Women of Another Era, by Denis Hickey
Excerpt, chapter “Virginia,” from autobiographical
novel, Women of Another Era, by Denis Hickey
Virginia
I’D OCCASIONALLY GO FOR DINNER to Virginia’s home in New Jersey during her middle years, when I worked nearby in New York City. Her family lived on Leonia Avenue in Leonia, New Jersey, which I found amusing since my uncle’s name was Leon. The house was old-style with two stories, a single or double bath depending on how you looked at it, creaky wooden floors, a dining room table that could accommodate eight and dusty bookshelves loaded with books. It took her family from the time I started high school until I left for California thirteen years later to start and finish a second bathroom off the kitchen. The toilet was in place quickly, but I had to sneak into the partially enclosed bathroom in the middle of the night to do my stuff, because the enclosure took so long install.
I believe that of the three sisters, Virginia had the most fun. She worked full-time as an artist, and in the summers was hired by a cruise-ship line to teach art on their cruises. She sailed the seas with my Uncle Leon as her assistant, along with her little helper, my cute cousin, Sharon—another vibrant O’Connell female in the making.
Both my aunts had loving and, as far as I know, uncomplicated unions with their husbands. They provided me examples of what successful relationships looked like. But it was in the realm of questions that I learned most from Virginia, who once told me, “Questions give an edge to the interesting person.”
She reminded me of the character Yentl that Barbra Streisand played in the movie of the same name. Yentl was an early-nineteenth-century Jewish girl who disguised herself as a boy to enter an orthodox, all-male yeshiva, or college. The disguised Yentl interviewed with the schoolmaster for admittance, ending the interview by apologizing to the scholarly man for not providing more answers. “It’s not by your answers we judge you,” the wise man tells her, “but by your questions.”
As a young auditor and consultant, I wrote down questions to ask executives during interviews, and afterwards checked to see if I had asked all the questions written down. Somewhere along the line, questions became second nature.
When we were together, Virginia would pepper me with questions about all sorts of matters that we’d subsequently discuss while she cooked dinner or as we set the table. If I disagreed with her, she’d say, “Don’t give me your facts, Denny.” Leon, sitting in his favorite living room armchair, reading newspapers and watching TV news, occasionally piped in, “If you argue with an O’Connell woman, you have to get used to them always being right.”
Virginia and Leon’s wedding
Virginia was feisty like the characters in her paintings and an ardent feminist, which made me wonder about the fairness of her working full-time and doing house chores while Leon watched the news. I guess it was a habit of the times. In any case, I remember a conversation around the time of the attempted ratification of the equal rights amendment (ERA), while visiting her back east after my nuclear family moved to California. The ERA failed to achieve ratification of the required three-fourths of the states by its 1982 deadline.
Setting the table for dinner that evening, Virginia, a slim woman with a sense of humor, whose red hair buzzed at its roots with vigor when she talked, asked, “Denny, what’s your opinion of the strategy used by the women’s groups battling Phyllis Schlafly’s opposition to ratification?” A leading emotive question if I ever heard one!
“I’ve sort of lost track,” I said sheepishly. “In the beginning I was an ardent enthusiast for passage, but then I felt the issue became we versus them, and I somehow wound up as part of them because of gender. So, my opinion was, screw it.”
“Right!” she almost screamed. “The strategy should have encouraged the participation of men like you to the end. It was a civil rights issue. Women like Schlafly don’t think we should have rights equal to men, because it would degrade American family ideals. I agree with some of her views. But Schlafly underestimates women. Look at what she herself accomplished defeating all those women’s groups stacked against her. So tell me …” her voice now shifted to softness-laced curiosity, “… what do you think of the failure to ratify?”
“Does it matter? Women in my family would say, ‘If they’re not going to give what is rightfully ours, you take it!’”
Her eyes conveyed admiration for this thought. “You have a point. And never forget, we are God’s special gift.”
“By we, I assume you mean women? Sounds like Ahma’s credo—‘women are equal—plus.’”
“The plus is in the Bible, honey, only it’s been misinterpreted. God may have taken a rib from Adam, but Adam was God’s trial run. Anybody who doubts that should consider the vastly improved and highly desirable female breast God created in the second, improved version. Viva la difference!” She said this patting my back gently.
By 2020, three-fourths of the states had ratified the ERA, but the amendment has been waylaid by legal issues and procedure.
My last intimate contact with Virginia was when I had time to spend helping her move from New Jersey to near Mom in Florida, where the sun shines and the wind blows warm. That was during the sisters’ exit from East to South, following in Mom’s tracks. By now Virginia was in her late seventies, her hair still predominantly red but fading and without its sheen. We sat on a flat throw rug on her upstairs bedroom floor in New Jersey, sorting things out for the move. She sat cross-legged on the floor with stacks of possessions around her, looking frozen and unable to make up her mind as to disposition.
Sitting beside her, I suggested, “What if we make three piles, Virginia? One pile for Florida, one for charity and the last for throwing away.”
“If you think so, Denny. Okay.” Her voice was anxious, displaying both physical and mental fragility, an emotion heretofore foreign to her.
Virginia picked up a paint-matted drawing brush, a half inch in width. It must’ve been fifteen years old. She couldn’t decide which pile to place it in. I judged her behavior to be the beginning stages of dementia. Afternoon turned into evening as we completed packing her room. She told me private thoughts during that time, making that evening the most intimate time with my aunt.
“You won’t always be the strong man, Denis,” she warned out of nowhere. “When you get older, and then older, your words and actions become as important as your legs are sturdy. Which isn’t much. It’s a younger person’s world then. What will you do?”
“I’ll remember your words, Virginia, and try to figure something out between now and then.”
To this she gave me her trademark cute little giggle.
Virginia died within a year of moving to Florida. She had Alzheimer’s, and the move pushed her into a bad stage of the disease. Near the end, Leon and my cousin, Sharon, checked her into assisted living with memory support. She looked at them with daggers in her eyes and refused to kiss them goodnight. The facility called at 6:00 a.m. the next day to say Virginia had died. She didn’t last there even twenty-four hours. She left this world on her own terms at eighty-one, refusing to eat until she expired.
Whether the prospective move from New Jersey triggered her illness, I don’t know. But my Aunt Virginia’s passing was the beginning of the end of an era.
Denis with mom (left) and Virginia (right)
Denis Hickey was a trailblazer in the world of solo traveling before traveling the world became more mainstream. In his first life, this product of a matriarchal family was a Silicon Valley businessperson who traveled along the leading edge of 5 technologies, co-founding the crisis management firm Hickey & Hill, and trying to balance work and family in keeping with his childhood vision: “a great family and enough money so nobody could pull my strings.”
At the age of 48, Denis exchanged his Mercedes for a low-maintenance backpack, and 80 countries later changed the pace and trajectory of his life. Transferring journey notes from paper to computer, he wrote the Breaking Free series, which in 1997 was a non-fiction finalist at the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Conference Literary Contest with the first two chapters of Doorway To a Dream (now Breaking Free series).
Denis has enjoyed two relationships lasting over 25 years, raising families of different generations and cultures. He is now a philosopher and writer of two travel adventure books and two how-tos (How to Make Women Happy and How to Make Men Happy). He recently finished writing a pair of unpublished children's books, The Vingdinger and The Babbles and Beetle Bayley, and has been working concurrently on a third travel adventure and a Silicon Valley book called CRISIS. Currently, Denis lives with his family in Warsaw, Poland.
Learn more about Denis and his books by visiting breakingfree-thebooks.com and denishickey.com. If you would like to contact him, denishickey@gmail.com. or shache1@aol.com.
