When one is in danger of complacency or inertia, the examples of others can often serve as a zesty tonic.  To wit: these three extraordinary women I met this week.

Sunita

Sunita, whom colleagues describe as “always smiling and loving,” works as a manicurist at a D.C. salon.  She came to the U.S. four years ago with her then-nine-year-0ld daughter, leaving her son (then four years old) and husband back in Nepal.  The reason?

“I want to give my daughter a different life than me.”

She is working towards the much-desired eventuality that the the family will regroup here permanently.  She hopes to soon provide her son what she has been able to give her daughter.  She smiles the whole time she’s telling me this, saying her grandparents, who lived till “about 100,” went through similarly devastating hardships.

“It’s OK.  We are all healthy.  So I always smile and thanks.”

After meeting her,  I realize that I have no problems.

Erin

Erin looks like she just walked out of the pages of Wuthering Heights, what with her thick raven mane, her Irish freckles and and a face, as Bronte wrote, that’s “just like the landscape–shadows and sunshine flitting over it in rapid succession.”

Yet Erin is no 19th century damsel: she is a force who has infiltrated a world traditionally offered largely to men.  Erin teaches fly-fishing. It has enhanced her life immeasurably, she says, by relieving stress, among other things. And despite sensing that she’s “walking into a locker room” every time she wades into a river with her gear, she knows she’s also simultaneously making a silent, modest and firm feminist statement.

She’s another one with a lovely, ready smile.  I’m hoping she’ll soon teach me her passion.

Mary Alice

I have seldom met even an average five-year-old who can display the energy, curiosity and ebullience of this tiny Southern lady.  And a lady she is indeed: classy, elegant, and “on.”  I met her through her daughter, my dear friend Carol Anne:  the two of them had dashed down to D.C. in the midst of a whirlwind, Broadway show-hopping, three-day visit to New York City.

“For one thing, Monday nights are dark in New York,” Mary Alice said, referring to the theater world’s one night off.  ”And for another, my whole life, if I’m ever within 200 miles of people I love, I make the effort.  So we jumped on the train this morning and here we are!  We go back to the New York later today.”

Mary Alice grew up in Washington, you see, and has long stayed in touch with sorority sisters and other friends.  More than a dozen of them trekked out to the Georgetown Inn to see her.  Others, myself included, trickled in later as the moveable feast migrated from the dining room to the bar.  And what did we all find?  Mary Alice, utterly and inimitably holding court.

Mary Alice and her daughter, my dear friend Carol Anne

She is magnificent, this woman.  Behold that hat: she bought it — and three others — at a millinery in Soho in between matinee and evening performances.  The jacket is emerald crepe.  The pants were black and sleek and perfectly pressed, and the shoes, dear reader, were gold strappy sandals, ones high enough to cripple a woman half her age. The lipstick was Parisian red; the eyes were done and the hair was perfectly set.

“I wanted to show my respect.”

I didn’t even know her name until we departed.  As she kissed me goodbye, she said, “It’s Mary Alice.  Mary Alice from Dallas.  Easy to remember.”

Impossible woman to forget.

And one I didn’t meet…Esther Corcoran

I read about Esther Corcoran today in the Washington Post’s obit section.  She died this week at age 104, having risen from “a private in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps to a lieutenant colonel in the regular Army,” the Post says.  The obit doesn’t mention any immediate family, so I thought it best to do my part to acknowledge her memory.

I have no idea, despite the title of this post, how a woman born in 1906 lived this long.  But if Col. Corcoran was anything like Mary Alice, then the secret, besides genes and good living, might just be what Carol Anne told me.

“She’s a happy person.  She accentuates the positive.”

“I like that song,” Mary Alice responded, sharp as a tack.

Eeee-lim-in-ate the negative…

Sounds like a good one to emulate.