architectural digest
Today in our little class, I asked the women sitting in the chairs circling me to do a couple of silly things. The first was to tell us the reason for choosing the shoes they had on today. The question came to mind when I saw the truly funky shoes worn by my new friend, the very cool Katherine— tall suede wedges that zipped up the back of her heel. I don't even know what the style would be called, I am so far away from trends, but I know I could probably not stand in them, they are that cool. And the zipper would just mean BLISTER for me. I am so not that cool.
Katherine had the first turn and admitted that she had hidden the shoes in her purse before going out of the house to church, so her husband couldn't see. She was supposed to be adhering to an austerity plan of sorts I think, but she just had to have those shoes.
Other shoes, other stories. Toes tired of standing in business woman pumps chose favorite boots instead. My friend Lee had on her very stunning 50th birthday kick-ass boots, because that's what she was feeling like today. Kicking ass.
Another woman, with very wide feet, talked of finding her first fashionable shoes at the Wide Shoe Warehouse, and how much better it made her feel to be wearing something stylish, rather than tennis shoes. Still another said she was wearing her mother's shoes — black paten loafers — shoes her mother had given away because they were too wide for her slim foot. The mother of three girls, a set of twins and one other, preschoolers all, she said that trendy shoes for her were out of the question. I had seen this mother as I headed from the car to church — she trying to stop one of the twins long enough to put a bow in her tousled hair. One daughter cried the entire walk down the long sidewalk.
Most of the women my age (including me) wore low heeled shoes, while the younger women wore spiked heels or boots, so high I know would fall off them and hurt myself if I tried to walk in them. I have a narrow foot, and shoes have always been such a problem for me to find. Only the expensive Italian ones seem to fit my foot, so I tend to keep the shoes that do fit for a long time, wear them out. These days it's flats usually, and the fact that nobody anywhere is making narrow shoes anymore means that pretty much every pair of shoes in my closet does not fit me properly, except the old walking shoes. So of course I have bunions.
My mother has a closet full of Ferragamos, all quads. She told me once that because I wore her size (my sister wears a 7.5 I think), she would leave them to me. I haven't worn a quad since I started pounding my feet, running after toddlers 28 years ago. I couldn't squeeze my big toe into my wedding shoes if I tried. (I think I finally gave them away last year.) Nor could I wear a single pair of my mother's shoes. (Metaphor intended.)
But what if I really want the antique corner cupboard or the silver or the wing chairs in her living room? Do I have to get shoes I can never wear?
The other silly question I asked was three-fold: What did you want to be when you were 10? Who are you now? And what would it take to be the person that 10-year-old wanted to be?
Laura wanted to be Farah Fawcett,to marry the boy who sat next to her in fifth grade. Cool Katherine, who is very tall, wanted not to be. And she admitted to playing with Barbies (I played with them, too), and to spending time dressing them and fixing their hair so that now she tells her friends what to wear. Marty wanted to be Nancy Drew. Velma, the oldest in our group, said she just wanted to get out of the house. Which she did, the same year I was born.
I didn't share my answer. I couldn't think of anything I ever wanted to be, except a writer, and everybody already knew that about me.
And then I remembered: Once upon a time I wanted to be an architect.
When I was just learning to read, one of our reading books contained stories about a neighborhood being built. I remember in first grade, being fascinated by the houses, each one in a different phase of building. What drew me where the bones of the house, the stick built structures standing there before they got their skin.
At 9 or 10, my friends and I drew houses. Using fountain pens we sketched out family rooms with shuttered picture windows, balconied second-story bedrooms, carports with flower beds circling around them, curving staircases that always led to white-carpeted rooms. I loved in particular to draw the floor plans, carefully placing bay windows and walk-in closets — I might have even used a ruler to get the lines straight... I can't remember that now.
But then, math intervened. I just wasn't good at it. I could do long division pretty well, but by the time I got to algebra, I got all mixed up with the abcs and xyzs, and though I did do pretty well in geometry, forget about calculus.
When I lie awake at night, sometimes I think about the fact that a whole room stands above me, with all my daughter's trinkets held there, and I am grateful that I don't have to worry about that floor falling down on me, because I am confident the person who designed my house knew more about math than I do.
