Esperanza, a Woman of Many Hats
Did you listen to (or watch) Episode 16 of Unpacking Life’s Crazy? If so, I hope you enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, despite my effort make a list of all the jobs I’ve worked though the years, there have been so many that I was bound to miss a few. Here are some I’d forgotten.
When I was a child, my best friend lived on a Christmas Tree farm. Their property bordered our sheep ranch. So every year from the day after Thanksgiving until the trees were sold out, my best friend was an ‘indentured servant’ for her parents.
As her best friend, I joined her in this unpaid labor. It was the only way we could hang out during the busy season. We helped people find their trees, cut them down, hall them back to their cars and gave out candy canes. We also got to dress as elves and walk beside her father in his tractor for the Thanksgiving parade to advertise the tree farm. Back then we were still allowed to pass out candy to kids along main street during the parade. That part was a lot of fun.
I’d also forgot a couple odd jobs that involved nudity, one of which was technically illegal.
When I was 17, I modeled for a photographer in Tuolumne County. Some of the images were very interesting. He did some long exposure photos in a grave yard where I walked over a graves in a white nightgown. It was developed in black and white and had the effect of making me look like a blurred ghost in the photos.
But some I also posed nude for some of the photo. Some in a bathtub, some outdoors as well. I didn’t feel coerced or embarrassed, for a couple of reasons. First, best friend’s parents were naturalists, so nudity for me wasn’t something I ever considered shameful. We’d spent summers skinny dipping in rivers and creeks since I was very little. Her mother was also an artist like my father, so nudity in art and nude models being utilized by artists throughout history was something I was very familiar with.
Many years later, I also posed naked for an elderly sculptor in Calaveras County. It’s likely there’s a sculpture of me carved into a hunk of marble somewhere out in the world. I don’t expect it will be famous one day like Michael Angelo’s David, but that was a thing that I did. Not sure, but I think maybe I made $50 for that modeling job, so there’s that.
“There are no bad hair days, just good hat days?”
My anxiety lead me to leave many a job over the years. How many? For that you’ll have to listen to or watch episode 16 of my podcast to find out. But here’s a few forgot to mention in the episode.
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