When I was little, I loved a vinyl record of Disney’s Cinderella and I listened until my parents were sick of the sound of it. My feminist mother disapproved of this story of a girl saved by a godmother and handsome prince, but she did not believe in censorship. Instead of taking it away, she bought me a coloring book called Great Women Paper Dolls.
Published in 1978, this book started in the ancient world with Sappho and ended with Golda Meir. No nonsense here about dreams coming true when you wish upon a star. Instead, “I will raise such a battle cry that you will remember it forever!” appeared beneath Joan of Arc. “No time to marry, no time to settle down,” Bessie Smith announced. I colored Lady Murasaki’s kimono blue and orange, then tinted Golda Meir’s boxy pocketbook a luscious pink.
“Golda Meir would never carry a fuchsia purse,” my mother observed, looking at my work. I was hurt, but my mother was a stickler, and I trusted that she knew the colors Great Women wore. Even then, I suspected my mother was one of them.
She was self-confident and, at the same time, self-deprecating. In high school I learned the word sprezzatura, which meant effortless brilliance—the grace and wit Renaissance courtiers were after. My mother embodied that quality. She valued repartee, enjoyed absurdity, and made you think that writing a scientific paper, organizing a conference, or balancing the budget of a large university is all in the wrist. She was witty, elegant, and she loved good style. She did not think lovely clothes were frivolous. She never separated style and substance. On the contrary, she understood the importance of presentation. She was a decisive and fearless shopper, and I, who had less patience and frankly less interest, let her choose my clothes even after I left home.
When I was working for my doctorate and had my first baby, my mother came to visit and took me to the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. While my newborn slept in his car seat, my mother got me to try one elegant outfit after another. “Graduate students don’t dress like this,” I pointed out.
She bought me three suits anyway. “Look like you’re going to finish.”
She could look playful. As a young professor in 1970s Hawaii, she wore a green Marimekko hat, high-heel sandals, sleeveless dresses, and oversized sunglasses. Jackie O. in Honolulu. She could look sexy. One New Year’s Eve in the 1980s, she wore skintight black satin pants and a tube top sequined in colored bands—red, blue, and silver. My sister and I called it her Wonder Woman outfit. She was tall, slender, and younger than other mothers. She was just 21 when I was born, so she was in her 30s when I was a teenager. In the 1980s when she became vice president for academic affairs at the University of Hawaii, she wore suits with boxy shoulders and carried briefcases. Laughingly she asked my dad, “Do I look intimidating?” I still have her pebbled leather bags. I found her card in one.