She Walked Her Talk

Her Own Path

“Life isn’t long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege it is to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!”

Tasha Tudor

          Tasha Tudor (1914-2008) lived a long time—ninety-four years. She wrote children’s books about corgis. She illustrated more than one hundred books, the last one published in 2003. She dressed in 19^th century clothing, because she believed women had given up their true power when they began trying to look and act like men by wearing pants and smoking. Tudor lived on a farm in the rolling hills of Vermont, cooked on a wood stove, grew her own flax, and spun it, and milked her cows. She did all this even though she had been born into Boston society, to parents who were friends of Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

          Tasha Tudor was a good example (to me) of a woman who charted her own course. She did not accommodate herself to the fashions and conventions of her time. I’m sure she was considered eccentric, even bizarre, by most of her contemporaries. But she walked her own path; she loved her antique way of life, her environment, and of course, her corgis. She said, “There is no peace that cannot be found in the present moment.”

          I’m inclined to agree with her, although bonnets and lace collars are not my thing. If we can find peace in this present moment and live through it by walking our own path, then we will have learned some important lessons about ourselves. We may learn that we do not need all the trappings and excesses of these modern times. We don’t need to change wardrobes every season or buy every new gadget that comes along. If we can learn to be content with ourselves, and with the solitude and quietude of this time of isolation, we will have dug some diamonds out of the deep dirt of this pandemic. I hope you find delight in the beauty of this world today. Oh, the wonder of it!

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane