Lessons from a dress

Today I am thankful that, for now at least, I am feeling much better.  I have felt surrounded by love and great friends.  I have had moments of intense joy, bursts of focus and ambition.  I feel like I have learned a lot about recovering when I get sucker punched.  I am sure there is much more to learn, and I won’t like those lessons at all.  But the recovery has been rich.  It may all evaporate tomorrow, or in another hour, and I’ll be back in a hole, but I’m not there right now, I wasn’t there yesterday or the day before, and that is a very good thing.

I have ideas for many more profound blog posts, but this is the one I want to write just now.

This dress has taught me two lessons — and I didn’t even buy it!

First, at the moment, I want to buy clothes with good stories.  This idea was crystallized for me by this post, which laid out all the different, contradictory ways that we assign value to clothes.

“Kate Fletcher, an academic who writes about sustainability in fashion argues that this is the way out of the fast fashion mess we’re in – clothes must mean something to people and we have to value them and have an emotional investment in them. And I like that idea.”

I like that idea, too.  In fact, the main reason I never bought this dress was that I didn’t love the story of it: it was on a great sale and I bought it online.  That didn’t seem very interesting.  I’m in a mood to want my clothes to remind me of people or experiences or events.   As the closet archive posts show, I have stories about most things in my closet, or I can create stories.  If I had really wanted this dress, I could have come up with a story about it: I was in thrall to Ines de la Fressange, and exploring the idea of dressing like an imagined French woman; this is a brand whose tailoring looks wonderful on me; I had been searching for a simple business dress for months; and then it was available to me at a 70% discount, so I pounced.  But somehow I didn’t believe that story,  so I didn’t buy the dress.  Or rather, the story I imagined (“I bought it at a 70% discount and it was unreturnable and it’s okay but not great and I don’t love it.”) wasn’t a compelling one.

Now it appears that this brand has gone out of business.  Illogically, this makes me wish I had bought some pieces — anything — on final sale, because the pieces were wonderful.  But “I bought it because the store was going out of business” is not a great story, either.  I suspect that online shopping may yield fewer stories.

I did buy something this week online, though, a navy and black cardigan (I can’t capture the photo).  I bought it on the day Lena died.  The story is that when I see it in my closet, I will think of her and her loveliness and her style and her attitude that every day could be a great day, and any person you met could be a wonderful person, so you should dress beautifully for it.  If the cardigan isn’t worthy of Lena, I’ll send it back.

I also learned something else from this dress, by comparing it to the dress I did buy (for much less money) a few weeks ago.

I got this dress at a charming store where I browse infrequently and purchase almost never.  It was the first day Daniel was home after his surgery (the day the squirrel invaded).  I had picked up Milo from school and we went to a small coffeeshop in the neighborhood next to ours to get Milo a custom-made mint soda.  The dress store is two doors down.  I tried it on and liked it, and it cost $38, so I bought it.  It’s a few decades old and I think it’s been remade or significantly altered at least once.  Some previous owner put glitter glue on the dots on the collar and cuffs, and I love that.  The brand is Lady Manhattan, and my stylish grandmother bought me a Lady Manhattan blouse when I was about 11, and she thought it was a tip-top brand.  (That’s the story.  It was also pouring rain.)

I love this dress.  When people see me in it, they say, “That’s a great dress” or “I love your dress,” and I agree and I am happy.  And THAT is the difference between American women (stereotypical) and French women (stereotypical).  A French woman wears the simple black dress in this post (with superb accessories) because she is mostly interested in being a beautiful woman, and not that interested in wearing an eye-catching dress.  I’d wager that if someone says to a French woman, “what an amazing dress you are wearing,” she’d feel like the dress had upstaged her and be rather vexed about it.  An American woman, by contrast, is very happy to have her dress do the talking and get the attention.  The French woman buys the black dress and thinks that my dress is too busy, too loud — and glitter? Non! The American woman says the black dress is drab and boring, and opts for the quirky, punchy, happy, fun dress that was such a good deal.

 

 

 

What morning brings

This morning a friend called me to say her mother, Lena, had died.  I adored Lena.  She was so sweet, and so strong.  She had had cancer for many years, and talked about starting a blog to advise women on how to wear wigs stylishly.  Her exquisite, impeccable, and delighted-in style was this unassuming woman’s way of refusing to disappear.  It was her way of paying the world a compliment, of being ready for the task at hand, at making an effort because it was a lovely thing to do.