Even today, when I walk into a house I admire or marvel at a skyscraper, I sometimes wish I possessed the vision and the expertise to design it. But the people who inhabit those buildings on a daily basis have to be thankful that I didn't try to fake it. To be the architect I dreamed of being at 10 would have been disastrous. For many.
So gosh, how can I connect the girl I wanted to be at 10, to what I have become?
Well.
There is an architecture to sentence structure, and a lot of it, when I think of it. And though I might misplace a metaphor or misspell a word or two, I doubt that even my favorite college professor would get so much as a concussion from reading what I write. And as far as I have been able to figure, math is rarely if ever involved. Thank goodness for that.
sbr
Katherine had the first turn and admitted that she had hidden the shoes in her purse before going out of the house to church, so her husband couldn't see. She was supposed to be adhering to an austerity plan of sorts I think, but she just had to have those shoes.
Other shoes, other stories. Toes tired of standing in business woman pumps chose favorite boots instead. My friend Lee had on her very stunning 50th birthday kick-ass boots, because that's what she was feeling like today. Kicking ass.
Another woman, with very wide feet, talked of finding her first fashionable shoes at the Wide Shoe Warehouse, and how much better it made her feel to be wearing something stylish, rather than tennis shoes. Still another said she was wearing her mother's shoes — black paten loafers — shoes her mother had given away because they were too wide for her slim foot. The mother of three girls, a set of twins and one other, preschoolers all, she said that trendy shoes for her were out of the question. I had seen this mother as I headed from the car to church — she trying to stop one of the twins long enough to put a bow in her tousled hair. One daughter cried the entire walk down the long sidewalk.
Most of the women my age (including me) wore low heeled shoes, while the younger women wore spiked heels or boots, so high I know would fall off them and hurt myself if I tried to walk in them. I have a narrow foot, and shoes have always been such a problem for me to find. Only the expensive Italian ones seem to fit my foot, so I tend to keep the shoes that do fit for a long time, wear them out. These days it's flats usually, and the fact that nobody anywhere is making narrow shoes anymore means that pretty much every pair of shoes in my closet does not fit me properly, except the old walking shoes. So of course I have bunions.
My mother has a closet full of Ferragamos, all quads. She told me once that because I wore her size (my sister wears a 7.5 I think), she would leave them to me. I haven't worn a quad since I started pounding my feet, running after toddlers 28 years ago. I couldn't squeeze my big toe into my wedding shoes if I tried. (I think I finally gave them away last year.) Nor could I wear a single pair of my mother's shoes. (Metaphor intended.)
But what if I really want the antique corner cupboard or the silver or the wing chairs in her living room? Do I have to get shoes I can never wear?
The other silly question I asked was three-fold: What did you want to be when you were 10? Who are you now? And what would it take to be the person that 10-year-old wanted to be?
Laura wanted to be Farah Fawcett,to marry the boy who sat next to her in fifth grade. Cool Katherine, who is very tall, wanted not to be. And she admitted to playing with Barbies (I played with them, too), and to spending time dressing them and fixing their hair so that now she tells her friends what to wear. Marty wanted to be Nancy Drew. Velma, the oldest in our group, said she just wanted to get out of the house. Which she did, the same year I was born.
I didn't share my answer. I couldn't think of anything I ever wanted to be, except a writer, and everybody already knew that about me.
And then I remembered: Once upon a time I wanted to be an architect.
When I was just learning to read, one of our reading books contained stories about a neighborhood being built. I remember in first grade, being fascinated by the houses, each one in a different phase of building. What drew me where the bones of the house, the stick built structures standing there before they got their skin.
At 9 or 10, my friends and I drew houses. Using fountain pens we sketched out family rooms with shuttered picture windows, balconied second-story bedrooms, carports with flower beds circling around them, curving staircases that always led to white-carpeted rooms. I loved in particular to draw the floor plans, carefully placing bay windows and walk-in closets — I might have even used a ruler to get the lines straight... I can't remember that now.
But then, math intervened. I just wasn't good at it. I could do long division pretty well, but by the time I got to algebra, I got all mixed up with the abcs and xyzs, and though I did do pretty well in geometry, forget about calculus.
