Closet archive

Today I am grateful that I stopped a resurgence of panic paralysis at work.  I thought about something my career coach told me: think about how you want to show up to this meeting.  I didn’t have a serious meeting, but I thought about how I wanted to show up to my colleagues.  I didn’t want to show up panicked.  I wanted to show up creative and composed.  So I tried to be that way.  I am not sure I was particularly creative or composed, but the effort distracted me from the panic.  I am going to try this the next time I’m in a situation that triggers my secondary infertility sadness.  How do I want to show up, to others, to my family?  Happy, grateful, not in my own head.  It doesn’t matter if I achieve that — if the effort displaces the bad feelings, that will be enough.  I realize that this is not a particularly original coping mechanism, but something about this formulation speaks to me.  I don’t like the idea of faking it — I do that already and it just encourages the sadness to rage.  I do (usually) like the idea of making an effort.

In response to my post about 38 dresses, the always wise and crafty sister told me to do a once-a-week rummage in the closet archive.  Tomorrow I will debut my first attempt:

(I love how kooky this looks on the floor, especially the scrawny, barely visible tights-legs, which look like the same color as the carpet, and the huge foreshortened boots.)  The little-worn but long-held item in this ensemble is the skirt.  I’m glad the photo shows the subtle herringbone pattern and the intentionally frayed hem.  The front of the skirt ends at the little bit of black lace detail — what you see below it in the photo is actually the inside of the back.

Why I don’t wear it: I last wore this skirt to work more than two years ago, with a white t-shirt, black cardigan, pearls, and pumps.  I remember it because the outfit felt like a costume, like it was 1950s dress-up day.  Or, to be honest, “dress like you did on a good day in high school dress-up day,” because that’s how I dressed in high school — not 1950s ironic, but 1980s matronly-before-my-time.   One of my high school nicknames was June Cleaver, which I’d forgotten until I started writing this post.  (My first date in college was a blind date with a boy named Ward.  I’m not joking.  I recall nothing else of the date.)  The cut  isn’t perfect, either.  You can’t tell in the photo, but the waistband is only about 1/2 an inch (if that), and I look best in skirts with thicker waistbands — a two-inch or so waistband fools the observer’s eye into thinking I  in fact have a waist.

Why I still have it: It’s too useful to give away. I do occasionally wear the skirt to synagogue, especially on holidays, because it’s appropriate for that, and it’s pretty. I like the subtle details.  I’ve had this skirt for almost 10 years, and  I’d miss seeing it in my closet.

What might save it: The red sweater and the beat-up boots.  Red and gray is one of my favorite sartorial combinations — so why haven’t I worn this red sweater with this skirt before?  The boots contradict the rest of the outfit enough to keep me from feeling like…June Cleaver.  If I like this when I wear it tomorrow, I’ll try  this skirt with a red t-shirt when the weather warms up  — not sure what the shoes would be, though.  All my casual sandals would look wrong — like terrible mistakes  rather than witty twists.   So I may wear tidy and prim shoes, but a rougher top, like my denim shirt.

This was fun.  Thanks, sister, for inspiring me as you do in so many other ways.

Poem for Wednesday

Very fast, because it’s the Top Chef season finale tonight

Onions

by William Matthews

William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter

slithers and swirls across the floor

of the sauté pan, especially if its

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease

from the taut ball first the brittle,

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on

weeping as you go on in, through

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on

in to the core, to the bud-like,

acrid, fibrous skins densely

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal

comfort that infant humans secrete.

This is the best domestic perfume.

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual

endurance. It’s there when you clean up

and rinse the wine glasses and make

a joke, and you leave the minutest

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

William Matthews, “Onions” from Selected Poems and Translations, 1969-1991. Copyright © 1992 by William Matthews.

Shoes, anotated

Today I am thankful that I have found a space between me and my panic about a particular work project.  It may not make the next week at work any easier, or the outcome of a big undertaking any better, but not panic is better than panic.

