Devastate me! I have found an alluring distraction. The timing is just right because I have all weekend to sink, to bob about like a fool, and to find my way back to shore before Monday stares me down. I’ll stumble around like a zombie with my heart shredded, my wings might get washed away, and my will shall become salted and peppered.

It will be worth all the indulgent romance, though.

I’ll let wave after wave of wow wash over me.

The honor of inspiring my impending escape, goes to Eleanor Roosevelt, whose My Day columns flashed before me on the computer screen when I was looking for something else. The columns are there for all of us to peruse–a rudimentary sort of blog, back in the day.

What tugged at my weekend “to-do” list and carried it away into the rubbish pile, was something Eleanor shared about Willa Cather in one of her My Day columns. I, too, am fond of Willa Cather.

Eleanor wrote about reading Cather’s latest collection of literary essays and how she liked best of all the chapter on Katherine Mansfield–an essay she called a gem. So I found the essay from Cather’s Not Under Forty, bright and easy on the Internet, and I read it.

Game over.

I have been to Eleanor’s Val-Kill in Hyde Park, New York. Oh to sit in the parlors and on the porches with her, reading together and hearing what she has to say! I can pretend-hear what she has to say by reading through her My Day columns. They are truly a peak into the heart of a steadfast woman. She writes not only of grave situations throughout the world, but also about an outfit she likes or about having her hair done while fashionable women prance all around in front of the mirrors or about meeting high school students or returning the girl scout salute to America’s best and brightest.

I went in search of entries that might have been penned from her camp at Campobello Island which is all the way down east on the coast of Maine and just over the border in Canada. I have also been there. Magnificent. (Both the camp and the fact that I have been there.)  I found such a funny column. She writes of the journey through Maine and of a tragedy at arrival in Campobello–she had forgotten all about a two-month-old puppy tied to the back of one of the trucks, for hours. She writes that she returned from the theater to the puppy’s sad wails! Thankfully, all ended well–the puppy was fed and put to bed. Perhaps Mitt Romney can relate.

*****

Here follows a picture of Eleanor’s Val-Kill. Her own fort. I am a great believer in women having their own fort. They should also lean in and lean out and think like a man and demand that men think like women and fight the fight for equality on every necessary front. But to be a woman warrior, you have to read, write, and have your own fort. Even Eleanor Roosevelt makes the remark in one of her columns that she had long had her love for writing and public speaking before her husband became president–she also said that she would stand back from herself and assess who she was. Was she being an individual or was she being what everyone else expected her to be?

Your fort, your expectations. I am always good to myself in my forts. They are pleasant and happy places. I sage-smudge them, I screen visitors.

Sometimes, a fort might only be a chair placed securely into a river on a warm day where you can sit all by yourself. For a long time, that was one of my forts. I had children and there was a river in Vermont that saved me by beckoning my children to float down it on floaty toys. The kids would walk just under a mile or so up the river, and then come floating over boulders and fallen trees right past me. This activity kept them out of my fort for a good stretch of time. They were very young! And someone might have stolen them or the river might have swallowed them up. I was always very happy when their churned up bodies came into view at about the same time I heard their laughter rise above the music of the river.

Eleanor’s fort Val-Kill:

*****

The My Day column I read, written by Eleanor Roosevelt on April 20, 1937, has caused me to create a list of short stories by Katherine Mansfield I hope to read. In my dreams, I will camp out with Eleanor at Val-Kill, reading all weekend, talking over cups of tea.

I agree with her about Willa Cather’s essay on Katherine Mansfield. Totally OMG.