I am Susan

It is a truth as yet unacknowledged that any woman over 45 in charge of some aspect of parish life could be a Susan. 

Thanks to Twitter's "Susan from the Parish Council," English-speaking Catholics online have had a chuckle or two at the expense of the elderly ladies who dominate parishes and fight for the Spirit of Vatican Two. And I don't doubt that many of these ladies are tyrants who deserve a bit of mockery, although I note that the promulgation of the Spirit of Vatican Two was not their fault.

I laughed at Susan, too, until I found myself crying bitterly in a car park because my TLM community was probably being moved to a chapel with a tearoom that would have been inaccessible to the disabled, difficult for parents, and dangerous for children. I believe the clergy involved rather liked the pretty chapel, but I was furious. Sometimes when you scratch a Trad you find a member of Alpha Sigma Nu.  I went on the warpath, and without knowing exactly how or why it happened, I note that we were not moved in the end. 

Recently I discovered that plans are afoot to renovate the tearoom for which I went to war. I wrote to my opposite number at the Earlier Mass to discover what this meant to her After Mass Coffee and Tea and to my After Mass Coffee and Tea. It was, I reflected, one Susan writing to another. 

Yesterday someone gave me a board game called "Jane Austen's Matchmaker Chapter Two," which made me feel that my Susan tendencies had not gone unnoticed. However, I would like to point out that I am not at all interested in matchmaking and (once again) that Jane Austen described the lives of multi-millionaires. I like to provide rational entertainments and hope to help restore Western Civilization by reestablishing basic tenets of social behaviour, but machinations around seating arrangements and forcing X to dance with Y are not my thing. In fact, I now find the whole concept frightening. 

Matchmaking is frightening because marriage is a very serious thing and should only be entered into, in the West, because both parties are so crazy-in-love that they sincerely believe their hearts will implode if they don't marry each other. (The right man for any woman is the one who is so tactful as to be crazy about her at least 5 seconds before she is observably crazy about him. He also should have a good character and a job/trade/profession, naturally.) Marriage only works if both parties are thoroughly decent to each other and to their children, and I'm frankly terrified of the alternative. In fact, I'd rather think about being a Susan.

The difficulty with being a Susan is that some of the mirth being a Susan excites is not entirely down to being strong-minded, but being strong-minded, female, and over 45 (and, like a Karen, of European extraction). Laughing at someone because she is female and aging (and pale) strikes me as unfair. It is especially unfair as many women first feel confident and have their feet on solid ground for the first time since childhood after the age of 40. After feeling frightened and unsure for about 28 years, you finally feel confidence rushing through your veins. You perceive a problem, you take action, and all of a sudden you're a Karen--or a Susan. Unjust! 

However, women over 45 complaining because women over 45 aren't taken entirely seriously is scarcely new or original, so I will stop. Instead I will note that I also received yesterday two beautiful mugs from northern Poland in tribute to my dance-making endeavours, which was splendid. 

I will also say that my waltzing parties are now so successful that I have engaged a larger hall. Once again, I encourage my fellow Susans out there, especially the Trad Susans, to consider hosting social dancing parties of your own.