Girl Crush … as seen in the NY Times …

… meaning not "girl-on-girl," as seen in Girls Gone Wild infomercials.*

During the summer of 2005, the NY Times wrote about how women, especially working women, tend to get "crushes" on other women. It's always a woman who is just SO … fantastic, cool, together, etc. Who so exemplifies everything you want to be, but aren't (or aren't yet). A woman whose respect you dearly want to have.

I've never had a real-life girl crush. But I have had an enduring, lifelong girl crush on the woman you see here.

JBKO. Effortlessly elegant. Sublimely self-contained. Feminine, but tough as nails when the situation demanded it.

Jackie Kennedy was fluent in French and conversational in Spanish. For fun she read Greek poets. For fun, I read about her.

She captured my imagination when I was a little girl. I was fascinated by how fascinated everyone was with her. As I got older, I got it. And like many others all over the world (including, it seems, Princess Diana), my fascination with her didn't wane with time.

My all-time favorite Jackie anecdote: After being fired upon in an open car, after being with her husband when he is pronounced dead, after exhibiting nothing but grace and stoicism to a worldwide television audience as she buried him, after receiving the foreign dignitaries who wished to convey their condolences, on the VERY DAY of that famous funeral, she switched gears fast and efficiently. To oversee a birthday party for her three-year-old son. Who didn't understand where Daddy was, but certainly remembered it was his birthday. So she passed out cone-shaped birthday hats, played preschool party games and tried to convince her neices and nephews that it was not only OK to be festive on this horrible day, it was the right thing to do. She sucked it up because she was John Jr.'s mother, and it was his birthday.

My throat closes a little every time I think of what it took for her to do that on that day.

I see stories all the time about firefighters, cops and soldiers. I have nothing but gratitude for anyone who is willing to go into harm's way on my behalf, but I don't get it. I don't understand what it takes to go into a burning building or face a gun. I do, however, understand how hard it would be to swallow my fear and heartache long enough to sing "Happy Birthday" and feign delight as a three-year-old rips paper off of Lincoln Logs and Mr. Potato Head. The lady had guts.


*Geez, why do straight men find that particular sexual situation so hot, even though it renders them completely irrelevant? I like to be IN my own fantasies. Oh well, that's a post for another day.