When Lena and I would see each other at her daughter’s house, to celebrate the birth of one of her grandchildren, or the writing of a book, or a safe return from a scary place, or even just Hanukkah, we would grasp hands and literally jump for joy.  She’d say to me, “Oh Doro, let’s jump!”

Last night I started to drown myself in bad comparisons.  I let my sadness about the baby that never came slosh over into sadness about my professional life and all the things I haven’t done and all the ways I come up short compared to others.   I live in a physical and mental geography that invites such comparisons.  Lena never saw people like that.  When you talked to Lena, you were a star and she was a star with you.  My life matters because I loved Lena and she loved me.

 

Never out of reach of a sucker punch

Oh my goodness.  I had just been observing how beautifully and mercifully time was doing its work of easing my pain about the baby I never had.  I still have odd fantasies about becoming pregnant, but I also have moments of thinking, “I’m glad there’s just one.”  And then they are followed by dreams (like last night’s) in which I am praying again for some intervention that brings me a baby.  But these are like the gentle rocking of waves, the hum of the refrigerator in the background.  Not disruptive or saddening, just static in the background.

And then, five minutes ago, Daniel came home and told me that our friend P is pregnant, again.  P is three days older than I am — we’re both 41;  her husband, R, is two years younger than Daniel, both much older than their excellent wives.  (I’m too wrecked to give them proper blog-o-nyms.)  P and R conceived their first child just after Daniel and I started our sad, expensive, wrenching, immiserating and futile quest to have a second.  P got pregnant before we knew it would be so hard, but I had glimmers that it might be.  I cried then, too, when I heard of her first pregnancy; and I remember visiting their first baby a day or two after yet another negative pregnancy test, and steeling myself to be very good and very happy.

I have, I confess, borne a slight, ugly, and unjustifiable grudge against P and R for having their first baby.  P is wildly, extravagantly successful in her field, as is R.  She and R have very serious, important, mind-engaging jobs, at which they work extremely hard and extremely long hours.  I cloaked my hateful jealousy at how easily and happily they had conceived their first baby by thinking, “Well, but they don’t seem to spend much time with that dear baby.”

So I’m already disposed to be bitter and vile.  And now… now they are having another.  And I feel like an unhappy outlier, like one disfavored by fortune, for having only one.  (I know I’m not. I’m really not. I’m healthy, solvent, strong, sane, safe.  I know where my next meal, next house payment, next paycheck is coming from.  My child has a full belly and a warm coat and is happy.  My husband is healthy and lives with us, not on an army base far away, or in another city to earn a living and send remittances.  And he was uncharacteristically kind and generous about my jolt this evening.  I am one of the luckiest people who ever lived.  I know that.  I just don’t taste it right at the moment.)  Even crazy-busy hyper-successful people who spend lots of time away from their first baby have another one.  Very few people choose to have only one.  It makes what happened to me seem even more like an aberration.  It seems unfair, even though fairness is no more relevant to this situation than the color purple or the sound of a French horn.  But this is my irrational thought: in a rational allocation of babies, that baby should have been mine.

I keep a close mental accounting of people who have only one.  I surround myself with them, mentally — not actually.  P was one of those people.  And now she’s not.  And it hurts.  I thought I was well beyond this kind of hurt, the feeling like there’s a profound electrical imbalance, a literal shock, in my cells.  Beyond these tears, beyond this confusion and ugliness and fruitless calibration and calculation of who is a better parent and who deserves more children and who doesn’t.  And who is lucky and who isn’t.  I did I did I did think I was well out of it.

Milo, blessedly, was an angel tonight.  He didn’t know I was upset.  He called me upstairs and said, “Mommy I am glad I have you.”  I am glad I have him.  He is my reality.  P and R have their reality, and bless them and bless their first baby and their second and any other babies that come their way (right?  Why not?  F*ck it, let them have 3, 4).   And now perhaps my prayer, other than the prayer for their beautiful second child’s health and happiness, is that the intervals between sucker punches get ever longer.

