The Quilt I Would Have Made for Myself

In my days as a stay-at-home mom, I started quilting. I quilted when I ran for School Board. Cutting fabric and running a sewing machine allowed me to zone out from the hectic and unpredictable campaign.

Since I've started working, I haven't found much time to quilt. In the past few days off of work, I finished a project I had been working on for about a year. I often work on more than one quilting project at a time. The different phases of quilting -- picking fabrics, creating a design, cutting fabric into shapes, assembling the top, quilting and binding-- each have their different appeal and it can be dull to have to do all of those steps them all in the same order every time. Unfortunately, a quilt has to be done in order; therefore, I have more than one project going. Plus, it can be daunting to finish a project without something else to work on.

This week, I finished a quilt. I finished the quilt I would have wanted on my own bed when I was ten. It is full of bright colors and birds and bicycles and flowers and tree houses. It has a green and blue binding. Some people out here might call them Seahawks colors.

Yesterday, I shipped it to my cousin's daughter in Chicago. She is eight. I hope she likes it.

I was sad to ship this quilt off, sadder than when I've shipped off other stuff. I make more stuff than I can use, so I have to get rid of what I make somehow. Claire-Adele didn't want this quilt, and I can't blame her. It is a little too whimsical for someone her age.

The funny thing about quilting is that started the hobby so I could make a quilt from the dresses Claire-Adele wore as a toddler. My mother-in-law lives in Atlanta and would buy Claire-Adele dozens of fancy dresses, so many that I sent her every day to preschool wearing one.

"Please don't worry about the dresses," I said. "Don't let her attire keep her from doing art projects of getting dirty. My mother-in-law buys them and she lives in the south where the clothes are more..."

"Flamboyant?" the teacher replied. I wasn't sure what word I was looking for, but "flamboyant" worked. I gave dozens of Claire-Adele's dresses to friends, family and Goodwill. Some had paint stains, others food. The fabric was too beautiful for me to part with, so I loaded them extra dresses in plastic tubs in the basement so someday they would become a quilt. But I needed to learn to quilt first.

Somewhere in this process, quilting became my hobby and I had almost forgotten about Claire-Adele's dresses in the basement. My goal was to create something for her before she left for college. I fear she won't like what I make, or won't bring it to school. I want to talk to her about patterns, but I fear there will be nothing she likes, and she'll kill the project before it starts. Which begs the question: who am I making this for, me or her?

Perhaps this is the quilt I need to make for myself. And if Claire-Adele wants it someday, I'll let her have it.

Brag and Drag Letter -- Senior in High School Edition

This week was part of ten days off of work. This will be the longest break I’ve had since I started my job last summer. Before the break, I was kind of dreading spending a week with my family.

The weekend before my break was total shit. Claire-Adele was in a rare form of bitchiness, so much so I was counting the months until she is 18 (six months) and leaves  for college (nine months). At one point last week, I was rooting that she’s choose a nearby state school. Now and rooting for her going to school on Mars. The following Monday I was giddy to return to work. The source of this general moodiness (I am guessing) is her applying to college.

Normal Mood of Daughter during Senior Year of High School

Mood of Daughter During College Application Process

I was complaining to my friend Jen about Claire-Adele's noxious behavior.

“Work is easier than home,” she said. How come no one told me that years ago? Why does the world keep this a secret from stay-at-home moms?

I could be simple and say Claire-Adele is horrible and awful all of the time, but no. With this experience comes exceptionable bouts of helpfulness and kindness.

"I'll make the Christmas cards this year," she said.

"I wrote the family Christmas letter," she texted me, including a copy of the note.

"Where is the address list? I'll address the envelopes," she said.

"Oooh, can I make the chicken parmesan for dinner tonight?" she asked. Uh, yeah. No permission needed to make dinner for the family.

I have three days left of vacation, and I've survived so far. Here's hoping I can make it until Tuesday. At the very least, I have my fancy red shoes to welcome me back to work.

Disappointment

Claire-Adele did not get into the school she applied to for Early Decision.