I am so exhausted I’m almost silly.  But I do want to post, just for posting’s sake.  So I’m posting something silly.  Below are the shoes that I have on my Amazon wish list.   I store shoes there, and I look at them almost every day, and eventually I get sick of them and take them off the list.  It’s the apotheosis of disposable culture — I throw it away before I have it.  (All photos from Amazon)

Dansko canvas clog with bouncy rubber bottom.  My Converse don’t fit properly and don’t  support my feet properly.  I’ll wear these to synagogue and on weekends.   I’ll buy them soon.

Corso como pump.  I can’t decide if I like these or find them not quite right.   They remind me of shoes my mother wore or would have worn in the 1970s, and that may be enough for me, once they go on sale.  I would find it convenient to have this color summer heels.

These shoes are all from the same designer, Luiza Barcelos.  I’ve never seen her shoes in real life, but I quite like these designs.  The green pair is so goofy looking I have to love it (it also comes in a leopard print, which is too much for me, at least in this style).  I also have a pair of black flats with a pink rosette on my wish list.  The black wedges and green flats are on sale.  I do like those green flats, but I worry they’ll be insufficiently padded and not look good with anything.  I have prominent, bony ankles and muscular calves, and that cut probably won’t do me any favors.   And yet… I may buy them just to look at them and then return them.  The kick would be worth the $4 return shipping fee.

I’ve had fairly good luck with Tsubos, and again I’m looking for beige.  (Did I really just type that?  “I’m looking for beige”?  Oy vey.)  Also on my wish list in shiny black.  They may be too sporty.  Oh dear.  I am looking for beige and sedate.  Please intervene.

Why these?  I’m not sure.  They also come in bright green which I really love , but the green isn’t available in my size.  When I put them on my wishlist, they cost $65.  Now, thanks to some kind of dynamic pricing algorithm, they are $116, and therefore will not be mine.  I would pay that much for perfect walking sandals, because the cost per mile walked would be approximately 5 cents, but I can’t walk well enough in platforms to justify it for these.  I do like looking at them.

I’m playing chicken with Amazon to see how low the price of these boots will get before they run out of my size.  They also come in purple suede, which I ordered earlier this year.  I almost kept the purple ones, because they were really comfortable and I wanted to dare myself to commit to zany winter boots.  But they were half a size too big and they were really purple.  Muppet purple.  11-year-old girl purple.  Hell, 3-year-old girl purple.  And I started to worry that this was the first step towards becoming that kind of expressive 40-something whose choices go far past creative and expressive and are mired in kooky.  I saw someone wearing this black pair and they looked amazing.

This was a really fun post to write.   I feel less enervated.  Do you feel like you know me better now that you have a glimpse of my taste in shoes?

 

 

Infertility and existentialism — and shoes

Today I am thankful that I can think, and that I have Daniel to help me think.  We put each other through so much, but we also make each other smarter and that is very important to both of us.  And on our good days, we make each other laugh.  Very few people know this about Daniel, but he can be exceedingly silly.

I don’t know that I will actually talk about shoes in this post.  But “infertility and existentialism” was just too damn daunting to leave alone.

So I am still in the struggle.  Still struggling at work, still grappling with doubt and sadness.  But this is only in part because of infertility.  Infertility has forced me to confront some existential questions now, rather than putting them off till later.  And here is what I am thinking about.

Getting versus having: I spent the years between 20 and 40  preparing to be 40.  I think a lot of striving, achieving people do.  We get educated, we start working, we find partners and make legal arrangements, we buy big heavy things like houses and cars, and if our bodies do what we want them to do and we are gasp-inducingly lucky, we have a child or children.  I knew what 40 looked like.  I saw my mom build up to it and past it when I was a child and a teenager.  So I knew what the blueprint was.   I have spent 20 years getting 40-ness, acquiring it.

