lovelace Harper Trophy, 192 pages Fiction Also Today I luv Ruby My love smoldered in the margins of great books. By Stephen J. Lyons

Then there was Petrova Fossil, my favorite of the three orphans in Noel Steatfield's "Ballet Shoes," set in London in the '20s and '30s. She and her sisters, Pauline and Posy, had been adopted by an archaeologist who subsequently disappeared for many years, forcing the girls to train as performers in order to provide for themselves. Petrova was surrounded by ballerinas and actresses, but she wanted to be a car mechanic or a pilot. Midway through the book, a friendly garage owner who boards in the Fossil house gives Petrova "a suit of jeans, just like garage men wear, only, of course, her size."

Prior to reading these words, I had never dreamed that such garb existed in my size. I was the only girl in my class at school who had a collection of Matchbox cars, and I had a burgeoning interest in mechanics myself. At last, I had a friend who understood.

As happy as I always was for Petrova, who hated her dance classes vehemently, I envied her as well. And so I did what any envious little girl would do: I imitated her. Every time we stopped at a gas station on family road trips, I went in to see what the mechanics were doing. I collected pamphlets on car repair and dreamed of opening a repair shop with my father some day. I had the feeling that Petrova, wherever she was, was looking upon my actions approvingly, and her existence gave me courage. Sometimes, in the cool of those gas station garages, I held consultations with her in my head about things like carburetors and fuel lines. Later on, when I was in high school, I joined a group of boys who were rebuilding an old engine after school under the guidance of a Latin teacher. I would be lying if I said that Petrova didn't come to mind once or twice during those long sessions with pistons and greasy rags. She had survived my adolescence intact.

And somewhere, right now, I bet there's a little girl asking her mystified parents for a pair of garage mechanic's overalls.
salon.com | April 13, 2000

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