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Professional Photography by Willene Johnson
Flag, owned by Micheline Voets
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For a science fair, in high school biology, I wrote a report on the jack-in-the pulpit (a wood’s flower), drew it on poster board, and made a clay model. Because the resemblance wasn’t good enough, I quit using it. Striking my disappointment, second place was an entry with a clay jack-in-the-pulpit.
My sister and I took horseback riding lessons in high school, mounted on big horses—learning to walk, trot, and canter on English saddles, in a ring. We graduated to an outside road—until stopping short one day, I pitched over the mane, clinging under the neck until my feet released to the ground. All night I cried quietly as antihistamine couldn’t stop the itching of poison ivy from horse hide. I quit riding. At my fiftieth high school reunion, one of my friends told me she jumped her horse every day.
One university summer, I waited on tables at the Atlantis Hotel, in Maine, with its huge dining room overlooking wide lawns. I did the work well until the week before Labor Day, when I developed a mild sore throat, a self-diagnosis confirmed by a doctor at one of my tables. I told the owner I wanted to leave, in return receiving a scowl and being told that it was the busiest weekend of the season. I quit. Married, I admiringly watched my daughter wait on tables after her university graduation, until she found the position she wanted.
My realization is, “Like the lengthwise and crosswise threads in woven fabric, the strength of success comes from both emotional growth and intellectual growth. The second, without the first, can cause misunderstood weakness in commitment and follow-through.”