China on the Plains
By Rachel Morrissey

Adversity strikes us all.  It’s our capacity to build a life afterwards, and the surfeit of beauty we infuse into that life, that marks us as women.

n 2005, I was sent to New Orleans by my company to help prepare for the reopening of our sugar refinery which had been severely flooded and damaged by Hurricane Katrina.  I had been to New Orleans a few times before, and had enjoyed the warmth and vitality of a city that believed in “laissez les bon temps rouler,” but three months after Katrina, the city was still hobbling.  Outside my hotel stood abandoned refrigerators full of rotting food, their stench permeating the air.  The streets were strewn with mud and debris.  And the trees that had seemed so lush on prior visits looked thrashed and thin, hanging low, as depressed in spirit as the gray December sky.  

Our refinery was in an area adjacent to St. Bernard Parish, one of the severely flooded and damaged communities in the area.  As we drove through St. Bernard, I felt as if I were witnessing a war zone.  Miles of businesses, schools, city buildings, public works, and homes were all abandoned, unusable and toxic due to the water damage.  All would have to be gutted or torn down and completely rebuilt before they could be used again.   

After arriving at the factory and getting a quick tour of the facility that only two months before had been completely flooded with water, debris, and remains of all sorts, I was taken to the tents where the press event was going to be held. There was a group of women preparing the tents, creating center pieces, hanging banners, arranging tables, laying out table clothes, and generally preparing for a beautiful event.  There was a Christmas tree that could have been in a Macy’s window at one end of the tent, and lights, banners, and tree boughs strung throughout.  It looked very elegant.  The food arrived, and it was beautifully laid out on the tables.  And of course, the women executing all these tasks looked impeccable—sharply dressed, hair affixed, made up bright and sunny, putting their best faces forward—and were happily chatting about their kids, husbands, jobs, and the bustle of their lives.  

As I was doing some prep work for the event, I overheard them talking and I realized that all of them had lost their homes to the hurricane.  They were living in the FEMA trailers which were 12-foot-squared boxes.  Those that had employees at the refinery had built a small trailer city next door to it, which I wandered over to after the event.  There were four “streets” running east-west, and three running north-south in a neatly patterned grid.  They had painted signs to label the streets, naming them after some of the families that had “founded” the settlement. The trailers were lined up, very orderly.  They had managed to create a line to a water system so that the trailers could have some running water.  There was a small school for the younger children.  As I walked by the trailers, some of which were housing families of five, I noticed that some had planters of flowers outside their doors, even though it was clear that these were to be temporary homes.  Welcome mats were laid out and swept often to keep from tracking dirt into the small space, and pretty curtains had been hung in the windows.  Trees were decorated for Christmas. These plucky women had managed to make things as beautiful as they could, given their circumstances. 

It struck me then that this is one of the great strengths of women.  We don’t just survive.  We survive beautifully.  It takes strength and stubbornness that insists on more, even in times of wont, to create and beautify.   

Perhaps this is why the muses of ancient Greek mythology—those mysterious creatures who inspire literary and artistic creation—are women.   There is some ancient recognition of the necessity of the feminine spirit to create beauty.  Maybe this is the kind of thing that led Shakespeare to write, “From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; they are the books, the arts, the academes, that show, contain, and nourish all the world.”   Even at the lowest times, women seem to have the gift of making the utilitarian beautiful.   Whether it is the pottery for collection of water, or the baskets woven in beautiful patterns and designs, or the well-set table and the well-arranged flowers, or their gardens, or buildings, or monuments, or books, women have often been the catalyst to making things more beautiful. 

When the women of a forgotten hollow in Alabama called Gees Bend took the scraps available to them and created a tradition of making stunning quilts that are works of art, they did it to keep warm.  But they also did it to make their homes beautiful.  They had no idea it would be of worth beyond that and couldn’t have dreamed that their creations would one day hang in some of the most prestigious museums in the world.

Growing up, I was often told tales of the Mormon pioneers building a temple in Kirtland, Ohio, and then in Nauvoo, Illinois, and how many of the women contributed their china so that it could be crushed up and made part of the finishing plaster.  That these women were willing to part with their earthly treasures was supposed to be a heart-warming affirmation of their faith, but what always confirms their faith to me is not that they gave the china, but that they had the china to give.  These were not cozy places and cities of easy access.  There was no UPS.  These women wrapped this china carefully and it was loaded onto wagons and carried to these places by them, from across oceans and rough wilderness.  They would arrive to unprepared land where china would be of little use.  Pewter and wood dishes were more wearable and serviceable.  Why be so impractical?  Was it just a sign of high maintenance?  I don’t think so. These women had a vision of creating homes of beauty and plenty.  They would stubbornly carry that china with them across oceans, plains, mountains, and deserts if need be to fulfill that vision.  

I have seen that elegant stubbornness in women of every field, from the professions to academia to public office to the interior of a home.  I think somewhere in the hearts of women it is written, “It isn’t good enough until it is beautiful too.”  This could be seen as shallow, were it not that the search for beauty is the search for truth.  In fact, in physics, it is noted that the more beautiful and elegant a theory, the more likely it is to be right.  Maybe that is the impetus:  women are just trying to make it right.  Could that be what drives Wangari Maathai, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 because of her work to reverse African deforestation, and the heart of her idea that if you plant trees, you make life better for the people near them?  Or perhaps it is the vision of Aung San Suu Kyi, who returned home to Burma to care for a dying mother, and ended up championing freedom in her homeland when an easier life awaits her outside the borders of her country.  Countless women throughout the ages have displayed this “promethean fire” and somehow, through resistance to the status quo, have maintained the same gritty gentleness of the women who carried china on the plains.  I believe it is that ineffable quality that has made great women great.