At one of the climactic moments in “The Lion in Winter”, a fabulous old film with Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Peter O’Toole as Henry II of England, Henry is overcome with the challenge of maintaining an empire, keeping his much loved and yet threateningly powerful Queen at bay while trying to woo and wed a younger woman with which to have new sons. After a particularly stressful moment, he moans to his new love, the Princess Alias,
“I want no women in my life.”
“You’re just tired.” she replies.
“I could have conquered Europe – all of it – but I had women in my life.”
All men, except those in prison or cloisters, have women in their lives. I was married for nearly 37 years and have two astounding daughters in my life: Kate and Jill. Looking to the fuss I’ve made over naming this plane “Beautiful Daemon” and all the time and energy I put into finding all those pictures to illustrate the woman this airplane is becoming to me, it seems the subject of the women in my life may require more explanation. From where do I get this attachment to women like Trinity from “The Matrix”, Beatrix Kiddo from “Kill Bill”, Sara Connor from “Terminator”, or even Lisbeth Salander from “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo”? No debutantes here, no shrinking violets; no divas.
I get them from my daughters.
On the left is a screen grab of my oldest daughter, Kate face-timing me from Bagram AB in Afghanistan where she was deployed as an Analyst in early 2014. On the right is Kate and her husband Brad, a Captain in the USAF after they finished the Goofy Challenge in Disney World. The Goofy Challenge consists of running the Disney World Half Marathon (13.1 miles) on Saturday and then the next day running the Disney World Marathon, a full 26.2 miles. Total of 39.3 miles in two days. Extra points to Brad for doing it dressed as a 6’3″ Minion while Kate was a 5’3″ Fairy Princess
Below on the left is my youngest daughter, Jillian and her husband, Frank after finishing a Tough Mudder race somewhere in Virginia. She’s recently gotten her Masters in Social Work, he’s a Producer for NBC news. On the right? That’s Jill in 2004, a senior in high school, holding a young Haitian orphan named Kiki in an orphanage in a slum of Port au Prince. Jill and Frank moved to Haiti after college and before the earthquake in 2010 and after a brief return to the US, they returned to Haiti and lived and worked there for the next two years.
Tough Chicks, beautiful women. As much as I may wax poetic about the glory of my plane, my Beautiful Daemon; these are the beauties in my life. These are my female better halves, the voices of my better angels. I have had THESE women in my life, and I am blessed.
theonceandfutureflyer 