Vanity (both kinds)

Happy Birthday, USA! Today we went to our little town's 4th of July parade. For a wee little burg it happens to boast the second-largest parade in les États-Unis.

The antique store was kind enough to deliver my new vanity over the holiday weekend

and, since I'm feeling cute, a picture of my anonymous son and me after the do today.

I'm wearing a vintage blue and white polka-dot number with new red cork-sole sandals and a bit more post-s'mores pooch than I'd like (but enough self-love to rock it anyway).

Now to wake my sleeping kid and husband to head out to a friend's little bbq. What are your plans for the day?

Happy 4th to you!

Fruit and Veg, Woeful Sprawl, White Teeth

It was a hot weekend of playing in the garden. We now have edible green beans, strawberries, arugula, mountains of chamomile for tea and skincare formulation, lemons and limes, spearmint for tea, Morrocan mint for mojitos and juleps, three kinds of lettuces, and some decorative plants. We planted zucchini and hope that will be ready to harvest in a short while. In the meantime, have a look at our chard and apples!



We returned from our little vacation on Friday. It was an unexpected delight. We had planned a week of camping in the redwoods but we got rained out after the first night. So we packed up our camping stuff and checked into a chain "inn" in Santa Cruz to ride out the rainy days. It was a lot of fun. There were hikes in the redwoods, lots of train and trolly rides in various places (because vehicles, particularly the antiquated kind, are my toddler's current obsession), and day trips to Big Sur and Monterey. Except for beautiful Big Sur, I noticed a depressing abundance of chain restos and awful tourist traps everywhere we went. It got me thinking: has the landscape of this state changed so much that there is no longer any place to go except nature, tourist places and chains? Are we lazier now that we travel with a child or is there really, as Gertrude Stein once said about my neighboring town of Oakland, California, "no there there?"

This feeling of opressive sameness was mitigated somewhat by the glorious, gritty descriptions of North London and its varied population in Zadie Smith's fantastic 2000 novel, White Teeth. I loved this book, with strong, funny characters and an epic narrative that spans WWII to 1996 or so. Smith has wit and spark as she touches on such issues as colonialism, race, class, sex, beauty, religion, ethics and coming of age. White Teeth spans generations and locales--India, Jamaica, Bangladesh and London-- to weave together seemingly disparate people into a surprising story line that I whipped through because I couldn't put it down. I believe I am the last semi-literate person on Earth to pick this book up (there was a time that everyone I ever encountered anywhere was reading it). But if there are any other latecomers out there, expecially those who love Salman Rushdie (who I would have guessed was the writer here in a blind taste-test), I recommend it most highly.

Now I'm onto a reread of Living the Savvy Life and a book of short stories by the very promising Katherine Mansfield.

What are you reading?

Chic-sighting San Francisco

I don't technically leave on my little trip until tomorrow but I didn't think I'd have time to update here before then. As it turns out, I couldn't head out without sharing this adorable ensemble I spotted on my way to the office yesterday. I love her cloche-and-bob combo, and the flats with the trench and dress are so cute and practical. I was too shy to ask permission before I snapped her photo and I wanted to rush to capture the look before one of us turned or went inside.

Thank you, strange woman, for the chic inspiration! And bon week-end to all.

In Which I Get Didactic about Nature

I once read an essay by Stephen Jay Gould in which the author talked about how crucial it is for one to know his own local geography and place-- for many reasons, one of which being our civic-mindedness. Without being intimately acquainted with our own landscape and local flora and fauna, he said, we can't be educated voters. I'm a Northern California girl, born and bred. My own geography is red clay hills, a roiling ocean, blackberry brambles, oak trees and redwoods. What care do I have, beyond an academic sort of appreciation, for Great Lakes or Amber Waves of Grain? My consciousness, my voting, are rooted in my relationship to the place I live.

I fret about raising a kid in an era of technological over-saturation. So many kids are engulfed by TV, computers, hand-held electronics. Time outside is rare and it frequently means being shuttled to and from organized activities. I read about Nature Deficit Disorder and Free-range parenting and it all really resonates with me. Of course I want to avoid childhood obesity (the result of lots of screen time along with poor diet). I also want my child to grow into a passionate and engaged adult. I want him to have a connection to his place, his history, his culture.

