UnderWoman

This “In the aftermath of the first snow” and !! MEDICAL ALERT !! stuff was all well and good.

But in January 2010, UnderWoman’s myasthenia gravis took a turn for the life threatening, and our hero very nearly died….

After a prolonged flare that could not be brought under control despite all the strong medicines and rigorous treatments tried, UnderWoman wound up intubated in the St. Cukes NICU, where they very nearly killed her before transferring her to her own TNYECONS (The New York EpiCenter of NeuroScience) and the very capable (but trembling) hands of the soon-to-retire Rich Granfeld and his caring, talented team.

As but one of the results of being ventilated (and literally unable to speak) for a week, UnderWoman’s Mom, Merrie Do-It, with the help of a concerted team of family and staff (and one disgruntled UnderWoman detractor), conspired that UnderWoman should move from Manhattan, her soul city of 26 years, to her home state of Maryland BEFORE UnderWoman could regain enough physical, emotional or financial strength to even think about it…much less protest.

In Maryland, Merrie Do-It could serve as UnderWoman’s chef, chauffeur, patron saint and pain in the a**.

So here UnderWoman is, at long last, back in the very land of encroaching suburbs and endless strip malls that she had worked so hard to escape so many years ago…and LOVING IT!!

Well, actually, it was a strange and winding road from her last backwards glances at Brian Liebman to “LOVING IT” on her own.

So more about that….

In Maryland, UnderWoman has time to concentrate on herself.

What else is there to do, since she neglected to have kids and buy a house here so many years ago?

As soon as she has regained adequate physical and emotional strength, she calls the marketing department of Under Armour, also based in Maryland, in hopes of procuring potential sponsorship and cross-promotion opportunities.

Her tides must be turning, because UnderWoman almost immediately receives a call back from an Under Armour’s talent agent, who accuses UnderWoman of…having skinny arms!

What does he expect?  UnderWoman’s logo — unlike the expensive ones that her person, brand builder Wendy Do-It, has helped spearhead for major companies, projects and products — cost $0, and is in fact cut out from her Sweet Sixteen caricature, when UW was even more energetic than she is now…and very nearly anorexic.

The agency is not the first to proclaim that UW’s big eyes and thin thighs might send the wrong message to a world already plagued with eating disorders and misplaced aspirations towards them.

More importantly, UnderWoman asks, what does Under Armour PROPOSE?

Despite her disabilities, Under Armour proposes that UnderWoman take up weight training and at least one sport.

Well!  Intel had wanted Wendy Do-It to get good at golf shortly before her myasthenia gravis diagnosis.  Back then, Intel was launching the Tiger Woods Learning Centers, and thought that some some “course time” could extend Wendy’s schmoozing repertoire from after-hours drinking with clients (at which she excelled) into the daylight hours.

Simultaneously, Wendy had tried taking up tennis again.  But alas, the signs she posted in Central Park didn’t attract quite the attention she’d wanted:

“Middle-aged girl, with small head (racquets had enlarged since her last foray into the field) and no balls (why invest in balls until one needed balls…) seeks patient partner to take to the courts.”

Then, too, her AOL boss had been so big into basketball that he ultimately ended up owning the team!  Hopefully they would take in some home games together soon.

But first things first:

UnderWoman seeks an illustrator with bold Sharpie to bulk her up — ideally also replacing the heart from her Sweet Sixteen caricature with golf club, tennis racquet, basketball.

UnderWoman seeks a personal trainer.

And she seeks a few good sponsors….

For the patience and funds of Merrie Do-It are running short.  And UnderWoman longs to stand on her own two feet again….But this time, on stronger legs!

UnderWoman likes her first logo!

Unlike days of brand building for Fortune 500s — with rich budgets and art departments around the world — UnderWoman Take One has cost nothing.

She is proud to have done something semi-artistic on her own:

She has, without serious injury, used an X-Acto knife to cut an image from a photo of a caricature of herself at sixteen. This image leaps out from an egg cracking open, made by using a Sharpie to nestle a W into the U. She loves the tag lines that this logo might lead to — UnderWoman Hatches a Plan, UnderWoman Thinks Outside the Egg, UnderWoman Acts Over her Egg, and more.

