Fashionably Late
NPR: This I Believe Series
August 20, 2009
I have never been accused of being fashionable. That I was presentable at all in high school was a testament to my well-healed mother’s tireless prodding. In college a gaggle of roommates mothered me out of t-shirts and into blouses, only to find me backsliding daily into a pair of old sweats.
Probably, I thought myself above vanity, and consumerism. A woman, after all, is only so grand as her idea of herself, and sometimes much less. I see now my persistent stylelessness as a combination of genuine lazy indifference and a healthy squeeze of egotism. “I don’t care. I don’t care. Look at me, because I don’t care!”
That is until I fell in love, which I never intended to do, and then married a colorblind man who doesn’t care what I wear and frankly can’t tell the difference between red and green, much less shades of navy blue. Now, in the face of such refreshing indifference, I find myself sheepishly emerging from fashion apathy. I realize now, more than finding and trying on clothes, I hated the comments and speculations if ever I dared to wear other than my drab everyday. “What’s the occasion?” or, “You look good, today.” Which meant, of course, that every other day…
Even if my husband was not colorblind, marriage has allowed me a measure of experimental freedom with my wardrobe I didn’t anticipate, freedom without fear of those persistent assumptions to which single girls are subject. A skirt is not some grand life statement, damn it. A skirt is a skirt. And the one person worth impressing, were I trying to impress anyone, doesn’t care what I wear (if he did he wouldn’t have married me.) Strangely enough, latching on to this particular ball and chain has left me freer to create a wardrobe, and a life, than I might have been, left to dig further into the fashion rut I’d carved for my single self.
You won’t find me racing out to Labor Day sales, or chanting open, open, open in front of department store windows. But you might find me surfing the shelves of second-hand stores, and I now openly, and graciously, accept the fashion charity of others. I’ve come to believe, that style, like love, finds us–hopeless though we fear ourselves to be–when we are open, willing and least expecting it.
Probably, I thought myself above vanity, and consumerism. A woman, after all, is only so grand as her idea of herself, and sometimes much less. I see now my persistent stylelessness as a combination of genuine lazy indifference and a healthy squeeze of egotism. “I don’t care. I don’t care. Look at me, because I don’t care!”
That is until I fell in love, which I never intended to do, and then married a colorblind man who doesn’t care what I wear and frankly can’t tell the difference between red and green, much less shades of navy blue. Now, in the face of such refreshing indifference, I find myself sheepishly emerging from fashion apathy. I realize now, more than finding and trying on clothes, I hated the comments and speculations if ever I dared to wear other than my drab everyday. “What’s the occasion?” or, “You look good, today.” Which meant, of course, that every other day…
Even if my husband was not colorblind, marriage has allowed me a measure of experimental freedom with my wardrobe I didn’t anticipate, freedom without fear of those persistent assumptions to which single girls are subject. A skirt is not some grand life statement, damn it. A skirt is a skirt. And the one person worth impressing, were I trying to impress anyone, doesn’t care what I wear (if he did he wouldn’t have married me.) Strangely enough, latching on to this particular ball and chain has left me freer to create a wardrobe, and a life, than I might have been, left to dig further into the fashion rut I’d carved for my single self.
You won’t find me racing out to Labor Day sales, or chanting open, open, open in front of department store windows. But you might find me surfing the shelves of second-hand stores, and I now openly, and graciously, accept the fashion charity of others. I’ve come to believe, that style, like love, finds us–hopeless though we fear ourselves to be–when we are open, willing and least expecting it.
Nana's Library
Open To All (2007) ed. Molly Fisk--an anthology benefiting Nevada County Libraries
For the eight years she lived with us my Nana needed two things to make her happy: baseball and books. While her baseball loyalties remained firmly with the Bash Brothers and the Oakland A’s, her reading loyalties were less stringent. Larry McMurtry and Daniel Steel were close companions on my Nana’s bookshelf. Crossword puzzles and National Geographics lounged on the same nightstand, and on the shelves above her bed, each and every western Louis L’Amour put a pen to. Romances were banished under the bed with the cigarettes we pretended not to know about.
Nana organized books by most recent use, or, in the case of the romances, by content. To a six-year-old with her first library card Nana’s collection carried no semblance of the order I’d discovered beyond the white pillars that still guard the red doors of the Grass Valley Library. Books lined like good soldiers, on shelves three times my height. So many books! About other places, other worlds, other times. If Nana’s collection represented familiar pets, the “real” library was a zoo of exotic animals.
But Nana's library, you see--the books she chose, the books that held her life--filled a higher purpose. They were her comfort, a balm for old age, an escape from the basement chill of our converted craft room, from the rasp of Granddad’s breath in the twin bed next to her. Page after page, long into the night, while the dog snored and Granddad wheezed, she’d read to find her youth again, her strength again, the rush of sex again. She smoked strong cigarettes, and loved strong men with years ahead of them before the stroke made them--made him--an angry wizened infant. The stroke that made them both dependent on their headstrong daughter and her loving mandates. Aerobics?! More fiber?! Less grease?!
When sleep finally came to her, it always came mid-sentence. I’d creep downstairs and find the reading light making a sharp incision in the morning. If the cover of the book resting on her chest featured twisting bodies, swirling titles in gold and scarlet, I’d let the light be and watch for a moment. Nana’s eyes were open slits, crusted, dry. Her breath told me she slept, though I imagined later, after she’d died, that even then she saw me. Even then she watched me, watching her, loved me, loving her. If the cover was an innocuous brown with a safe, block title, I’d reach up, click off the light and tiptoe out again. I never spoke to her about this. I never told anyone.