The night before she found out, she did, however, get accepted at the state school she applied to, which softened the blow a little bit. Her letter from Western said she was accepted with distinction and would be considered for merit aid. Which is all good. Now she has to buckle down for the rest of the break and finish her other college applications, which might be harder to do after the sting of rejection.

I had a million feelings after I found the news.

• I feel bad for my daughter for not getting into her favorite school.
• WTF? Her favorite school is one of the most competitive in the country. What kind of Princess cries over losing something that would be an honor and a privilege, not a right?
• Yay! I don't have to shell out an obscene amount of money for her to go to school.
• But I don't get to go to New York a few times year for vacation.
• How would she navigate the big city anyway? She could go to school much closer to home and that would be nice.
• She would learn so much in the big city and it would be fun. I am sorry she might miss that unless she gets into another school in the Big Apple.
• I could buy a new car, a vacation home, Jack could quit his job or retire early, etc., with all of the money we'd save on tuition if she went to a state school instead.

And back and forth and back and forth...

Saturday morning, I woke up and talked to my dad on the phone about Claire-Adele not getting into her top choice college.

I told him I felt like Rachel from Friends when she is finding out of she was pregnant. Phoebe took the test and told Rachel she wasn't pregnant, and Rachel was got weepy when she heard the test was negative. Phoebe lied, and said "No, you are really pregnant, but now you know what you really want."

When I was growing up, my mom thought it was outrageous to spend a ton of money on a private college education for me.

"I don't need the mother of my grandchildren to be that educated," she said. My mom turned the corner a little bit when a friend told her that it is good for women to have the capacity to be financially independent in case they get a divorce. My dad never participated in those discussions. He quietly wrote the tuition check and that was the end of the conversation.

Fast forward to 2017, the Year of the Gropers, Assaulters, and Rapists: Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, et al. Now more than ever, a woman with a strong education is a woman who has power over her fate and destiny. Now that uneducated women deserved to be harassed or assaulted--hardly. We need more women who can step into leadership roles in all areas -- business, government, entertainment, education.

A good education is a shield, a weapon against the bullshit of sexism. I am not talking here about assault or rape. I am talking about mansplaining or the automatic assumption some men make that women don't know what they are doing. I remember I met a young journalist from Northwestern when I was President of the Seattle Council PTSA. I told him I was an NU alum, too.

"What did you study?" he asked.

"MMSS," I said.

"Oh my god," he said, eyes wide. "You must be smart." As if I wasn't. It was as if I were an airhead until proven otherwise. Does this happen to men? I doubt it.

I had my Rachel pregnancy moment when Claire-Adele didn't get into her to favorite school. I realized how much I wanted it for her when she didn't get in. Sure, I had been saving money for this (and the Boy) since before they could walk or talk. I gave up a fancier house, clothes, and car so some day my kids could have the education they wanted.

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe she'll be fine without a snob school on her resume as my friend Marta calls them. Claire-Adele will likely be fine no matter where she goes. She is smart, creative and independent. Still, I had thought the world was changing--as so many other women did--and now we are in a moment of national reckoning and I am boomeranging back to wanting to protect her, to give her a suit of armor to face the world.

Claire-Adele

The big day is coming up soon.

I am kind of glad she is being so difficult. If she were being sweet and normal, I’d be crying every time I’d hear a Christmas carol.

“Claire-Adele loves Christmas carols and next year she won’t be here to listen to them the day after Thanksgiving,” is what I’d say between sobs. I would think about how after she leaves for college that we might never live in the same city—or coast—again. Ever. I did that to my parents. Oy.

Still, I hope that tomorrow brings happiness for her even if it breaks my heart a little bit. My sadness will take a backseat to her happiness, but it is not as if I’ll rejoice if she doesn’t get in. I'll probably be right there in the pit with her, along with the other 94% of the students who apply and don't get in.

Would I be happier if she stays closer to home next year? Only if she is.

On another topic, I opted for the red velvet. They should be delivered in one to two days. I can wear them the dress I wore to Hamilton, forever now to be known as my Hamilton dress.