And now that I have it, I don’t know what to do with it.  I am very, very good at getting.  I am good at getting degrees, jobs, assignments, shoes (there they are!), lipsticks, groceries, mixing bowls.  I have a lot of energy for getting.  I am less sure about having.  I need to do the equivalent of shopping my closet for my whole life.  I don’t know what the having looks like.  I left my parents’ house for college when my mother was 42.  I have not seen an adult woman’s 40s enacted, not up close, not daily.  I am making it up for myself and Daniel and Milo.  What does it mean to stop acquiring, gaining, striving?  I mean, I want things like promotions and recognition and more assignments and more professional advancement, but those are going to be incremental.  There’s unlikely to be a great leap forward from here on out.

Another child would have been a great leap forward.  She would have delayed the what next question for another five years or so, maybe more.  But it’s here now. And the answer is, why “next”?  Why not now?  Have now and let next take care of itself for a minute.  See the view from the mountain you’ve spent 20 years climbing.  The thought unnerves me.  I have a fear of existential heights.

Getting more. I’ve written this before, I think.  If I keep myself focused on the moment, I am happy.  I get unhappy when I fear being unhappy in the future.   I think a lot, with mild panic, about what I need to do now so that I am happy at 6o.  Exercise.  Save money.  Wear sunscreen.  Develop close social ties.  Have meaningful work.  Drink a little less.  Eat intelligently.  Is that enough?  I look back on the last two decades and I see so many wrong choices (well not so many.  Fewer than I think.  What I really see is a lack of omniscience and a fair amount of fear).  What are the wrong choices I am making now that I will regret at 60?  Oh, hello alarm bell that is ringing and telling me, “D, you stupid cow, the biggest mistake you are making is not loving what is in front of you with all your crazy energy.  The biggest mistake you are making is envy and regret.”

I had a big surge of envy and regret on Sunday morning when we went to a baby naming ceremony.  We were surrounded by very happy, lucky, shiny couples with 3 or 4 children (no kidding — 3 kid minimum in that neighborhood, with 4 kids perfectly common.  The baby being named was a 4th child).  The life I was looking in on was so pretty, so ideal, so warm and full.  I wanted so much to have a family like that.  Envy doesn’t feel like envy when it’s not angry and hateful and spiteful and nasty.  It doesn’t feel like envy when I’m crying in the bathroom with longing.  But it is.  It doesn’t hurt the objects, it just hurts me.  I need to figure out not hurting me.  Maybe that’s my project for the 40-60 range.

 

The meaning of 38 dresses

Today I am thankful that I took Milo and his friend Noah to the park this afternoon, and tried to teach them to play basketball.  I usually am selfish with my Shabbat afternoon time.  I encourage Milo and his friends to entertain themselves while I nap (within earshot) or read.  But my feeling of Shabbat dread and unease is very present lately.  So why not do something different, since the old thing wasn’t making me happy?

Sara at Orchids in Buttonholes is causing all kinds of shifts in my thinking.  In a recent post, she explained how and why she started and maintains a closet inventory, and she created a page that shows each piece she has.  Inspired by her example, I went and counted (but I didn’t list) each item in my closet.  If I had done this two weeks ago, I would probably not have gone shopping.

I have 38 dresses.  Three of them have been purchased in the last month — because 35 was clearly not enough!  Why?  I have 38 dresses because I still have the dress I wore to my wedding rehearsal dinner more than 10 years ago.  I have a dress Daniel bought me two years ago when I brought home a dress from Gilt that didn’t fit properly, which I later returned.  He came home a few days later with a shopping bag and said, “You wanted a red dress, so I got you one.”  I have lots of dresses Daniel bought for me — he likes to shop for me.  Daniel likes to buy things for people, and it’s mostly sweet but it’s also a way of exerting his will —  “this is what I think you need, how I want you to be, whether or not you think you need it or want it. ”  We’ve quarreled about this.

