Meet Roxi

She took time out of her busy schedule, and she came to my door holding a bag of homemade cookies and chocolate. YUM! The shoot was off to a great start. I had met Roxi in a photo journal class. I gathered bits of her daily life through the photos she shared during the course. She provides Communion to shut ins, holds Apple Dumpling fundraisers, host Community Dinners, knocks out walls and runs marathons. She is a strong woman who knows her path. She was patient with me as I manipulated her and the lighting to get the most wrinkled look possible. Then she left me with a warm hug and I knew that she had gone out of her way to do this for me expecting nothing in return. Funny after she left and I processed my photos, I kept coming back to this one. Not the most dramatic of the shoot, but the one in which I saw the little girl and the gentle spirit that builds into a strong woman. Here is her story....






I've never been a girly girl. I had dolls, but without sisters they were not played with as often as I played with my brothers and their cars and trucks in the sand pile by the shed. I was a tomboy and I knew it. Growing up on a dairy farm 10 miles from town in northwestern Wisconsin I didn't have girlfriends close by, so my brothers and I rode bikes on the farm, played softball and football in the yard, and did our chores.


Most often chores were divided along traditional gender roles. After supper my brothers went to the barn with my father and grandfather to milk the cows while I stayed in the house with my mother to wash dishes. I learned how to cook, how to sew, how to clean, how to manage a household. I also learned you do what needs to be done even when they crossed traditional gender lines.


I learned to fold fitted sheets from my grandfather. My mother regularly mowed the lawn. My father taught me to throw a football. When I was five my father set me on the flat roof of a steel shed; my job was holding nuts while he tightened the bolts. At 16 Dad built a small addition to the house and I was given the task of gofer; go for tools, go for this, go for lemonade.


It was the 70's and the Woman's Movement challenged traditional gender roles. I was already living it, and so were most of the women I knew. It was not a conscience decision on their part. It was simply doing what needed to be done. For me that meant working my way through college, then went on to seminary. I became a pastor, then wife and stepmother. Along the way I accumulated degrees. Now I am wrinkled, and if genetics has a say, these wrinkles are just the beginning to a face furrowed with wrinkles.


I think I should name them. One is called Hazel, my most wrinkled grandmother, whose first born died after being hit by a car when he was 4. One is called Ruth, who delighted in children. One is called Esther, an aunt of gentle spirit. Another is called Gertrude, who homesteaded 169 acres. My wrinkles are named Jane and Cori and Cari and Barbo and Freelove and Susan and Anna and Elizabeth and Caroline and Sarah. My wrinkles are named for women who sailed from England and Ireland and Norway and Germany, women who traveled west from New England to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. My wrinkles are named for the women whose own wrinkles I see on my face.....wrinkles that declare perseverance, determination and resilience.