Mind and body

Today I am grateful that I got my teeth cleaned and they look lovely.  The black tea I drank immediately afterwards and the red wine I’m drinking now are not conducive to maintaining that loveliness, but another cleaning is only six months away.

I went to a pilates class on Sunday, as part of my effort to do more non-yoga things with my body.  The non-yoga experiment is yielding interesting results.  It turns out that I was more in tune to yoga than I knew.  I was getting benefits beyond the physical — I was calmer and more at peace, even when I was doing yoga sleepily, or hurriedly, and always while still in my pajamas (even when I wore a nightgown).  It was a very good way for me to be in and know my body, and that itself is a kind of meditation, or has, for me — a very physical person — a kind of transcendent, or emotional, or even spiritual quality.  Yoga certainly wasn’t just another form of exercise, readily replaceable by any other form.  I worried a bit that it was.  I don’t know exactly what to do with this knowledge, other than to be grateful for the years and years of yoga that brought me to it.  It doesn’t change my schedule any, or lessen my need for sleep, or solve any of the problems that led me to scale way back on my practice.  It does make meditation a bit more pressing.

Anyway, I went to pilates class on Sunday.  The studio is gorgeous, a four-story townhouse, impeccably designed and decorated.  Someone lavished money and thought into it.  But after my first class, I think that the polished and perfect appearance of the studio is unfortunately too apt.  Classes start with the instructor asking what we want “to work on.”  In other words, what parts of our bodies are too big, too squishy, too round, too soft?  What don’t we like?

I have grown unaccustomed to thinking that way about “problem areas.”  Yes, I’d like a flatter tummy, and yes, I was at pilates to accomplish that, but I want the flat tummy and the great arms and the excellent rump to be the byproduct of some other, more worthy goal, like strength, stamina, or a back that doesn’t hurt after long hours of standing.  The semantics matter a lot to me.  I want a body that works better.  Yet there I was, doing tiny little leg lifts to really bad music because one of the women in the room had bad feelings about her inner thighs.  I found the class incredibly boring, except for the socio-cultural -gender theorizing that was going on in my head.

It was gratifying to know that I am so far from that conversation of “I hate my…”  I have yoga, and Daniel, and my own discoveries about strength and pleasure to thank for that.  There are two more classes I want to try at the Studio of Perfect Surfaces — one that sounds as if it might be fun and sweaty, one that’s taught by a teacher with an extensive yoga background and that would fit conveniently into my work day.  Yoga is also teaching me to reserve judgment a little, perhaps.  Or perhaps I can’t release my hope that my tummy will recede just a little.

Everything I’ve just written is true.  Except it’s also true that, when I caught sight of myself in a bathroom mirror today, despite disastrous hair and an unusually red face (new budget-friendly face treatments may be a bad idea), I thought, approvingly, “Holy cow, this dress makes me look Kate Middleton skinny.”  Yet if you asked me, I’d say that the lovely Princess is much too thin.  The old conditioning dies hard.

Sal at Already Pretty is reliably smart about these things.  She has a nice post up today about jiggle anxieties.   And a blog I’ve just discovered (via Sal), The House in the Clouds, has some really lovely thoughts on how to resist age-induced invisibility.  Her juxtaposition of ways that the outside doesn’t and does match the inside is inspiring.

 

Droopy, but well dressed.

Today I am grateful for warm socks, warm boots, warm tights, layers of sweaters, and hats.  I am wearied by the cold weather.  I was feeling disgruntled this morning, and I stopped myself by thinking of my warm coat.  It is a lucky thing to have a warm coat.

I am wearied generally.  The bitter (to me) weather, the aftermath of Daniel’s surgery, an approaching cold have left me exhausted.  I am usually fine in a crisis. It is after the crisis that I crumble.  So I’m crumbling.  Last week, I was on top of so many things: I mailed birthday cards to my grandmother, I reconciled various accounts, I coordinated, organized, and remembered.  This week, so far, I’ve ruined a sweater and forgot my keys when I went to walk the dog.  Small things, but symbolic.  I find myself returning to my bad habit of obsessive online window shopping (different kinds of windows, I suppose).  And my spending-for-comfort has been sharply curtailed at the prospect of thousands of dollars in dental work in a few weeks.  (I have terrible teeth, filled everywhere a filling could possibly be.  If one of my teeth is literally rotten to the core, as x-rays suggest, I’ll need another root canal and another crown.  I have dental insurance, but, still, it’s a four-figure endeavor.  And I had so hoped to spend that money on sprucing up the bathroom and replacing the bedroom carpet.)