So my dresses are memories and history and mistakes and experiments.  They are what I thought I might be (a very short dress with huge drapey sleeves, almost a cape on the back, that I thought I would wear to work, that I thought was a good break from my normal tailored shifts).  They are all the different parts of my life that don’t exactly overlap: I have dresses and skirts that I keep for the sole purpose of wearing to synagogue.  They are longish, not very snug, and I can wear them with the shoes that one wears for a 40 minute walk (each way).   I have around-the-house and in-the-park dresses. I have dresses that I don’t wear because they’re too nice, or too professional, or too tailored.

If I like one kind of dress, like a t-shirt dress, I’ll buy another one.  I’ll buy a dress because I don’t want my sister-in-law to see me in the same dresses year after year after year at Rosh Hashanah and Passover.   I’ll buy a dress because I want to be the kind of woman who wears that kind of dress.

It’s easier to buy a new dress than to revise or relinquish the old ones.  I don’t want to lose that part of me, or hurt Daniel’s feelings, or not try anymore to be someone in a dress like that.  I don’t want to look unusually good at work or synagogue, so I keep my schleppy dresses alongside my amazing ones, and reach for the schleppy ones first.    I’m afraid of feeling too great.

And here’s why I really can’t stop thinking about that closet inventory: it’s suggesting to me how I am thinking about secondary infertility and a lot of the rest of my life.  Last week in a post I wrote, I need to enjoy what I have and not keep searching for new things.  I recognized the walloping echo then.  But the echo isn’t stopping.  I buy the same thing over and over (how many black cardigans?  Oh, 5.  Well, two were hand-me-downs; one is grey-ish black, and one is really navy-ish black, and one I don’t really wear but think I should so I hang on to it.  Wait, it’s 6 actually.  I forgot another hand-me-down, a black sweater-coat.), rather than going back to the perfect one thing I have.  I want to repeat the experience.  I want lots of back up.  I want multiplicity.  Which is good, but it is also a dilution.  I think the thing that I don’t have will solve the problem, the problem of getting dressed, the problem of loneliness, the problem of not knowing what my life is supposed to be like now that I’m 40 and everything ahead looks like loss and not gain.  I don’t look at my accumulated resources and say, “Oh, it’s in here.”  I am not creative with the materials at hand.  I’m afraid of feeling too great (because it won’t last).

I’ve been low and scrambled this week, a complete mess at work, unable to concentrate or get anything done.  It’s possible that I miss the rush of getting new clothes, honestly.  It’s possible that I am settling into perma-sad.  I meant to say more with this post, to have some better synthesis or breakthrough.  Anyone who watches What Not to Wear understands the emotional power of clothes.  I’m just trying to say that I need to do more looking inward, more holding what I have and being in it (physically inside it, in the case of my clothes), more thinking about what to do with the resources at hand, more creating, less yearning.  And it’s hard to do.  It’s very hard, and scary.  I want to edit my closet, to have, say, 11 skirts and not 22, or decide to wear everything I own rather than keeping a museum, and it feels scary.  It feels scary to dive into what I have, all the parts of it, and claim it and use it (or give it away — what if I want it back?).  And I don’t even know what is metaphorical and what is literal in this maze of sentences.  I want to be who I am now — not who I hoped I’d be or who I used to be or who I think I ought to be — except everything between those dashes is also a part of who I am now.

Having a second baby was a good, good dream.  I have to let go of that dream, even though it was a good, good one.  Why do I have to learn that lesson so damn often?  If I practice with skirts, and blouses, and dresses and shoes, that all seemed like good ideas, too, will it be easier?

Varieties of Infertility Experience

It’s not a good idea for me to blog in the morning instead of going to work, but if I don’t do this now, these ideas and feelings will rattle around in my head and heart and distract me all day.  They may do that anyway, but at least now I’m making an effort.

It turns out that there are new frontiers of my sadness.  I’ve been approaching another one, and last night I arrived.  This will be hard to explain, but last night, the reality that I will never have another child took on a new and deeper resonance.  Previous sadnesses felt intense — sometimes so intense I wondered how I could bear it — but perhaps because they were so intense they stopped and went away.  But now there’s some kind of feeling in my bones or in new parts of my brain that this is really and truly permanent.  I mean I knew that of course, I knew I would never have another child months ago.  But until now some renegade part of my mind or spirit was holding out, or hadn’t gotten the message.  Now it’s true, and real.  This is perma-sad.  This is the sadness I’ll feel about it until I die.  It has finally arrived.