Today my own library bears a cluttered resemblance to Nana’s. Organization is an afterthought. Books with bar codes and books without are piled in the order I read them. If people live on in memory, my Nana lives also in the careful chaos of my own library. And once in a while I’ll wake in the blue-black early morning; the reading light will be off, though I know I’d left it on; a book will be open on my chest. I just might hear the sound of baseball in the distance, or, catch a jolt of nicotine. My team is the A’s, but my radio is off. I don’t smoke. I won’t tell you what books I keep under my bed. I trust that Nana won’t either.
Nana organized books by most recent use, or, in the case of the romances, by content. To a six-year-old with her first library card Nana’s collection carried no semblance of the order I’d discovered beyond the white pillars that still guard the red doors of the Grass Valley Library. Books lined like good soldiers, on shelves three times my height. So many books! About other places, other worlds, other times. If Nana’s collection represented familiar pets, the “real” library was a zoo of exotic animals.
But Nana's library, you see--the books she chose, the books that held her life--filled a higher purpose. They were her comfort, a balm for old age, an escape from the basement chill of our converted craft room, from the rasp of Granddad’s breath in the twin bed next to her. Page after page, long into the night, while the dog snored and Granddad wheezed, she’d read to find her youth again, her strength again, the rush of sex again. She smoked strong cigarettes, and loved strong men with years ahead of them before the stroke made them--made him--an angry wizened infant. The stroke that made them both dependent on their headstrong daughter and her loving mandates. Aerobics?! More fiber?! Less grease?!
When sleep finally came to her, it always came mid-sentence. I’d creep downstairs and find the reading light making a sharp incision in the morning. If the cover of the book resting on her chest featured twisting bodies, swirling titles in gold and scarlet, I’d let the light be and watch for a moment. Nana’s eyes were open slits, crusted, dry. Her breath told me she slept, though I imagined later, after she’d died, that even then she saw me. Even then she watched me, watching her, loved me, loving her. If the cover was an innocuous brown with a safe, block title, I’d reach up, click off the light and tiptoe out again. I never spoke to her about this. I never told anyone.
Today my own library bears a cluttered resemblance to Nana’s. Organization is an afterthought. Books with bar codes and books without are piled in the order I read them. If people live on in memory, my Nana lives also in the careful chaos of my own library. And once in a while I’ll wake in the blue-black early morning; the reading light will be off, though I know I’d left it on; a book will be open on my chest. I just might hear the sound of baseball in the distance, or, catch a jolt of nicotine. My team is the A’s, but my radio is off. I don’t smoke. I won’t tell you what books I keep under my bed. I trust that Nana won’t either.
Alumni Success Stories:
Mary Volmer '01
I came to Saint Mary’s College to study biology and the life sciences, but after two years changed majors to English.
To study the heart in biology we’d cut it up, learn names for the parts, their functions, and maladies. The heart was reduced to a mechanism, which impressed but did not inspire me.
The novels, plays and stories I read in my English classes inspired me.
If life makes sense at all, it is only through the stories we tell and the words we use to tell them. Once upon a time dinosaurs walked the earth. Once upon a time amphibians grew legs and climbed to dry land. Once upon a time a sperm met egg and made you.
The English major at Saint Mary’s taught me to read and listen closely, to form arguments and express my ideas clearly and carefully. I grew to appreciate the importance of both the stories we hold dear, and the stories we take for granted. I gained analytic and expressive skills valuable in any field. I attended readings of renowned authors the department brought to campus and cautiously began to consider the writing life.
After college I received a Rotary Scholarship to pursue a Masters in writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Saint Mary’s had prepared me well for graduate level work. While many of my fellow grad students had read books about authors, and theoretical tomes about novels, at Saint Mary’s I had read the novels themselves. Through seminar-style discussion and daily writing I had learned to incorporate other people’s insights into my own understanding.
The English Major at Saint Mary’s had taught me to think for myself and to express myself, and it was these skills that enabled me to begin my first novel.
I returned to Saint Mary’s for an MFA in creative writing and in my second year sold my first novel, Crown of Dust. My second novel is in progress. I attribute this success largely to the education I received as an undergraduate.
Now, as a teacher at Saint Mary’s I hope to contribute to the creative awakening of another crop of Gaels. I have never regretted my decision to change from science to English. I am suited to stories and the study of life through words.
To study the heart in biology we’d cut it up, learn names for the parts, their functions, and maladies. The heart was reduced to a mechanism, which impressed but did not inspire me.
The novels, plays and stories I read in my English classes inspired me.
If life makes sense at all, it is only through the stories we tell and the words we use to tell them. Once upon a time dinosaurs walked the earth. Once upon a time amphibians grew legs and climbed to dry land. Once upon a time a sperm met egg and made you.
The English major at Saint Mary’s taught me to read and listen closely, to form arguments and express my ideas clearly and carefully. I grew to appreciate the importance of both the stories we hold dear, and the stories we take for granted. I gained analytic and expressive skills valuable in any field. I attended readings of renowned authors the department brought to campus and cautiously began to consider the writing life.
After college I received a Rotary Scholarship to pursue a Masters in writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Saint Mary’s had prepared me well for graduate level work. While many of my fellow grad students had read books about authors, and theoretical tomes about novels, at Saint Mary’s I had read the novels themselves. Through seminar-style discussion and daily writing I had learned to incorporate other people’s insights into my own understanding.
The English Major at Saint Mary’s had taught me to think for myself and to express myself, and it was these skills that enabled me to begin my first novel.
I returned to Saint Mary’s for an MFA in creative writing and in my second year sold my first novel, Crown of Dust. My second novel is in progress. I attribute this success largely to the education I received as an undergraduate.
Now, as a teacher at Saint Mary’s I hope to contribute to the creative awakening of another crop of Gaels. I have never regretted my decision to change from science to English. I am suited to stories and the study of life through words.