When I lie awake at night, sometimes I think about the fact that a whole room stands above me, with all my daughter's trinkets held there, and I am grateful that I don't have to worry about that floor falling down on me, because I am confident the person who designed my house knew more about math than I do.
Even today, when I walk into a house I admire or marvel at a skyscraper, I sometimes wish I possessed the vision and the expertise to design it. But the people who inhabit those buildings on a daily basis have to be thankful that I didn't try to fake it. To be the architect I dreamed of being at 10 would have been disastrous. For many.
So gosh, how can I connect the girl I wanted to be at 10, to what I have become?
Well.
There is an architecture to sentence structure, and a lot of it, when I think of it. And though I might misplace a metaphor or misspell a word or two, I doubt that even my favorite college professor would get so much as a concussion from reading what I write. And as far as I have been able to figure, math is rarely if ever involved. Thank goodness for that.
sbr
Me To the Core
I know we are five days beyond Reverb10, but I am still catching up...
Core story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (Bonus: Consider your reflections from this month. Look through them to discover a thread you may not have noticed until today.)Author: Molly O'Neill, Harper Collins Children's
A few years ago I got an email from the editor of a regional magazine I had been writing for, asking for writers willing to undergo a personal makeover for the sake of the story. I was 49 years old and in that space of life when, as I say in the story, we want Oprah’s people to call and offer to transform us into someone more beautiful than we feel.
So, I jumped. A freelancer at the time, I was not about to turn down good money, even if it meant being subjected to bleaches and pincers and people poking at my particulars. I imagined myself under the influence of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, finally throwing out that aqua pique pantsuit I wore for my book tour 10 years ago, because you know, I might just fit into it one day again soon. Stylist Nick Arrojo with his sexy Manchester accent giving me just the right cut, and makeup artist Carmindy (what kind of name is that, Carmindy? Could I combine my names somehow, Sustella? Stellusan?)... Carmindy telling me what I really need is a smokey eye. Oh, how I wanted a smokey eye.
What I didn't know was that the story required not only a hair/makeup/clothing makeover — which was hard enough — but that I work with a life coach. A LIFE coach! I didn't agree to anything about changing my life. But I had signed on, so I was in. For five weeks (FIVE WEEKS!) I spent time on the phone with my life coach, with my space organizer, with my clothes makeover maven. The organizer came to my house and transformed my office. (And because of her I now have wonderful built-in book shelves.) The clothes maven came to my closet, and I was embarrassed that I don't have a light close enough by to see what I am trying to find. Even now.
The final day would be with the hairstylist, then shopping for a new chic image. (Thank goodness the photos are lost to the magazine archive.) I approached each with trepidation. What did those women really feel when found on a NYC street by Meredith and Matt and Ann and Al and taken off for a day of transformation?
I would soon find out.
On the final day, before I was to have my physical transformation, I met with my life coach at a coffee shop. And OMG (though that expression didn't exist in the vernacular at the time) I was thrilled at the outcome of my little treasure map project. But she was not.
"All you have here are words," she said. "Where are the pictures?" Pictures? Well, I had a few. (ok, four.) But I guess the assignment was NO words.
Imagine.
When I thought about it, the magazine pictures of women smiling whom I had never met, objects I would never own.. they didn't draw my eye. What I saw before she pointed to the lack of pictures, was art— something I had created that reflected quite by accident the me at that moment, and probably the me of every moment since I could spell out words at all, on the chalkboard lines my teacher drew in front of me in first grade.
I remember that, how my teacher, Mrs. Pippen, used to write the letters out in yellow chalk, spelling plain old words across the chalkboard in fine block letters that looked like art to me. And she could take that old eraser, wipe it all away, and make a whole new sentence, all over again. What magic, that was. (Yes, I do realize how weird that is.)
How wonderful, to be able to put one letter in front of the other to make a word. And then a sentence. A paragraph. A page. A story.
But according to my life coach, I had not followed the directions. I had made a C. Well, there you also have me. C. To the Core.
And so, in the beginning of my "finding" (my word for 2011,) today I revisited that treasure map, the one that didn't have (enough) pictures. Looking at it now I am embarrassed at how much I haven't done, but heartened that it still holds the secrets to what I wish for myself, at my core.