I wonder if the previous emotions were about the trauma of infertility treatment and the agony of the years leading up to the treatments in which Daniel would not decide whether to have another child (years in which our fertility may have leaked away, unnoticed, so that when we needed it, it was gone).  Infertility treatment, even if it works, is an awful thing.  It makes sense to me that it has its own period of grieving and working through.  I think I’ve done that.

Or perhaps not.  I am coming to the first anniversary of the short, expensive, and agonizing period of treatments.  Maybe this feeling is just a continuation of the treatment trauma.  Almost a whole year has passed, and I’ve done all this work, and I can’t I be released now?  I’ve been such a good girl, can’t I go home or to the place where that never-born (never-conceived, even, poor love) baby is waiting for me, and we can all join her and have that other life that we’re supposed to be having?  Yes, that’s it.  I feel like I’m in exile, or in a place of punishment.  Is it over yet?  (No, love, it will never be over.)  How can a year have passed without a miracle?

Some precipitating events: yesterday was parent-teacher conferences at Milo’s school.  One of Milo’s teachers is pregnant (with her fifth.  Yes, fifth), and he’s very excited about this.  We congratulated her and told her Milo was so excited, and she said, “Yes, he seems to really love babies.”  And for a few seconds, the question of why we didn’t have some more babies for him (and us) to love just hung there.  Maybe I was the only one who knew it was there.  But I felt it.  It was real to me.  I want to know, too: where is that other baby?

Milo last night, feeling oppressed by homework, said, “Sometimes I’m sick of being the youngest in the family.”  What me meant was he wants the freedom of a grownup.  But I heard it differently.

My career coach and friend just had her fourth child.  We’re going to the baby naming (baptism-equivalent) on Sunday morning.  It’s churlish of me, but I will point out that I’m missing my favorite workout class to go.  I love the class because it reminds me of what my body can do, and how great it feels to have a body that can work so hard.  So skipping it and being reminded of what my body couldn’t do is a whisper bitter.

Last night I felt so sad.  I had this desperate fantasy of my brother having a child, the child’s mother leaving, and Ethan and my mother (because my mother saves E from all kinds of stuff) deciding that Daniel and I should raise the child.  I wanted it so much I had to concentrate on breathing.

This morning, the woman who cuts my hair came to the house (crazy schedule, a haircut for me and Milo at 7am, but she works this way and my roots were showing, so it seemed like a good idea).  I was flustered because Daniel had broken a compact flourescent lightbulb last night, and I came upon the mess this morning and was in full-on hazmat remediation mode.  As I was cleaning up, I thought, “Wow, it’s a good thing I’m not pregnant, because I’d be flipping out right now because of the mercury.”  And I said to her, “Y’know, it breaks my heart that I couldn’t get pregnant after Milo, but when I’m cleaning this up, I’m glad not to be pregnant.”  Women talk to their hairdressers that way, right?

You know what she said, right?  She said, “Well, I’ll tell you some news: I am pregnant, with a girl, due in September.”  She has a one-year old and is the mother to her husband’s teenage son from a previous marriage.

Note to all fertile people: When someone says words like I, heartbreak, can’t, and pregnant in the same sentence,  it’s bad form to announce that you yourself are pregnant.  Could she not have waited?  I see her every four weeks.  I’m not her ob/gyn — I didn’t need to know today.

And worst of all, I think my angel Milo heard what I said about not being able to have another baby.  I thought he was upstairs and out of earshot, but he had just gone into another room.  He was clingy and off-balance this morning, which he could have been for 100 reasons.  But of course I have to believe that it’s because I infected him with my sadness, and made it his somehow, that he heard something about me being sad and he can and can’t understand it and now he is sad, too.  In some ways I want him to know.  I want him to know how hard I tried to give him someone else to love and be with.  He’s sort of asked about it before, in an indirect, not knowing the words or even the right question, way;  and I’ve answered, sort of, by saying that sometimes people can’t have children when they want to, like Sarah in the Bible.