Our reality is a fragmented, atomized suburban existence. My dream is an integrated "village" of extended family and a love of our place. So we throw dinner parties and we try to get to know our neighbors. We grow some vegetables and herbs and we hike on the weekends. Lately I am including "more nature" in my cultivation of a more intentional life.

This week we will be going camping down south in the redwoods, our first of such trips for longer than an overnight. Truthfully, I'm a bit worried we will get bored. But I hope to come back a bit tanner, a bit lighter, and a bit more grateful for my fluffy eiderdown and soft bed. Plus, I'm looking forward to the s'mores.

Bye for now!

I'm Dating Myself

Last night I took myself on a lovely date. First, a new dance class that I have been in for only a couple of weeks. I go there and I ask myself, What could be better than a class so frustratingly difficult I could literally cry? Answer: Many things.

American Tribal Style belly dance. So much harder and more frustrating than the Egyptian "Raqs sharqi"style I am used to- and better at doing.

But I persist because I want to get good and the workout is amazing. Since I've gotten more seriously into dancing after a break of a few years, I have become much more aware of my posture and carriage. As a person who has the farthest thing possible from what I think of when I think of a dancer's body, this awareness of posture has been almost revolutionary for me. I began noticing this when I started dancing with a teacher who outweighs me by a lot but who has such grace and amazing carriage that I look positively dumpy by comparison. One of my current missions is to get my posture gorgeous and to really work on carriage. Clothes fit better, my neck is elongated, my cute little postpartum belly (let's be positive, here) is tucked and - extra bonus - the body feels better.  Bar Method and Floor Barre classes are helping a lot. If only I had ample free time to take all the classes I wanted in a week. I would be a specimen.

 After class I walked to a little restaurant and had a lovely chicken skewer and a glass of wine before a late showing of Midnight in Paris.

I have been living in my own little dreamworld lately and I wouldn't have even known it existed if it weren't for the lovely Rich Life (on a Budget), so grazie mille to Adrienne for the heads-up. Other than a few cast members and the fact that it was Woody Allen's newest I had not a clue what this movie was about. I won't spoil the plot if any of my three readers have yet to see it but I will say it is worth seeing, probably twice (as I'm sure I will if only for the sheer Paris valentine of it all ).

Sets, costumes, acting and plot were all amazing, and if watching the beautiful Marion Cotillard and Carla Bruni are not motivation enough to keep working on grace and carriage, I don't know what is.

The Dread Voiture

Something wonderful and maybe terrible happened: we were given a car. We had lived so long car-free: me, my whole life, and for my husband it had been at least 15 years. Now we have one and our beautiful life of daily walking and knowing our neighbors and daily shopping for the freshest foods is perhaps threatened. Will we become the kind of people who drive 10 blocks to the park on a rainy day? Or will we continue to splash our way east the 15 minutes it takes to walk, all soggy hair and drippy boots and loving the way it feels to live in the weather? Will we rush to school in the car or will we remember to make time, leave early, and walk that mile first thing in the morning, maybe stopping for coffee in a paper cup, maybe riding on the back of the stroller--scooter style-- for the last two blocks before the mad rush to another day at school? Will we still shop at the farmer's market twice a week, carrying only what fits in our canvas bags and what stacks on the seat of the scooter-stroller?

I don't know. One thing I do know is that we have grown accustomed to every day being like that special market day many people in less walkable cities and towns only dream of. We don't shop for sport, and if we did we would be very lucky: we live in a place where our options extend beyond chain groceries and big box stores. We have shade trees and good buses and wide bike lanes. There are independent books stores, non-chain coffee shops and organic options as far as the eye can see. We have hills and a beach and, across the bridge, all the culture we could ask for, for the price of bus fare.

Without trying we live many of our dreams daily. I don't want to give that up for the convenience of getting there faster and in our own little metal world.

But one thing that the car does provide that we didn't have before is the ability to cull our stuff ruthlessly. We no longer have to wait for one of those monthly charity donation trucks to come by and take away the stuff we thoughtlessly let into our homes and our life. Now we can pack it all up and drive it to the nearest Goodwill. So today, between fundraising, craft-selling, and margarita-drinking, we began a huge purging project. The goal is to box up and donate 100 things this month. I'm calling it 100 Things in May and I'm excited to see the final outcome. Updates and photos tomorrow!