(Second) Worst. Ski. Day. Ever.

Some people say that any day on the slopes is a good day. Those people probably have never been taken down the hill on the sled by the ski patrol. My worst day skiing was the day I tore my ACL. My second worst day skiing ever was yesterday.

Saturday, I took the Boy and one of his friends to Snoqualmie. It was the first day Central was open. The boys had wanted to go to Alpental, but I wanted to stay on one of the smaller hills. I started my morning on the green run, Holiday, at Central while the boys went on the blues and blacks.  Holiday was one of the steeper green hills I’ve been on since I tore my ACL.

After about fifteen runs, I was bored. I watched several new skiers head over to the steeper terrain and thought I can do that. I've done it before. After lunch, I decided to go down Alpine. Alpine is a blue run that I have done dozens of times before I tore my ACL. I was feeling good on the greens. I figured I was mostly afraid and fear was holding me back. I did fine on the main runs at Crystal two weeks earlier.

I got on Central Express, the chairlift to the top of Alpine. The chairlift was a four-seater, and it flew up the mountain. The lift to the green hills are often fixed grip and they crawl and creep up the hills. I had forgotten how fast these new lifts are. As I was riding up, I thought about the Ski Patrol guy I met on the lift last week at West. He tore his ACL twenty years ago and was now going to skin up the mountain and ride through the back country. Cool, I thought. This guy is my inspiration.

Alpine has four main parts to the run: first, a downhill curve then a second steep part, then a third part which is not that steep and then the flat run-out at the bottom. The first part is a soft gentle curve. I manage this part just fine. It was a little bit harder than I remembered but nothing impossible. The cover on the mountain was thin, so they might not have groomed this run. There were more bumps and unevenness than I would have liked. I almost lost it once, but I recovered before I hit the ground.

The second part nearly killed me. I felt like I was going down to straight vertical drop. The snow was on groomed and it had small moguls in spots. I was terrified. How am I going to get to the bottom of this hill? I thought about taking off my skis and walking down the mountain. I nixed that idea because I'd have to get to the edge of the run and to get to the edge I have to ski there and I didn't want to do that.

Fear was kicking my ass.

Fear = 1

Lauren = 0

I was in the middle of the hill and stuck. I couldn't go back to the top and beg the lift ops guys to let me download. Instead, I turned my skis perpendicular to the fall line and marched down the hill sideways. I flattened out all of the bumps in my path, as if I were a one-woman grooming machine.

When I made it down the second part, I thought I was in luck. I didn't remember the third part being hard at all.

I was wrong.

Fear = 2

Lauren = 0

The snow cover at the edges of the run was thin. Instead of being wide open with flat parts, this was a narrow chute with bushes and ice puddles on the side. I sidestepped down this part, too. Last week, the Boy told me I should ski faster and harder, so when I crash my skis will come flying off and I won't tear my ACL. He thinks I tore my ACL because I was going to slow when I crashed two years ago. This is coming from a fourteen year old who thinks he is indestructible.

As I was slowly sidestepping down the mountain, I watched old pros fly by with grace and ease. I watched elementary school aged children turn and pass me. The only people going slower than me were a dad and his five year old daughter. As I watched people of all ages and abilities ski by, I thought of my physical therapist, Evan. I love Evan. He is a great guy and I would recommend him to anyone. But I never want to see him again. Ever. Falling is part of skiing, but I don't want a fall that will cause me to struggle walking for a year.

The fourth, flat part I managed okay. Because it was flat.

It took me almost an hour from when I left the lodge after lunch to when I skied past the lodge. I was ready to hang up my skis forever after my run on Alpine. Maybe life in the lodge isn't so bad, I thought. No, the other voice in my head fought back. Sitting the lodge sucks. You need to do another run. Go back to Holiday, even if it is dull. So I went to Holiday.

Why couldn't I do the Alpine run? Did I lose that much leg strength over two years since I tore my ACL? Even with all of my physical therapy? I couldn't believe that I had the weakest legs of anyone on the mountain. That couldn't be possible, or could it? Were my legs drained like a battery after my accident, and they have never fully recharged? Will they ever fully recharge?