I didn’t want to have another baby because I thought Milo “needed” a sibling.  I’ve seen too many siblings to believe in the story of eternal affection and mutual support.  I wanted another baby for me.  But Milo would have loved a baby so much (at least until it was clear how much that baby would demand of Daniel and me.  Then he might want to reconsider).  He used to lobby for a baby and a dog.  He’s a realist, so now he’s waiting for the dog.

And all that’s happened is that I’m now both sad and very, very late for work.

Poem(s) for Wednesday

Today I am thankful that I laughed at work.  I was being silly with some colleagues, and it felt so good.  There has been a dearth of laughter in the office (and at home).  I’ve been too busy to laugh.

Are you surprised that the poems are about clothes?  Three for your consideration:

"What do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress. 
I want it flimsy and cheap, 
I want it too tight, I want to wear it 
until someone tears it off me. 
I want it sleeveless and backless, 
this dress, so no one has to guess 
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store 
with all those keys glittering in the window, 
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old 
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers 
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, 
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. 
I want to walk like I'm the only 
woman on earth and I can have my pick. 
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm 
your worst fears about me, 
to show you how little I care about you 
or anything except what 
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment 
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body 
to carry me into this world, through 
the birth-cries and the love-cries too, 
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, 
it'll be the goddamned 
dress they bury me in.

From Tell Me by Kim Addonizio. 
Copyright © 2000 by Kim Addonizio. 
Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. 
All rights reserved.

Little Black Dress by Dan Burt (which stubbornly resists my copying and copyright carelessness)

Upon Julia’s Clothes
by Robert Herrick
Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes! Next, when I cast mine eyes and see That brave vibration each way free, —O how that glittering taketh me!

Not shopping, but still thinking about shopping

Today I am thankful that my mom is healthy and strong and that I like her.

A few poorly organized additional thoughts on my shopping experience.  I have stepped away from the credit card and weaned myself from the rush for a moment.  But my replacement drug is now going to be blogging about shopping, which costs only time.

I realize I made a misstep by not reorganizing my closet before I started shopping.  I once hired a wardrobe consultant, and the best thing she taught me was to reorganize my closet at the beginning of a new season.  The weather has been so dreary and cold that I’ve kept my woolly, wintry stuff right where I can see it, and my lighter spring and summer clothes off to the side.  When I switched them a few days ago (which is really a small switch, because a lot of my clothes are year-round), I realized that I have more spring clothes that I like than I thought.  I was sure I had a skirt crisis.   That’s because I have a dearth of fall skirts that fit properly and look good.  But I’m quite full up for spring.  One of my verrrryyy expensive new skirts is going back to the store.

My new clothes have made me more creative.   Now that I have new clothes, I can see possibilities that I didn’t see before.  I wonder if I should have started more slowly, with just a few new purchases to get my imagination going, rather than filling up all at once.  On the other hand, there’s something nice about feeling done.  And at the moment, until the gasp-inducing credit card bill arrives, the pleasant feeling of doneness is more powerful than the wrenching feeling of spending too much or spending badly.

I should shop for shoes online, and nowhere else.  That’s counter-intuitive, I know.  But when I order shoes online, I can wear them around the office for several hours to see how they fit.  I usually return them because they don’t fit like I want them to.  I returned the $40 sandals I ordered last week after 15 minutes of wear.  The 85% off, no-return shoes I bought at the store were a ridiculous purchase.  I was a fool to tell myself that ill-fitting shoes could be  fixed with foot pads.   I’m going to the shoe repair expert later this week to see if he can make my pumps into Mary Janes or t-straps so that they will stay on my feet.  If not, then I’ll sell the shoes at a consignment store and get half my money back.  The stupidity tax will be $30 a pair.

