When my brother was 16, and I was 10, I told him I was glad to be a girl because boys had to go into the military. They had no choice. I had grown up hearing about my father in WWII, freezing winters and exploding mines. I was glad I didn’t have to go to work every weekday like my father and understand all the law books and win cases. At the time, women lawyers were very rare.

After my mother fixed my father’s breakfast and he went off to catch the train, she gave the four of us breakfast and handed us the lunches she had packed before waving us out the door. I saw that she was in the living room, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes, with the dog at her feet. When I tell people I wanted to stay home like my mother when no one else was in the house, they say how unempowered she was. I wasn’t looking for power. I was looking for time to myself.

But now women want to be—and are—top combat soldiers. They want to be top attorneys. Many have a bunch of children, too.

There is a passage in Genesis that reads, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a suitable helper.”

God would have made this companion from available materials, but I think it must have taken a while, maybe years, for God and Adam to agree on a form for this “suitable helper.” My paintings in this series are of those that did not make the cut.