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twenty-one and died, on average, at fifty-two, this was exactly the right age for a young woman to get her act together.
    Fortunately for me, and my search for O’Keeffian life lessons, it was not the beginning of everything coming together. My mother used to say that no one ever learns anything when things are going well, and however well Patsy’s life may have looked from the outside, inside she was in turmoil.
    Like so many people leaving childhood and taking those first tentative steps into adulthood, Georgia suffered deeply from she knew not what. Because she was a Midwestern farm girl she didn’t grumble, but she was unhappy. Her scholarship had been awarded based on a painting of a dead rabbit slung beside a copper pot that looked as if it hadn’t seen a good polishing since the first Thanksgiving, done in the smeary style of her mentor, Merritt Chase. In her heart, she knew that if this was what painting was all about—duplicating objective reality—she didn’t want anything to do with it. And anyway, there were people who were much better at doing that than she was, despite Chase’s encouragement. Even the Impressionists, so up-to-the-minute, so cutting-edge, were still giving their impressions of what they saw. The eyes still ruled the day. What about the heart? Was there no room for feelings in painting?
    The Lake George countryside was a lush blanket of blooming flowers, the lake itself a sun-kissed sapphire, yet she felt no urge to paint. Instead, she rowed desultorily around the lake with the sensitive, smitten Dannenberg, until one day the rowboat was stolen, and with it, her interest in pursuing a career as an artist.
    After her stint at Lake George ended, Patsy went home to dispiriting Williamsburg, with its decaying mansions and cold neighbors. Georgia—no one called her Patsy at home—dusted the living room in the morning and read in the long, lazy afternoons. Because it was another time, and people didn’t air their money troubles, Georgia’s only clue that family finances were on their way from bad to worse was that when September came, only her brother Alexius was sent to school. Education for girls a hundred years ago was a luxury on par with having a personal trainer or a twice-weekly housecleaner; when money got tight, it was the first thing to go.
    Some Lessons for Getting through Challenging Times
    Screw the lemonade—seriously.
    Sometimes when life gives you lemons, you stick them in the fridge and forget about them, until one day months later you’re cleaning out the vegetable drawer (because every time you open the door something smells), and lo and behold, you discover an old bag of radishes with liquefied greens, and while times may be challenging, they’re not impossible. You’re not a complete wreck; you just aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be doing next. You manage to get it together enough to sling those nasty radishes into the garbage. Meanwhile, at the back of the drawer you come across these shriveled yellow artifacts, perhaps spotted with white mold. Yes, those annoying lemons. The ones that you were supposed to use for the lemonade you didn’t want. My point is, sometimes there’s no making the best of things. Georgia may have been half Irish, but she was half Hungarian too (i.e., capable of being dour and petulant).
    For all the ways in which Georgia was not like us, in some ways she was. She was given lemons and she did not make lemonade. She did not rise above her circumstances and do something inspiring and amazing. Instead, she dragged herself back to Chicago (gray, uninspiring), moved back in with her uncle Charles and aunt Ollie (nice of them to have her back; still), and proceeded to “pursue” a “career” in commercial art. Basically, she was hired to work in a sweatshop that made drawings for dress catalogs. Georgia’s subspecialty was lace collars and cuffs. She loathed