Though Friday’s topics du jour at the salon were spirited - We figured out how to improve the state of public education, what we might wear for Halloween and how to handle the Balloon Boy saga - I still managed to get about 40 pages read.
I finished the book I was reading at the salon, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, this weekend. It occurred to me that it might be a fitting first mention for a style conscious blog’s book club, because of its nod to that wardrobe staple, the Little Black Dress, or as the fashion elite reverently and affectionately refer to it, the LBD.
One of the larger Mennonite communities in the country is in Central Pennsylvania, where my Mother grew up and where a number of my family members still live. A long time household employee in my Grandparents’ home was of Mennonite descent. I remember her as a hard working woman with a kind heart who made delicious (though unusual to my taste buds) food. I also had the opportunity to observe women of the denomination at the market in their simple, no nonsense dresses, their practical shoes and their modest head coverings when we visited the area during our childhood vacations.
One thing I never saw any of the Mennonite women wearing was a little black dress. Vogue once called Coco Chanel’s version of the LBD “Chanel’s Ford” because “like the Model T… it was simple and accessible for women of all social classes”. While that statement is largely true, the little black dress was not something that would’ve been easily accessible for a young Mennonite.
The title of this book caught my attention immediately. I simply had to hear more.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is a memoir and for the same reasons I enjoy hanging out at a hair salon, I love a good memoir. I just love hearing people’s stories. This one is compelling.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the 2006 blockbuster, Eat, Pray, Love, another of my favorites, said about Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: “This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully – even wincingly – funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I’m reading, but Rhoda Janzen’s voice – singular, deadpan, sharp-witted, and honest – slayed me, with audible results.” She went on to declare the book, “the most delightful memoir” she’s “read in ages”. Another reviewer described it as, “A hilarious and moving memoir—in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron—about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.” A true story written by a woman described as a cross between Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron and enthusiastically endorsed by Elizabeth Gilbert? I could hardly turn the pages fast enough!
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is about a woman whose religious training subconsciously plays a role in her decision to stay in an unhealthy marriage for far longer than she should have. One can also make the case that she should’ve never entered into said marriage in the first place. It is the story of a bright woman whose life came crumbling down around her in her mid-forties after her on again off again marriage to a troubled, self absorbed, charming (when he wanted to be) terribly good looking man of Italian heritage came to a tabloid worthy end. It is a story about all of the other rotten things that happened to her at around the same time her marriage ended. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is about Janzen’s having to depend on family and friends in a way that was both comforting and humbling during a decade when a woman is supposed to have all the answers and to be comfortably coasting into the next phase of her life. It is a tale about self discovery, healing, love, family, humor and charting a new course. It is a story I know, which is why I believe it resonated with me so profoundly.
My father was never the head of the North American Mennonite Conference for Canada and the United States, like Janzen’s was, a post she referred to as “the Mennonite equivalent of the Pope”. I never had to spend six months of my life attached to something Janzen refers to as a “pee bag” after a fluky medical mishap, which occurred mid-hysterectomy. I never had a drunk driver slam head - on into my VW Bug on a windy, snowy road leaving me with “assorted broken bones and Franken-bruises the size of my head” and my husband didn’t leave me for a man named Bob who he met on Gay.com. With those exceptions, however, I understood exactly where Janzen was coming from and I couldn’t help but want to call her up and ask her to join me for a cup of coffee.
In the first chapter, shortly after dropping the bombshell about her ex and his new love interest, Janzen made an observation about the timing of so many badly behaved men’s most egregious acts. She wondered why “husbands never seem to ditch their wives until the wives develop a varicose vein the size of a Roman aqueduct”. She asked, “if husbands must leave us for guys named Bob, why can’t they do it pre-vein, while we are young and gorgeous?” Why indeed?!!
At the book’s conclusion, there is a seventeen page Mennonite History primer. It is an interesting, well researched and, in places, rather amusing, portrait of a faith I had previously, simplistically categorized as “Amish Lite”. My point of reference was, again, my childhood Pennsylvania vacations. I knew that if there was a horse and buggy in front of us on old Route 30, we were behind an Amish family. If, on the other hand, the family in front was in a late model, no frills car and if the women in said car had what appeared to be small white mesh baskets on the back of their heads, the family was Mennonite. There were other distinctions too. I was told, for example, that the Amish still lit their homes with candles and used wood burning stoves. While the Mennonites did have electricity, they apparently didn’t use it for frivolous things like powering stereo equipment and televisions. (Well, some Mennonite families had TVs, in fact, Janzen’s did, but it’s a good bet they weren’t watching All in The Family or any of the other things my friends and I watched during that era.)