My purple room friend today took a look at the map and suggested I pick pieces of it to write about during this year. What a wonderful idea. My own little Reverb, she said. A goal I will set for myself. When I am stuck, and maybe when I am not.
What my 49-year-old self meant by the words "Sane, polished, and ready for anything," I have no idea. But I am just curious enough about her to dig out the old chalk board and eraser, to wiggle with the words enough, to find out.
sbr
Core story. What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (Bonus: Consider your reflections from this month. Look through them to discover a thread you may not have noticed until today.)Author: Molly O'Neill, Harper Collins Children's
A few years ago I got an email from the editor of a regional magazine I had been writing for, asking for writers willing to undergo a personal makeover for the sake of the story. I was 49 years old and in that space of life when, as I say in the story, we want Oprah’s people to call and offer to transform us into someone more beautiful than we feel.
So, I jumped. A freelancer at the time, I was not about to turn down good money, even if it meant being subjected to bleaches and pincers and people poking at my particulars. I imagined myself under the influence of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, finally throwing out that aqua pique pantsuit I wore for my book tour 10 years ago, because you know, I might just fit into it one day again soon. Stylist Nick Arrojo with his sexy Manchester accent giving me just the right cut, and makeup artist Carmindy (what kind of name is that, Carmindy? Could I combine my names somehow, Sustella? Stellusan?)... Carmindy telling me what I really need is a smokey eye. Oh, how I wanted a smokey eye.
What I didn't know was that the story required not only a hair/makeup/clothing makeover — which was hard enough — but that I work with a life coach. A LIFE coach! I didn't agree to anything about changing my life. But I had signed on, so I was in. For five weeks (FIVE WEEKS!) I spent time on the phone with my life coach, with my space organizer, with my clothes makeover maven. The organizer came to my house and transformed my office. (And because of her I now have wonderful built-in book shelves.) The clothes maven came to my closet, and I was embarrassed that I don't have a light close enough by to see what I am trying to find. Even now.
The final day would be with the hairstylist, then shopping for a new chic image. (Thank goodness the photos are lost to the magazine archive.) I approached each with trepidation. What did those women really feel when found on a NYC street by Meredith and Matt and Ann and Al and taken off for a day of transformation?
I would soon find out.
On the final day, before I was to have my physical transformation, I met with my life coach at a coffee shop. And OMG (though that expression didn't exist in the vernacular at the time) I was thrilled at the outcome of my little treasure map project. But she was not.
"All you have here are words," she said. "Where are the pictures?" Pictures? Well, I had a few. (ok, four.) But I guess the assignment was NO words.
Imagine.
When I thought about it, the magazine pictures of women smiling whom I had never met, objects I would never own.. they didn't draw my eye. What I saw before she pointed to the lack of pictures, was art— something I had created that reflected quite by accident the me at that moment, and probably the me of every moment since I could spell out words at all, on the chalkboard lines my teacher drew in front of me in first grade.
I remember that, how my teacher, Mrs. Pippen, used to write the letters out in yellow chalk, spelling plain old words across the chalkboard in fine block letters that looked like art to me. And she could take that old eraser, wipe it all away, and make a whole new sentence, all over again. What magic, that was. (Yes, I do realize how weird that is.)
How wonderful, to be able to put one letter in front of the other to make a word. And then a sentence. A paragraph. A page. A story.
But according to my life coach, I had not followed the directions. I had made a C. Well, there you also have me. C. To the Core.
And so, in the beginning of my "finding" (my word for 2011,) today I revisited that treasure map, the one that didn't have (enough) pictures. Looking at it now I am embarrassed at how much I haven't done, but heartened that it still holds the secrets to what I wish for myself, at my core.
My purple room friend today took a look at the map and suggested I pick pieces of it to write about during this year. What a wonderful idea. My own little Reverb, she said. A goal I will set for myself. When I am stuck, and maybe when I am not.
What my 49-year-old self meant by the words "Sane, polished, and ready for anything," I have no idea. But I am just curious enough about her to dig out the old chalk board and eraser, to wiggle with the words enough, to find out.
sbr