I want to be the kind of person who shops at charming, independently owned shops that contribute to the community and where the proprietor knows my name.  But I bought the ridiculous shoes in a shop like that, because they know my name, and I feel self-conscious whenever I go there because I only ever buy things on sale and I fear they think I’m cheap (if only!).  Yesterday I was in another store like that (where the adorable owner knows my name even though I almost never buy anything from her), and I looked at the price tags of the charming, ecologically responsible jackets and cardigans made from recycled and repurposed textiles and thought, “Wow, $225 for a cotton jacket? $185 for a short-sleeved cardigan?  That’s really expensive!”  The mass-market, mass-produced, artificial fiber, plastic-wrapped cheap goods have seduced me, at least this time around.  I did get two organic cotton t-shirts.  The experimental blazer was from a consignment shop, which is a bit like recycling (I had the odd experience of seeing a woman on the street wearing an ex-blouse of mine.  I’m pretty sure it was my ex-blouse.  I didn’t want to stop and introduce myself as the first owner.  It would have been awkward and stalker-ish.)  The next time I start buying, I’ll divide my budget between mass market and conscience-salving clothes.

There is a lot of serious and difficult stuff happening in the big world, and even in little worlds of people’s homes, and here I am nattering on about shopping.  I hope it can be a distraction, or a source of humor, or maybe you want to skip these posts and come back for the struggle.  It’s all true to life.  Take the parts you want.  I’m the only one who needs all of it.

Back in the closet

Today I am thankful that everything that really needed to get done, got done.  It usually does.  I usually forget that.

So I went back to synagogue today.  In fact, I went back last night just before I wrote yesterday’s post.  It’s Purim, and Jews who attend Orthodox synagogues really are supposed to hear the reading of the Book of Esther, aka “the Megillah” (which is where we get the expression: the whole megillah — one is supposed to hear every single word), once at night and once in the morning.  I’ve never gone to the second Megillah reading, and it occurred to me to go, and Daniel thought I was nuts because he’s never gone to second reading and he grew up Orthodox.  But I thought I should go, and I did and I wasn’t moved one way or another, which was fine.  I do like doing Jewish things without Daniel.  I became Jewish because of him, but only learned enough to be converted and then stopped progressing in my learning and adopted the not-quite-according-to-the-law practices of his family.  I should know and learn and do more, but I choose not to make it a priority.  You may notice that I use all kinds of absurd constructions so that I don’t describe myself as an Orthodox Jew.  I am according to Jewish law, because I had an Orthodox conversion.  But my practices are not strictly Orthodox, and I don’t want people to think they are.

But that’s not really what this post is about.  It’s really to talk more about clothes.  I’ve decided that this season much can be forgiven because this is a season of experimentation.  I’m buying from stores I usually don’t buy from.  I’m buying a lot more prints and professional clothes.  I’m seeing what it’s like to buy a whole lot at the beginning of a season (actually two seasons — I can’t afford to do this at the beginning of summer), and seeing if I have the discipline not to buy in dribs and drabs and to stop thinking about clothes I don’t have and enjoy the ones I do (OMG — I surprised myself.  Where have I heard THAT before?).

I don’t have to be perfect here.  Dressing is my hobby.  If cooking were my hobby, I wouldn’t expect every dish to be perfect (well, I do, which is why I am not am ambitious cook).  Or if painting were my hobby, I’d just paint, and buy the materials and not worry about the waste of money if a canvas didn’t turn out like I wanted it to.   Why are we so judgmental about spending money wisely or not on clothes?  Is it because it’s something women do, and women’s urges are supposed to be tightly confined?  Did it start with men criticizing women about extravagance and now we’ve adopted it in how we think of each other?  Why do we expect omniscience from ourselves?  I don’t know how much this rayon/spandex skirt I’m wearing right now will stretch.  I can’t know till I’ve worn it for a while.  Maybe I should have waited till it went on sale, so it would be a cheaper experiment.  But it’s exactly right for now.