She is confident that X-Acto and Sharpie will sign on as sponsors soon.

Still, the feedback on the original UW logo does not come back unanimous:

Some say UnderWoman’s big eyes and thin thighs do no service to humanity.

Others are upset that she is missing a left hand. (It formerly held a “Sweet Sixteen” heart that Wendy found sappy and removed with a quick slip of the wrist….)

Taking all this feedback in stride, and now embracing her life in Maryland enough to safely return to New York without posing a flight risk, UnderWoman and entourage hop a bus to Manhattan and set off in search:

At the Central Park Zoo, UnderWoman susses out the caricaturists — judging them on a weighted average of talent, paper stock, pricing, boldness, accuracy, speed.

When she has found THE ONE, she presents him with her hope — holding forth the cut-out figure, presenting her preferred Pantone Matching System color palette, pointing to potential type faces, pontificating about the “happy medium” look that will “split the difference” between her younger self and her older self.

“Wait,” the Caricature King cuts her short: “You are looking for a LOGO, not a caricature!”

“Well, really more like a brand than a logo,” says UnderWoman, quite pleased.

“I can’t just do that for you, here, in public, in the park,” he hisses, “lest everyone in the line behind you also seeks to be a brand.”

“And the problem with that would be?” asks UnderWoman.

He hands her a card, and says, in loud whisper: “I mean, I would have to do this in private, at night, for more pay.”

UnderWoman considers the possibilities, begins to bargain: “Night would be WONDERFUL,” she purrs.  “Would you be willing to throw in some stocks of Obama, Oprah, Martha, Madoff?  UnderWoman would like to talk with them. UnderWoman also seeks thematic and seasonal backdrops as part of the packege. See! The cracking egg also resembles a tulip, which is especially heartening in the Spring. I’m thinking Colorforms, paper dolls. And….”

“Please stop now,” he says. “Google me. E-mail me. Call me. But don’t give people ideas….”

“Dessine-moi un mouton,” she says, pouting, strutting, as parting words.

He laughs…knows just what she means!

But it will be months before they pursue this path again.

For now, other things take precedence….

UnderWoman decides that it’s best to proceed along the lines of Saint-Exupery’s Le Petit Prince, who truculently demands, dessine-moi un mouton….”

In Central Park, just north of Caricature King, armed with all the tools of her trade and a few work-for-hire forms, she will beseech strangers to draw their versions of she and her entourage.

Things do not exactly go as planned:

Brisk-It, her Attention Deficit Disorder Dog, runs off in all directions. Pig-It, the three-legged one, hops and limps along in sporadic bursts.  And Risk-It, the myotonic goat, faints whenever excited or scared…which is always.  The progress is slow. No people have been approached. No portraits have been drawn.

Risk-It faints yet again in the enthusiasm of entering Sheep’s Meadow…when Brian Liebman, the amnesic neuro-anatomist, UnderWoman’s co-star from myasthenia gravis night out…and so much more…comes running over.

As usual, he is brilliant, enthusiastic, and a little “off.”

It is as if they have not missed a beat…as if it has not been months since UnderWoman’s sudden disappearance from their intense but brief scene, narrated through the senses, with Central Park as sundial, meeting each other at every gate they could name…and at some that had not yet been named.

“Those are a lot of pencils in your pocket,” he says.  “You weren’t going to write me off, were you?”

She laughs.

“I would have called if you’d had a phone number or a phone, a name you could remember or one I could pronounce.”

She hands him a doctor’s note — a drastically shrunk-down top-line summary of her precipitous flare’s progression — from ocular symptoms that made it hard to see to bulbar ones that made it hard to speak, and then to swallow, and then to breathe, and that ultimately led to UnderWoman’s intubation / ventilation and her Maryland “vacation.”

“I asked after you as soon as I could talk again,” UnderWoman assures.  “But nobody knew:  Where where you?”

“Missing,” he says mournfully, shrugging his shoulders.

Brian hands her his notebook.

It brims with pieces of poem, snippets of songs, favorite math equations, and drawings that take her breath away.

Brian and UnderWoman incline their heads towards each other.  Both cry….

And then, Brisk-It pees on Brian’s pants leg again.

And the animals of Delacorte Music Clock strike up their march.

There will be time!  There will be time….