Another thing neither denomination put much stock in – and this will be of particular interest to readers of this blog - was mirrors. That alone would’ve done me in, as one of my favorite childhood pastimes was folding, twisting and tying my nightgowns in such a way that they resembled evening gowns. I then posed for the camera i.e. the bathroom mirror, fielded interview questions and blew kisses to my adoring fans. Apparently Janzen, known in her family as the vainglorious one - Don't you love that word, vainglorious? It's BIG in Mennonite circles! -felt the same way.
One of my favorite expressions is: “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water". That appears to be exactly what Rhoda Janzen did, for much of her adult life. She was so eager to get away from the stifling customs, rigid expectations and embarrassing foods (her description, not mine), that she couldn’t open a beer or get into a short skirt fast enough when she went away to college. There is a lot of good that comes from being raised by stable, decent, predictable, hard working folk. She didn’t really appreciate that though, at least not at the time. Going home, in her recent time of crisis, allowed her to view her upbringing with fresh eyes, to reconsider her assumptions and to see value in what she had once disdained.
As one might expect, there is much discussion throughout the book about what Janzen thinks of God now that she’s an adult. To be honest, that part made me a little sad. I could elaborate here, but I won’t. As a Psych major and a first born child, I have a tendency to want to put up my Lucy Van Pelt (of Peanuts fame) Psychiatry booth, ask for my 5 cents and explain why I think people act the way they do. Since this doesn’t seem like the right forum for that type of in-depth discussion, I’ll refrain.
Of course theological discussions are not all there is to the book. While most of us like to stretch intellectually now and again, we generally don’t read serious works about philosophy and about how or why the universe was created when sitting in a chair at a salon outside of a department store. When sitting in a chair at the salon, we want a handsome man or two and a little relationship drama. Janzen gave it to us.
Every reader – lucky in love or not, young, old, married, single or somewhere in between – wanted one obvious question answered. Everyone wanted to know why a bright (the woman has a PhD), beautiful (check out her bio picture) woman chose to play with fire by getting involved with a bisexual atheist who, when he wasn’t rocking her world, treated her very badly. Janzen knew this and she did her best to oblige. The reason this question is of such interest is because we’ve all watched similar stories play out in our own personal lives. I know I have.
I have smart, beautiful, talented friends (and relatives) who are competent in every other area of their lives, but, who, for whatever reasons, seem incapable of making good choices when it comes to the men in their lives. I have been accused of being challenged in this area myself. (Guilty as charged.) It’s a well known phenomenon that has always puzzled those with the savvy not to marry human time bombs. People are always interested to know the reasons why women, who are not trolls and who appear to have an adequate number of working brain cells, choose such clearly unsuitable men.
Reading this book offers some more insight into that that age old question. For young girls trying to decide between that shy, honest, chess club member who will end up making six figures and who will never cheat ...and the troubled, but exciting guy, who won’t be able to keep a job, who will prove to be moody, unfaithful and unpredictable and who will rack up DUIs like they’re Publix deli numbers on the afternoon before school starts, it may prove to be a cautionary tale. For those who made the right choices, it will be a validation. For those who are in the same boat as Janzen, there will be comfort in the knowledge that they’re not alone.
I, personally, am at a place where I need to get the map back out before continuing on in my journey. I appreciated the fact that, thanks to this book, I was able to hang out with Janzen at the rest stop.
I am hereby recommending this book to anyone who:
• has ever gone out with a dirtbag
• has ever taken a road trip with relatives
• has ever been forced to wear a homemade piece of clothing, a hand me down or a clearance rounder find to a public junior high school
• has ever been embarrassed by a family member’s actions
• has ever loved the wrong guy
• has ever been asked inappropriate questions by a busybody at a dinner party.
• is currently upside down in a real estate deal
• is so obsessed with shopping that she’d consider putting her “pee bag” in an aqua patent tote and heading out to the mall (if she ever found herself in the unenviable position of being tethered to a “pee bag”)
• Has a best friend who loves her enough to encourage her to go to the mall attached to a carefully concealed“pee bag”
• has a little sister who has bailed her out of a mess
• has crazy in laws
• has a Mom, Grandmother, friend, neighbor or co-worker who wants to set her up with “a perfect guy”
• likes to contemplate life’s big questions
• appreciates simplicity in home décor
• hates raisins, and/or
• wants to spend a little time with a smart, funny, attractive, accomplished, well traveled, insightful English professor who has had a few rough breaks recently.
I’m giving this book my first ever “Hot Heads Hot Read” designation. Happy Reading! The HHG
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