In the end, the greens were too easy and the blues were too hard. Where was my "just right" run? After skiing greens all day, my thighs didn't burn at all. Usually, after a good day of skiing, my quads are on fire in a good way. If I don't need a salt bath or twenty-minutes in a hot tub after skiing, I really haven't skied. Likewise, I want sore muscles, not torn ligaments or broken bones.

I wish I could design my own ski runs. The Boy has a video game where he creates his own race tracks. My neighbor designs landscapes for gold courses. Unfortunately, ski runs are harder to modify and change, otherwise, I'd make a run that got a little bit harder every time I did it until I was as good as I once was.

Prada and a Fortnight, Part 2

Claire-Adele and I skied today. Rather, we drove in the car to Snoqualmie together and we skied on two different parts of the mountain--me on the greens, she on the most difficult terrain she could find. Only West was open. Everyone there fit into two categories:

1. Beginners
2. People who wished they were at Alpental, buy hey, snow is snow and they'll take what they can get.

When we were driving home, I asked her if I should buy a $400 pair of Prada shoes. In my last post, I wondered what advice I would give her. Now I was curious to hear what advice she would give me. I didn't explain the whole middle-aged, pre-empty-nest and pre-empty bank account syndrome that I am experiencing. Instead, I asked the question straight: Should I buy a $400 pair of Prada shoes?

I partially expected her to freak out, and say you want to spend how much on shoes before I could go to college? That would buy a quarters worth of textbooks! And then she would cry. This morning before we left for skiing, she lost her shit when I suggested taking her out to dinner on Dec. 15 in honor of her getting her first college response--good or bad. We would celebrate her applying to college.

She exploded into tears. "How can you say that? Don't you know how stressful this is for me?"

(Me silently thinking: Yeah. That's why I offered to treat you to dinner...)

"I am going to my room to cry by myself," she said and stormed off.

I was expecting something like that when I asked about the shoes. Instead, I got an in-depth analysis.

"What do they look like?"

"Velvet Mary Janes," she said.

"Nice," she said. Even without a picture, she approved of the style. "What color?"

"They have the style in blue, purple or red."

"Burgundy red or red red?"

"Burgundy."

"Brown burgundy or red burgundy?" she asked. I had to think about it. "More brown, I suppose. They aren't really all that red."

"How high is the heel?" she asked.

"Two and a half inches," I said.

"Mid-height," she said. "That's good. How often would you wear them?" she asked. "If you wear them ten times, that is $40 a time. If you wear them 100 times, that is $4 a time."

"I am planning to wear them at work," I said.

"You would wear Prada to work? Isn't where you work super casual?" she asked.

"I don't care. They can wear what they want. I'll wear what I want."

"Seriously? Don't people where you work wear t-shirts and ripped jeans?" she asked.

[Editor's Note: I am skipping the sidebar conversation on ripped jeans.]

"What would you wear it with?" she asked.

"I don't know. Black skirts, likely," she said.

"You could wear the blue ones with your Jawa dress," she said. "If you wear blue shoes with black, you will need to wear a blue scarf or blouse or something. Blue shoes with black clothes otherwise doesn't go together."

[Editor's Note: I am skipping the item by item of discussion of clothes in my closet that could be worn with different colors.]

"The blue or red are probably the safest bet. I'd skip the purple," she said.

"Should I get a pair, or ___" I asked, waiting to see how she would fill in that blank.

"Christmas is coming up," she said. "You could get yourself the shoes as a Christmas present."

What is my take-away from this conversation? The conversation wasn't

• Philosophical--why should I spend that much on shoes when there are homeless people in Seattle? or,
• An analysis of my budget or whether or not I could afford the shoes, or 
• An analysis of the practicality of buying luxury goods versus spending that money on something other than shoes.

The question before the court of Claire-Adele was "Should I buy a $400 pair of Prada shoes?" Her analysis considered something I had thought about but not as my primary question: Are these the right shoes on which to spend $400? In some bizarre way, I was proud of her. She was not going to be an impulse shopper, letting her emotions take over her decision making. I was impressed.