And yet… it’s been a fine week sartorially.  (By the way, this post, about dressing to go the hospital, is smart and lovely.)  Today I wore my red sweater and red skirt together, with black tights and boots.  Yesterday, I needed to feel smashing because I was having lunch with the deputy VP of my division to make the case that I need to be on the path to a huge promotion in the next 18 months.  It’s a sign of my ambivalence about making such a case for myself that only at the last minute before leaving the house did I think, “Oh — I need to wear a blazer because the VP herself wears a blazer 90% of the time.”  So:

(I wore very simple jewelry — it wouldn’t show up in the photo.  And the shirt is grey/beige, and a closet archive item.  I’ve had it for more than five years, but don’t wear it often.  It’s a wonderful fabric.  I didn’t wear it because I hadn’t discovered how chic I feel combining neutrals, and I didn’t have that amazing blazer.  Now I’ll wear it all the time.)

The mix of neutrals was super, and the textures were good, too.  The pants are a corduroy velvet — very dark and matte, and the blazer is knit.  This may sound strangely casual for a business lunch, and if I’d thought about it, I would have worn something more traditionally business-y, but the clothes actually, subtly supported my argument about what I do and how that needs to be elevated.  Looking a little edgier than typical business dress worked for the case I was making.  At least I hope they did.

(On reflection, I’m really astonished at how close I came to wearing something inexplicably casual yesterday.  Exhaustion and that ambivalence almost sidetracked me.  I’ll have to be more aware of that in the future.)

Oh, I’m not going to buy the dress.  It’s too much of a risk given that I can’t return it.  I think all my lovely commenters were saying the same thing: a black dress has got to be perfect — not something I get just because it’s a good deal.  It’s not a good deal if it’s not perfect.

What would Ines do?

Today I am thankful that Daniel is steadily getting back to normal, and that Milo and Percy (the dog) have been superstars throughout this whole experience.  Percy’s devotion to Daniel has been very touching, and if one has to spend a week in bed, it’s very nice to have 17 pounds of warm and friendly dog at one’s side. (Yes, Percy is welcome in the bed.  Resistance was futile.)

This post started because I wanted to buy this dress

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lovely, presumably very well made, practical as all get out, on a walloping good sale.  And yet… perhaps a bit staid?  Dull?  One would never be incorrect wearing this dress, but would one ever be glorious?  What, I intended to ask, would Ines do?

I didn’t buy the dress, or, rather, I haven’t bought the dress yet.  I may, eventually (please advise, dear readers).  The ostensible reason is that I really can’t afford it.  But in fact, over the last week, I’ve spent the cost of this dress on other things: new shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel (day one of Daniel’s hospitalization); a new foot smoothing file (the day Daniel left the hospital); a different new dress, vintage, inexpensive (the first day Daniel was home all day recovering); and, today, a vintage necklace to replace one that broke last week.

Daniel’s winter illnesses have wrought minor havoc on my budget.  This is not a crisis, by any means.  We have health insurance, we can afford our deductible, we will not lose a dime of salary because we both have paid sick leave.  The budgetary havoc I’m experiencing is the kind of havoc that lucky people have — the kind of havoc you have if you can afford to.   So this is not a complaint about my financial situation, merely an observation about how I’m using money to deal with stress.

When I added up the costs of my many (almost daily) “minor” purchases, and recognized that they more than added up to a major purchase, I was all set to be vexed at myself.  For goodness sakes, why am I leaking money like a dripping faucet?!  If I wanted to buy something to make myself feel better, why not buy a perfect dress, rather than these bits and bobs?  Isn’t the cardinal rule of French women: Buy less, buy better?