And I can think of garments that seemed like exactly the right and sensible things to buy, and ended up unworn and unloved — of course they did — it’s hard to love sensible, which is why I was not a sought-after high school date; and garments that seemed like a foolish extravagance that I wear quite often (not so many of those, but enough).  I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.  Yes I could have spent the money on a trip to the beach — but it might have rained every single day.

Maybe spending wisely is not where I need to focus.  I need to save wisely (save a lot, save for the long term in index funds, rebalance when necessary, save some more, save automatically, save still more).  But as long as I’ve done that, maybe I can spend experimentally, inquisitively, pleasurably.

Sucker punched

Today I am thankful for a beautiful, gigantic moon; for the early flowering of trees; for this gigantic glass of wine 18 inches from my right hand; and for these moments entirely alone in my house.

So, today I am adding a new category, a subcategory of secondary infertility: sucker punched.  Because it’s been happening a lot lately and it happened today.

Today I got to synagogue with Milo much earlier than usual, so I was saying some prayers that I normally don’t say, and I started feeling like I was opening again to prayer, or not resisting it as much.  I unclenched a little, and I thought this was good.  Colossal mistake.

I also heard the rabbi’s derasha (sermon), which I don’t normally do.  During his derasha, the rabbi said, offhand as anything, that commentators on the Torah believed that there were/are especially propitious times for prayer: Yom Kippur, Shabbat afternoons, certain holidays.  They are considered analogous to birthdays.  A human king would be more likely to grant requests during his birthday celebration, goes the argument, so these are like birthdays for God, when He’s most likely to listen to our prayers.

And my open and unresisting heart broke into 1000 pieces.   I didn’t know that.  I didn’t know I was supposed to pray extra hard (instead of sleeping, or reading a novel, or doing nothing in particular) on Shabbat afternoon.  I didn’t know God had good days, or yes moods.  I missed the window.  There was a boost I could have had, but I didn’t know. There was something undone and now it’s too late.  I didn’t do it right.  I was lazy in my Jewishness, didn’t ask the rabbi, didn’t study the literature — and look what it cost me.

People who have never been infertile may not have any idea what I am talking about in that last paragraph.  You fortunate loves may think that the big glass of wine is muddling my thoughts.  It’s not the wine.  It’s infertility.  Infertility creates corrosive, mind-eating, rationality-crushing magical thinking (so much to link to here — this is just one example).  Someone said vitamin C, someone said acupuncture, someone said headstands — no, not headstands, headstands are bad you have to do twists instead, no not twists because they squeeze your organs you have to do….  When you’re infertile long enough, your life is a swirl of rumors and Google searches and potions and dream boards and intentions and visioning exercises and any last bit of cosmic grasping that you can think of.  You have no control over the thing you want most, and so damn many doctors and books and friends and non-friends are telling you to be so very very precise and giving you so many instructions — so much you have to control about the thing you can’t control.  If the language I am using is convoluted, imagine the feelings.  It’s like being told that your happiness and all your dreams for the future depend on being able to recite a complicated poem in a language you don’t speak and have never heard, backwards.

I started crying and could hardly stop.  I walked out of synagogue (Orthodox synagogues are come-and-go places, it wasn’t a dramatic exit) and took a walk around the block.  I got back inside, prayed for 2 more minutes and fled to the bathroom.  I took 10 deep breaths.  I took 2 more deep breaths.  And I barely, barely held it together.  I don’t think I’m conveying how completely blindsided I was.  I just got back to praying, only to learn that when I was praying my hardest, I was doing it wrong.  I missed God’s birthday, so no more birth days for me.

When I got home, all I wanted to do was come here and write it down, but I don’t use the computer on Shabbat.  So I dove into sleep.  Sleep helped.  Time is helping.  Finding out that a woman I know and like with four elementary-school aged kids  is getting divorced didn’t help, but it reminded me that a life that may look so pretty from the outside is a mystery except to those who live it (and sometimes even to them).