Sophie Deveraux
As is well known by now, I love to look at stories through Christian-colored glasses. I also love to look for women who tend their hearth and home regardless of the intentions of the director, writers, or actors. Another beautiful thing to look for to help us love truth is women who softly and gently tend their people. These women nurture others, gather them close, and help them be better people. They can be subtle. It’s not necessarily the point of the story being told. You must pay attention. They’re the ones who mother. Not in a smothering, narcissistic, helicopter way, but in a “Did you eat? Have you slept?” sort of way. They are also not engaged in child rearing per se, but are simply women who care for their people in a specifically nurturing way.
My new favorite people-tender is Sophie Deveraux from Leverage. Leverage is a heist show from the early 2000s. Its tagline is: Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys. It’s about four criminals who normally work alone, that team up with one honest man to use their unique skills for the good of the downtrodden and abused. Sophie has all the normal, worldly signs of success: wealth, beauty, sex appeal. She’s smart and elegant. Sophie is a grifter. She cons people by studying them, understanding their desires, and making them think they’re close to getting what they want. When Leverage starts, Nate—the honest man—brings Sophie onto the team to help him con someone who conned him. After they win, the whole team decides to keep using their skills to go after bad guys that the law can’t take down. They turn their criminal gifts into a force for good.
The show is cheesy and silly and manages to have some of the best season finales. It has a lot of heart. Right when you think you might want to watch something deeper it shifts from a cool heist to broken people trying with their last breath to do what is right. In that way it’s kind of in the same vein as Chuck and even Dr Who. A lot of silliness, geeky references, and a lot of heart.
The other appealing thing about this show is its use of the found family. It establishes its found family dynamic in the first episode not so much as everyone is best friends who form a family but as an actual family. Nate refers to Eliot, Parker, and Hardison as “children” when he gets annoyed. Eliot, Parker, and Hardison have some of the best sibling dynamics I’ve seen since Firefly. (And they handle the love story between Parker and Hardison so well that it manages to not ruin the sibling side and not be weird. Because, after all, these people aren’t siblings.) When they recruit Sophie, Eliot climbs in the back seat so she can sit up front with Nate, just like a family. Mom and Dad up front, kids in the back.
Over and over in the show, Sophie is the one who takes care of everyone. She nurtures Eliot, Hardison, and Parker. She helps Parker understand people. They have the sweetest mother-daughter vibe. She gains Eliot’s trust, breaks it, and regains it. She helps Hardison develop his skills and grow others. She encourages all of them while giving them room. With Nate, she constantly works to confront him, keep him grounded, and help him face his demons. Eliot responds to Nate’s downward spiral into alcoholism like a firstborn son, protecting the family from a father who is out of control, and hard-hitting. Sophie, without nagging, calls Nate out all the time, holding him to a higher standard, all while encouraging him and reminding him that she loves him and is here for him. At one point, Sophie decides she wants to do Nate’s job and run the con, be the Mastermind. It doesn’t go well. Nate’s job is harder than she anticipated. At the end of the episode, she gives the lead back to Nate and is content to be his support and helper. (What show would do that today?) In season 2, Sophie fakes her death and goes to find herself. The team keeps calling her. All of them. Because she is who they rely on to tend them. Sophie’s whole character is summed up in something Hardison said to her: We trust Nate to make sure the plan works. We trust you to make sure we’re all okay.
This ladies! This! This is why we are the homemakers. We are here in our dwellings so that we can make sure our people are okay. Not through fear, anxiety, nagging, or sheer willpower, but by seeing, nurturing, loving, confronting if needed, hand on the forehead, big hugs of support. We offer the support of food and shelter, but we also do the intangible work of lifting our people up or providing them a soft place to fall. We provide generations with safety because we are here. Our world talks a lot about safe spaces while disregarding the very people who create acceptable safe spaces. It is impossible to make the world safe. But we can strive to make our homes safe places for our few people. We can create pockets of safe spaces, be it Sophie at Leverage Headquarters, Shaye Elliot of the Elliot Homestead, or just Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith down the road who you don’t know and will never hear about.
We’re the support. That’s not an easy calling. It is a burden. It is hard work. It is often intangible. It is hard to help. It is hard to tend. It’s hard to tend people. Love isn’t ephemeral. It is a blood and guts choice every day. Love doesn’t ignore problems and sin, but it sure covers a lot of them.
The people we nurture and tend, that we appropriately “mother’ are the main beneficiaries of our homemaking. They’re the why to our what. Homemaking isn’t child-rearing. It’s not. That’s a whole separate job. But it is tending people. Everything we do from our attitude to our cooking to our cleaning to our hobbies affects our people, churches, and communities. That’s a heavy burden to bear. There are elements of homemaking that are done for the sheer delight of doing them, but their real value comes from doing them for someone else.
Looking at Sophie is looking at a far-from-normal mother who is graciously, confidently, and kindly tending her people.
