Queen of Fortuitous Whimsy
During our most recent marriage therapy zoom session, our therapist asked me: “so who is the Queen of Fortuitous Whimsy”.
Some definitions:
Queen = monarch, ruler
Fortuitous = serendipitous, happening by accident or chance rather than design, “lucky”
Whimsy = quaint, fanciful quality or humor , impulse
My husband bestowed this title on me many years ago. I love that this is how he sees me. His imposing, brusque, half british overthinking self is the staid to my whimsy. His logical practical side is heavy and difficult for me to grock at times. It feels sluggish and painfully slow. On the contrary, my creative thinking and whimsy is equally foreign to him. He is astounded that something not fully thought through, conceived in a split second, on a whim, somehow, actually can work out. We are a good balance in this wild world we’ve navigated for 27 years together.
Whims by definition are: a sudden desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or unexplained. I have learned that this can cause whiplash, as most people are not well suited for “sudden change”. Control seemed to be a large part of my upbringing, possibly because it was accompanied by so much sudden change. Not the sudden change of whim however , but the sudden change that comes from moving 15 times in 18 years, the sudden change to a child of her neighborhood, her school, her friends. It was the breaking free, the loss of control, the loss of restrictions, if even in my own young imagination, that helped the QFW take hold.
I was hatched from an Army green egg into a blase beige maze of cookie cutter apartments on military bases scattered across the globe. Surprisingly, everywhere we moved could have been the same place. Somehow, the Army had contrived the experience of living in Columbus Ohio USA or Kagnew Station Ethiopia to feel exactly the same, a McDonalds level of uniformity.
Even when I was young, I was determined to seek out the extraordinary in this seemingly endless landscape of the ordinary. I would find houses decorated with gingerbread exterior moldings of bright color. I would take mental pictures of particular hairstyles and hats on the ladies at church. How certain people would carry themselves, their attitudes, and outlook on life. Much to the chagrin of my conforming parents, I saw that there was an “other”. I eventually fell away from the “same/same” of my life into the sometimes chaotic streets of color, choice, style, and exquisiteness.
I fully struck out into my world in my early 20s through the blinding whiteness of the early “go go” 1980s. The white blond of my crew cut hair, the white flashing club strobe lights, and the bitter white of cocaine. With time and maturity, these whites muted and morphed, exposing all the colors that white contains. I have let this “white light”, in all its 1990’s new age-i-ness, be my life guide.
On my QFW journey I’ve realized there are many other QFW in the world, they are called different names like artists, avant garde, the freaky and the weird. We are the ones that don't often attune, integrate or even coordinate. There is the woman with the perfectly perched hat, the older woman with her silver hair twisted into a precise french knot with her light pink lipstick superbly applied and the young man in a well tailored bright suit jacket. I can sense it in them immediately when our paths cross, a member of the tribe. They are secure in their own style and it shows.
I saw the Princess of Fortiutous Whimsy a few years ago in Venice Italy. Braless, yellow knit top, shorts,brilliant red lipstick, and the hallmark teenage shoe of black high top converse that carried her long thin legs across the open air plaza. Her newly dyed copper red hair bouncing in a pony tail held with a silk scarf. She sauntered through the square unaware of the wake she left behind her. I felt giddy knowing that I was the one she was coming to meet. AFter not seeing her for so long while she traveled, I almost didn’t even recognize my PFW daughter.
The OG of all QFW to me, would be Goldie Hawn. Before she was the academy award winning actress she was a gogo girl, on the 1960s comedy show “Laugh In” (1968-1973). She was a true gogo dancer akin to those found at Whisky a GoGo in Paris and the Peppermint Lounge in NYC. In her bikini tops, mini skirts, white pleather gogo boots with peace signs and counter culture statements written across her bare skin - she danced and flipped her hair with reckless, whimsical, abandon, a true queen.
When I was asked throughout my lifetime, “what do you want to be when you grow up”? I would reply the proper and true responses of; author, entrepreneur, mother But if I were to answer from my QFW heart, the answer would always be “a gogo dancer”.
When I am living my best QFW self I feel freshly opened to the world and joy-filled. It doesn’t always work out that way of course, the reverse side can be closed dark and depressing My previously programmed self can easily twist the QFW into being seen as silly, frivolous, selfish, shallow an unintelligent.
THe QFW speaks in naturally arising spontaneous intuition, impulse or reflex. It’s a spark of a thought, a tickle in my gut , a leap of my heart, a sudden smile upon my face. I don’t have to act on it, I don’t have to even give her voice credence at that moment, but I always try to keep a light on for her.
I sometimes forget that I have this title of QFW plastered at the end of every email I send out into the world. Somehow in my announcing it to the world in this way, she lives on.