Jacqueline Onassis. JBKO. She's my idol.She was so self contained. No one knew what she was thinking or how she felt. Once she went out in public, wearing dark glasses that I suspect kept out much more than the sun, her demeanor was even and inscrutable. As one who blurts and wears her heart on her sleeve, I wish I was more like Jackie.
She did so much well. She was fluent in French and conversational in Spanish and Italian. She knew all the best gossip (she read voraciously about the Woody/Mia scandal), yet could discuss Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde, too. She had a soft voice, exceptionally good manners and an iron will, which proved to be a powerful combination and enabled to almost always do just about whatever she wanted. While she appreciated the best food, fine art, and classical music, she was also an animal lover, happy and comfortable on horseback or romping with a dog.
Effortlessly elegant, Jackie chose simple clothes in feminine colors that are still influential in fashion today. She liked accessories, but they never overpowered her look. You always noticed Jackie, not her outfit.
Her style wasn't limited to wardrobe. She had an unerring visual sense at home, too. In her book Living History, Hillary Clinton wrote of Jackie's apartment: "The first thing I noticed was that it was overflowing with books. They were stacked everywhere -- on and under tables, beside couches and chairs. Books were piled so high in her study that she could rest her plate on them if she was eating at her desk. She is the only person I've met who literally decorated her apartment with books -- and pulled it off." I know if I tried the same thing, I wouldn't be viewed as a trendsetter. I'd be the crazy-cat-lady-pack-rat.
Most of all, she was a profile in courage in her own right. Yes, everyone has seen the photos of Dallas and at Arlington Cemetery in November 1963. One of the most moving stories I've ever heard, though, takes place after JFK's funeral. After Jackie buried her husband before a worldwide TV audience, after she met privately and accepted condolences from world leaders at the White House. This woman -- who had been fired upon in an open car, who washed her husband's brains off her face, who mourned almost tearlessly before the nation, who had to face life not only without her husband, but without a home -- somehow managed to throw a birthday party for her 3 year old boy. I can't imagine what it must have been like for her, that day, after all she had been through, to adjust cone-shaped party hats on Kennedy cousin heads, express wonder when John-John unwrapped Mr. Potato Head and other toys, play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, serve cake and ice cream and sing. She had to appear to be having fun and convince her nieces and nephews that it was OK to do the same, too. After all, her son was only 3, and he didn't understand death but he did understand birthdays. She was his mother, she sucked it up and had the party. My throat closes a bit just thinking about the bravery involved in that preschool birthday party. I suspect most of us would have been in bed, behind closed doors, crying our eyes out in pain and loneliness and terror. But not Jackie. At least not until the last little Kennedy reveler had gone home.
She made it all look easy. It wasn't, of course. Underneath that impervious exterior, she was human and very vulnerable. That explains the chainsmoking and nailbiting. Knowing that doesn't make me admire her any less. I find it comforting that she may have appeared perfect, but she wasn't perfect.