But my discipline has deserted me.  I want things that make me feel uplifted immediately, and in myriad ways.  I want pretty feet and bouncy hair and a new dress.  I want stuff I can touch and smell.  I take a shower every day — I’ll only wear that nice black dress once a week at most.  I need a new hit, constantly.  And I’ve decided that that’s okay.  It’s okay not to make wise purchases right now.  It’s okay to be felled in the health and beauty aisle of the grocery store — I’m vulnerable because Daniel usually does the grocery shopping, so my appetite is whetted by the novelty of all of it, and they have so many things that promise instant soothing, relief, respite, rejuvenation, and I’d like all of that right now.  I’m very tired, and I’m taking care of a lot of dependents, and I want treats.  So, because I am a grown-up competent woman and I’m doing a great job, I’m getting them for myself.  All the time.

And I think Ines would approve.  Because even more important to joie de vive than buying less and buying better is knowing when to opt for pleasure over practicality, indulgence over rules, flowers over frugality.

 

So much to be thankful for

Today I am thankful that Daniel’s surgery was successful, and he’s at home now.

I am thankful that we have good health insurance and enough money to pay our annual deductible and any other charges.

I am thankful that I could take two days sick leave to stay with Daniel in the hospital and that I can work from home tomorrow to help him manage his pain and pain medicines.  This may not be a great career move, but it doesn’t put me at risk of losing my job or any wages.

I am thankful that I have yoga and meditation to help me manage the stress of caring for someone who is in a lot of pain (and hates it — as would I), and fresh ginger and other concoctions that tell my mind that I am invulnerable to colds right now.

I am thankful that we have so many friends who are offering to help.

I am thankful that, when a squirrel appeared in our living room this afternoon (really, about an hour after we got home from the hospital– it probably came down the chimney): 1) I was home — not at the hospital, or the pharmacy, or at the bus stop to pick up Milo — and could open the doors to let it out; 2) it didn’t break, shred, or destroy anything; 3) it left after 10 anxious minutes.

Yeah — the squirrel nearly wrecked my equanimity.  Daniel was in pain, loopy from the medication, and furious that he couldn’t race downstairs and protect me from the intruder (the squirrel).  After I opened an exit for the interloper, I said, aloud, “I am a grown-up competent woman and I am doing a great job.”  It’s a phrase I will say often over the coming days as I balance caring for Daniel, who hates to admit how much pain he’s in, and how much anxiety it’s causing (as would I) with focusing on work again.

And when all this is over, I’m going to go a little mad with the Jason Wu for Target collection.  I haven’t loved most of the Target+fancy designer collaborations lately, but this one looks divine.  I grabbed a couple of Albertus Swanepoel hats on clearance last week when I popped in to buy a new calendar, and I love them.  It makes me so happy to think of frippery, spring, and a new floral skirt.  It’s the opposite of the last two days: hospital, anxiety, and bad weather.

The next challenge

The letter I quoted in my last post continues to resonate, and makes me feel really good about letting go of my yoga practice as much as I have.  I kept squelching my interest in other things because I didn’t want to lose ground in yoga.  I got very attached to being “advanced” and doing really cool-looking and hard poses.  I am not transcending that wish, I’m just taking it to other playgrounds, other workouts, where that aggression is more appropriate.  I’m looking forward to it, too.

My challenge for the next week will be Daniel’s surgery on Monday.  The surgeon tells us that this is no big deal, really simple, done in an hour.  And I’m sure it IS really simple for the surgeon — thank goodness!  But Daniel is extremely nervous about it, and prickly, and uncomfortable, and snappish.  It’s my understanding that being under anesthesia can also have unsettling emotional effects on a person, so I’m bracing myself for that, too.   Last week, I put myself in Daniel’s place, which (sadly) I rarely do, and thought “Wow, I’d really hate to be going into the hospital for a day and a half.  I’d be freaked out about it.”  But I haven’t been able to do much with my empathy.

If anything, my operating principle is to act like this is, in fact, no big deal (which is how I approached my biopsy, which was much less invasive but was scarier in some ways.  I’ll never forget carrying a container of my own tissue to the office receptionist.)

Posting will be light for the next week, while I tend to Daniel.

 

Lessons unlearned

Today I am thankful that I went back to budokon class tonight, when it would have been much easier to stay home.  I took up space, and it was great.

One of the lessons I learned last year was to avoid messing with unusual (for me) silhouettes:

Corollary to 5: the worst mistakes I make are when I try to shift my silhouette dramatically; and bad proportions, rather than any one piece in particular, make me look frumpy.