La musique - AIR

A foggy, rainy Monday with breakthrough sun by day's end. It's the perfect day for a moody, atmospheric soundtrack. Do you know the amazingly talented French duo, Air?

Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin play an intoxicating psychedlic retro-tinged "chillout" electronica that is some of my favorite and some of my most precious music of all time.

I've had the great pleasure of seeing them live a few times. The best was a few years ago at Oakland, CA's historic Paramount Theater. This is a classic deco building where I'd previously only seen Miles Davis (in high school; the kind of event for which I believe the phrase pearls before swine was invented).

Air are a surprisingly upbeat live act. They're funkier that you'd think by listening to their recordings and they play all kinds of interesting analog musical equipment like Wurlitzers and Moog synths to geek out on, if you swing that way. Aside from that the band has been the soundtrack to so many important things in my life. In 2001 I met the man who would become my husband. Air's 1998 album Moon Safari was the soundtrack to our courting and falling in love in taxi cabs and clubs all over a city that was riding a dot.com fairytale high about to come crashing down. In 2004 they were still playing tracks from that album in the smoky little bars of Paris when my husband proposed to me there atop la Tour Eiffel on a windy January night. In 2008 I gave birth to my son listening to that same album. (I remember being vaguely embarassed that a song called Sexy Boy played during one conversation with my midwife. But ultimately the music soothed me to a place outside of time, outside my head.) This profoundly gorgeous, otherworldly music has truly been some of the most important in my life.

I am 10 years older than when I first heard this song. I'm a mother; I've moved to the suburbs. And it's been many years since I have consistently been as optimistic and carefree as this music still reminds me, occasionally, to feel. As it begins sprinkling again I want to offer two sweet Youtube finds: the first is an odd studio video of Moon Safari's hypnotic opening track La Femme d'Argent.

The second is the same song with scenes from Antonioni's classic 1960 film Eclipse.

A lovely drink of something warm and a very lovely week to you.

greetings

Balance in Everything

The husband is out of town for a bachelor party weekend that would depress me and annoy me if I thought too much about it. Yesterday I spent a lovely afternoon with two gorgeous girlfriends; one is a teacher on spring break and the other is a lucky lady of leisure. We had lunch and spent hours laughing and talking. There were cocktails and tarot cards, and if either of those things are to be believed the future looks excellent for all of us.

After school was out, my son and I came home to some relaxing and household tasks before heading out for a special evening together. I wrote last week about saying no to ice cream. Tonight was a break from my usual paleoh-la-la. I had a sweet dinner with my kid, followed by yes to ice cream, followed by a trip to the book store.

When we arrived there was a reading in progress by a journalist who has documented the history of Burning Man and its current transitioning from for-profit company to non-profit entity. The reading itself was fascinating enough but what struck me about the evening was the odd convergence of parts of my life: me in the children's section, reading Curious George on the one hand and, on the other, half listening to this journalist relay the story of the politics affecting this sometimes cooler-than-thou scene I've not been a part of in a long time. We ran into our neighbors there. They are also parents (as is everyone on this island, it seems) and also former burners. And while I won't likely go back to the Gerlach desert for large-scale art and dancing all night (at least not for a very long time), it was nice to be there and to feel a small part of the intersection between family and culture, just by virtue of participating in discussion at the reading.

As I was falling asleep I was thinking that I don't feel a conflict between being a woman and a mother. But I do believe that negotiating that balance takes work. Salad and ice cream, Curious George and Burning Man. Balance, balance in everything.

On Jolie Laide



While looking for the lyrics to the Serge Gainsbourg song whose lyric lent the title of this blog, I came across an exceptional NYT piece by Daphne Merkin. It was published in 2005 and you can read the full text here.