When we got home, she looked online at the shoes I was considering.

"The blue ones are nice," she said. "And those silver Mary Janes would look great with my Winter Ball dress."

Yes, yes they would. And the real reason to keep Mom actively engaged in a conversation about shoes became apparent.

Prada and a Fortnight

Years ago, before I had kids, Jack and I were shopping at Marshall Field's in Chicago on a Saturday. It was January and we were getting ready for our upcoming to trip to Thailand in March and we both needed new clothes. The previous week, I was feeling a little funny and wondered if I was pregnant. I was too naive or in denial to think it was a real possibility for about a week after I missed my period. In Marshall Field's, I was riding the escalator down, I saw I giant shoe display. Even though I didn't know I was pregnant at the time, I remember thinking, I will never own a $400 pair of shoes.

The deep recesses of my mind knew I was pregnant even if the front end of my brain didn't know what was going on. The backend of my brain knew that if I were pregnant, that every decision in my life thereafter would be different, and spending $400 on a pair of shoes would be an absurd and unnecessary expense with baby clothes, new furniture and saving for college. To this day, I've never owned a $400 pair of shoes. 

In less than two weeks, Claire-Adele will find out if she gets into a college that will have a major financial impact on our lives. Even if she doesn't get in early admission to her dream school, she will have more chances in the winter to apply for more schools that will cause an equal amount of financial wreckage. I've scrapped and saved and invested and got a job to prepare for this. Like childbirth, I can prepare and be ready, but that won't make it any less painful as I open the outflow of money we set aside for saving for college that hasn't been touched since 2001. The thought of taking more money out of savings than I am putting in makes my head spin. 

I know it will be for a good cause and I am willing to spend a boatload on my daughter's education. First, I know she wants it and will work hard. Second--and I don't know if this is reverse sexism or not, but I know from my own experience as a young woman in the workforce I benefited tremendously from having a degree from a top-notch university with a top-notch major. Whenever I got mansplained to or had to speak up in a meeting, knowing I had a great education gave me confidence and credibility I don't know if I otherwise I would have had. Maybe I was like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz--I had a brain all along, but Northwestern was my Oz, telling me it was true. I want Claire-Adele to have that advantage because I know it helps, and as such I am willing to pay for it. It isn't just the brand name, either. It was four years of being surrounded by people equally smart and hard-working, who challenged, humbled, and supported me. 

Let's go back to $400 shoes. I was reading the fashion pages in the New York Times this week and I saw this amazing--amazing--pair of red velvet Mary Jane pumps by Prada. I have two weeks before I find out if I am going to have to adopt a major form of financial austerity for the next four plus years, depending on where the Boy decides to attend college, too. Is this now my window of opportunity--the window that closed when I first became pregnant--to buy an outrageously and irresponsibly expensive pair of shoes? In two weeks, that window could slam shut and not open again for eight years during which time I will be shopping at the Rack.

Nordstrom has these shoes (not in red, though) on sale for $389 with free shipping! 

They would even be less than my $400 threshold. Then I start wondering, would these be the perfect shoe? Are these shoes simply awesome, or are they the most awesome? Should I look for a better shoe, like these...

And they too are on sale, even though the sale price is crazy. These silver ones are wild. I have no idea where I would ever wear them, but aren't they fun? 

Fun...fun...fun.

Perhaps that is the theme here. This for the past seventeen years, my life has been primarily about responsibility and taking care of other people, not fun and frivolity. I can't say I mind. I am glad I have two kids and love them deeply even though at times they drive me crazy. I suppose that is the point of parental love. I remember thinking I was ready to have kids when I had more to give than I needed to take. Somehow I took that to mean I didn't need to give anything to myself. Buying these shoes aren't going to deprive my kids of food or shelter, or anything, really. 

Fast forward thirty years when Claire-Adele's daughter is going to college. What would I tell her to do? Buy the shoes or save the money?  

I don't know. I have a fortnight to decide.