So, I should not love this sweater, which I received as a gift

Mine is black — I included the brown version to show the details.  You have to click on the photos to see much at all.  Wordpress’s settings defeated me tonight.

There is nothing at all I should like about this sweater:   It is more or less a turtleneck, although a bit drapey, and turtlenecks make me look like a turtle; it is black, and black near my face makes me look yellow (a yellow turtle!); it has batwing sleeves, and those are entirely not my style; it has those leather buckles, which means I can’t wash it by hand, and I am sufficiently sweaty even in winter that washing sweaters is much better than dry-cleaning them; the points of the arc hem end where my body is widest and peaks where my thighs are full and plump — it’s like a spotlight on the most cushiony part of my body; and it’s itchy.

And yet… I wore it today with slim black pants and my gray ankle boots and felt like a rock star — and I needed to feel like a rock star.  I looked like the the middle-aged woman with the dragon tattoo!

So just when I think I’ve got all my rules set down, something upends them.  I am sneaking in another goal: to know when to leave lessons, goals, rules and prescriptions aside.

A significantly more elegant expression of a similar thought arrived today in one of the yoga newsletters I subscribe to. It resonated with me today especially, because I have noticed how much easier the mornings are now that I’m not trying to wedge a yoga practice in before walking the dog with Milo.  I can sleep a little later when I need to, so I am not rushing Daniel to settle down at night, either.  Giving up my morning practice, as much as I miss it, has helped me achieve some of the goals of practice:

Dear Friends, Happy New Year!  I hope that everyone had a restful break.  This year, rather than making resolutions, I have been letting them go.  About eight years ago, I made the resolution to do sitting meditation every single morning.  And until recently, I have kept that resolution, rising from bed very early, even in the darkest, coldest mornings, sitting through illnesses, sitting in hotel rooms, on planes, and even while in doctors’ waiting rooms.  But last month, something shifted. One morning, while traveling abroad with my husband, my alarm went off, and I prepared to get up and sit.  And I had a moment of noticing that if I got up, I would be severing something very precious with my husband, and myself.  We had recently been feeling very close and enjoying a deeper intimacy and connection with each other.  So when my meditation alarm went off, I realized that I had to choose between staying cuddled with my beloved and getting up and sitting alone in a chair.  And I decided to stay cuddled. During much of December, I stayed in bed with my beloved in the mornings, each of us feeling a sense of love and care for each other that we hadn’t experienced before.  And questions kept coming up in my mind: What does it mean to practice mindfulness?  What is the practice, and why do we do it?  Is it sitting up and following the breath, or is it loving others in the deepest way we know how?  When do we let go of the form of the practice in order to stay with the formless practice of love? The Buddha said that his teachings were like a raft that leads us from the shore of suffering to the shore of non-suffering.  And he asked his disciples whether someone, after reaching the other shore, should carry the raft with them on their shoulders.  Clearly, they answered, a practitioner should not carry the raft on her shoulders once she has reached the other shore.  In the same way, there are times when our discipline is important and we need to cling to the raft and the practice, coming to yoga class, and having a strong home practice.  And there are other times when we have reached a further shore and we need to set the raft down and enjoy the new landscape by loving and playing and enjoying this precious life to its fullest. In my case, spending quality loving time with my husband was the most important thing in that moment.  And what got me to that moment were all of the mornings when I dragged my sleepy butt out of bed to sit.  Those daily sits were what allowed me to see my husband and our relationship more clearly, and helped me wake up to the love that we shared.  Without those mornings, I might not have gotten to this point.  But once I was there, I could let go of my attachment to my morning sitting practice in order to fully engage in love. It’s not easy to know when to hang on to the raft and when to set it down.  And very often we need to pick it back up to reach yet another further shore of non-suffering.  Even though I have really enjoyed the connection with my husband, I can see other parts of my life which need more meditation and mindfulness practice.  So I have started sitting again, sometimes in the morning, but also finding other times that work when I don’t have to separate myself so dramatically from my loved ones.

Choose goals wisely

 

 

Goal 12, aced, although the eggs didn’t taste amazing.  They were overpowered by the (vegetarian) sausage and beans beneath. I may need to poach the next batch in a richer liquid.

Goal 10, I am observing, and what I observed over the last hour was an epic failure!  Tomorrow, tomorrow.