Virago Vagabond

There’s a hill on a road that’s named after my family.

It’s the refuse of a glacier that scraped across the continent thousands of years ago. In the fourth grade I learned the name of this landform, but I never remember it because I have another name for this hill.

I simply call it Mine.

And every year for as long as I can remember, I’ve gone to the top of my hill.

As a child, my mom would go with me and hold my hand. We’d pick blackberries on the hill and eat them until our fingers and lips turned bright purple and my belly ached. We’d watch hang gliders fly off the edge with their nylon wings, and hold our breath until they landed in the field below.

I remember one of my earliest visits to my hill. I ran through the tall grass and picked wild flowers. Mom warned me to stay close and not go far, but something called to me.

I let go of her hand and stepped to the grassy edge. I looked out at the entire world I knew. I could see my house, and my daddy’s farm. I could count the cows and see the soccer fields I played on.

As the wind blew my mother’s voice through my ponytail and fluttered my shirt, I closed my eyes and held out my arms and imagined myself soaring up over everything and flying away.

Now every year I go alone to the top of my hill. I stand at the edge, and I hold out my arms and close my eyes. And for a moment, just a moment, I soar up over everything and fly away.

I drive by my hill often, and every time I yearn to climb it and stand alone at the top of my childhood world. But even more, I yearn to leave my hill.

It’s time to really fly. Watch me soar.

Now, nasty dictionaries (note the word “dic” in their name) make viragoes sound bad – a quick Google search gave me “a noisy or scolding or domineering woman,” and wikipedia even said it’s ” a pejorative name for a verbally abusive and angry woman. It is borrowed from Latin virago, which means ‘resembling (-ago) a man (vir)’. ”
Well, this “noisy, domineering, angry woman” says to hell with all that.
I got the wonderful phrase Virago from Florence King’s book “Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady.”
In it King writes that viragoes are “the only V worth having… A virago is a woman of geat stature, strength and courage who is not feminine in the conventional ways.”
That’s me to a V.
Like King’s mother, I should have it painted on my bowling ball. If I had one, I would.
Instead, I’m painting it on my blog.
Perhaps my parents knew before I was born that I wouldn’t fit the conventional ways of womanhood.
My father decided to christen me Elliotte, the name of a cocktail waitress he met on vacation in Hawaii. She’s not my mother, and dad claims “nothing happened, I just liked the name.”
I’ve yet to meet another female with the same name, although the brilliant show “Scrubs” has a female Eliot Reid (I like my spelling better) as one of its main characters.
A few people have told me they’ve met other female Elliottes (spelling varies), and another quick Google search showed me “Elliotte Crowell” is an actress, but generally I’m a unique first encounter with the female Elliotte kind.
I like it that way, because my dad might not have known it when he named me Elliotte, but I’m a woman of geat stature, strength and courage who is not feminine in the conventional ways.
So when I start my vagabonding in August, you can call me Elliotte, or Virago for short.