Chapter 3: Janet Gone Wild

Janet Trever and Loie's future son-in-law on the right.

I've seen this picture before, but never quite this way.  After reading through Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, I myself feel like flying now that we've reached Chapter 3.  Mom transfers to DU and takes a chance on her iconic eye patch.  She pledges a sorority and finds herself soon on a blind date with the president of a fraternity.  As mom says, "I got three years in the swan pool."

Janet lived a fairytale.  I have stacks of photo albums with picture after picture of formals, theme parties, hikes and drives in the mountains. 

Tarzan party patch on the Eye Patch Quilt.



Chapter 3: A Patch is Born

From the cover of Wild Women.

The summer before mom transferred to DU she worked back in Chicago as a Kelly Girl and was placed at United Airlines new executive headquarters.

I went to downtown Chicago on the train on Saturdays to Patricia Stevens' modeling school where our girl scout troop had visited.  I enrolled in many different classes.  During an eyebrow class the instructor looked at me struggling to invent an eye brow on top of the seam of this plastic glob.  She said, "I notice you make all of your clothes.  Did you know there was a famous opera singer who always performed with jewel encrusted eye patches?"  I thought this was a wonderful idea to explore.  When I went home to tell my parents that night,my Mom said, "Great idea, try it!" and my Dad said, "No daughter of mine is going to be a pirate!"  Of course he had no way of knowing how it felt to me, with my face, to be in my adolescence: navigating through the world of fashion, appearance, and the need for acceptance.

The Pirates of Blood River came out in 1962, context for Grander's comment.

So, I waited to try it.  My parents drove me to Denver University in the fall; as they headed down the driveway to go back home, I went in to Pat's sewing machine and came up with my first patch proto-types to wear during rush week.  My thinking was that this was a whole new place, no one had ever seen me before besides Pat, and I could be whoever I wanted to be: they'd think I had always worn a patch.  And if it didn't work out or feel good to me, I could always go back to Illinois and never see any of these people again.  It was a window of opportunity I didn't want to miss.

It's obvious, isn't it? The patch worked.

Chapter 3: I'M A SWAN!

Mom begins chapter 3 saying she always listened carefully when anyone talked about swans.  She loved Hans Christian Anderson's story of the Ugly Duckling, but also references a fairytale of a different sort:

A Hindu story says that swans, as represented in the order of Saraswati, represents the priceless skill of discrimination and discernment.  Supposedly a swan is able to drink in fluid but spit out the water while swallowing the milk that was in the mixture.  It reminds me of Virginia Satir's advice to "taste everything, but swallow only that which fits you."