Calvinettes

On Wednesday I colored my roots. On Thursday a box of clothes and a new pair of boots from J.Jill arrived by FedEx. On Friday I got a manicure,today a hair cut. On Monday I am having my teeth whitened.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that I can't get the Calvinette motto out of my head:
Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain,
but a woman that feareth Jehovah,
she shall be praised. (Proverbs something: something)

Yes, Calvinette. I was a Calvinette. In the Dutch Calvinist immigrant sub-culture in which I was raised, one could not be a Brownie or Girl Scout or Indian Princess. One might get tainted by the secular world. So instead we had our own uniformed sex-segregated child movements: Cadets and Calvinettes. It seemed so normal then. It was only when I grew up and realized there were no Lutherettes or Loyolaettes or Wesleyettes that I first thought maybe we were all a bit odd.

One progressed up the Calvinette ranks from Gleaner to Reaper to Something to Sower (what would come between sowing and reaping--Waterer? Weeder? Fertilizerer?) by earning badges in skills and achievements ranging from Bicycle Repair or Water Safety to Reformation Heroes and (my personal favorite) Old Testament Women.

Apart from the Bicycle Repair badge, little that could be described as "feminist" appeared in Calvinettes. Certainly conformity rather than competition structured our troop. There was no sense, really, in mimicking my brothers' quest for as many Cadet badges as possible. In Calvinettes, our counselors (mothers dragooned into service for a year) made sure we all earned enough points to move up the ranks in step with our age group. We learned to sew and to embroider (or at least we were supposed to. . . I failed miserably but got promoted to Reaper all the same); we had lessons in how to sit down properly after singing the hymn in church (you smooth your skirt as you are sitting; you do not sit and then half-hop up and pull out the wrinkles); and best of all, once we hit 8th grade, we no longer had crafts and Bible study under the watchful eyes of the mothers but instead "Charm Course," in which two single women in their late teens taught us such important life skills as how to perk up limp hair with a lemon rinse and where to sit in the front seat when on a first date (in the middle). Even at 13 I thought it somewhat ironic to recite "Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain" and then to spend the next two hours learning how to apply blush and lip stick. (Yes, I was the sort of 13-year-old who knew what "ironic" meant.) Still, anything was an improvement over embroidery; moreover, by age 13, a regular-church-going child is already an expert in negotiating ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions. The Bible was full of them; the adults at church, even more so.

Here I am, an aged Calvinette, with my painted nails, my new clothes, my about-to-be-white teeth, and my freshly colored and cut hair (not in the least bit limp or in need of a lemon rinse). Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain. They do, however, make life a bit more livable. I don't think Jehovah minds, really.