. . .there have always been those who question the dictates of conventional beauty, whose views of what constitutes a ravishing face range further than either the classical ideal or the ordained images of the cultural moment and who see our reverence for certain types over others as a form of aesthetic provincialism. . . (One) was my Belgian-born grandmother, who looked irritated whenever I, an insecure girl loitering on the edges of adolescence, asked her whether she thought I was pretty. "Pretty?" she'd ask. "Who wants to be pretty?" Her blazing blue eyes lit up her wrinkled face with the preposterousness of the wish. "Pretty is silly." I later discovered that no less an authority than F. Scott Fitzgerald, who studied the laws of female comeliness the way others study the laws of physics, agreed with my grandmother regarding the inherent banality of the merely pretty: "After a certain degree of prettiness," he wrote, "one pretty girl is as pretty as another."

I think Proust put it well too. He wrote, "Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination."

Conflict: The Woman and the Mother

This summer will come the English translation of Elisabeth Badlinter's Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, a bestseller in France since its publication last year. The book is described this way:


Elisabeth Badinter has for decades been in the vanguard of the European fight for women's equality. Now, in an explosive new book, she points her finger at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women: liberal motherhood, in thrall to all that is "natural." Attachment parenting, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, and especially breast-feeding—these hallmarks of contemporary motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home and family to an extent not seen since the 1950s. Badinter argues that the taboos now surrounding epidurals, formula, disposable diapers, cribs—and anything that distracts a mother's attention from her offspring—have turned childrearing into a singularly regressive force.

A bestseller in Europe, The Conflict is a scathing indictment of a stealthy zealotry that cheats women of their full potential. 

I will agree that having a baby tethered me to my family. That's kind of what having a baby does, no? It's true I can no longer comfortably work 11-hour days six days a week. Nor can I jet to New York, meet friends for frequent cocktails, or take all the night classes I want to take without hiring someone to see my kid more than I do. And that was my choice. I chose to give birth and restructure my life and my priorities to care for the offspring I chose to create. Is that regressive? I don't think so. Did it rob me of my full potential? No - I offered that willingly. Life is about choices and compromise. And while I'd be lying if I said I always like it, I can at least acknowledge that it happened of my own volition and that the benefits, for me, outweigh the frustrations. Should that change, I might change how I choose to parent. For now it works. For me.

I support any woman's right to choose whatever works for her and I'm not at all keen to jump into the fray. But as for "taboos" surrounding epidurals, Ms. Badinter ought to check out the excellent, evidence-based work of Michel Odent (on whom I admit I have a bit of a crush).

Incidentally, a NYT review of Badinter's book quoted one one mother who says much more succinctly what I tried to about feminism and capitalism in my last post:


Amandine Panhard, 29. . . thinks the Badinter thesis is a false one. “It’s not about disposable diapers or plastic baby bottles but each woman’s personal development, financial independence and the relations between husband and wife,” she said. “The real conflict is not between the woman and the mother, but between the woman and the company.”

Late to the Party: Erica Jong vs. Dr. Sears

This past November Erica Jong wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the philosophies of Attachment Parenting and its advocates William and Martha Sears. She questioned whether attachment parenting is a prison for mothers. How I missed it when it first came out I do not know; the argument between attachment- and other styles of parents always means an amount of back-and-forth commentary on the Internet that is prolific to say the least.

In her essay, Jong writes, As long as women remain the gender most responsible for children, we are the ones who have the most to lose by accepting the "noble savage" view of parenting, with its ideals of attachment and naturalness. We need to be released from guilt about our children, not further bound by it.

First off, what is so "savage" about raising our own children in a style that children have evolved being raised? Yes of course we should lose the guilt, to which mothers are too often subject no matter what we do. But should we lose the ideal of strong attachment with our children?

Jong writes that our media display "an orgy of motherphilia" that romanticizes parenthood." Nannies are rarely photographed, giving the impression that motherhood is easy and cheap. What she fails to account for is that childcare is expensive. For me to go to work, I must pay someone to look after my child. For me to stay home, I forgo the paycheck to which I as one half of a dynamic DINK duo took wholly for granted. Either way, there is a high price to be paid. Considering that reality I would prefer to raise my own child. And I did, for many months, before I finally missed the work I love so much that I returned to a short week. We hired my brother to manny for us three short days a week and he made money (because childcare is expensive) but my son was in the care of family. It worked for us and I realize we were lucky that family was around and available. But for the amount of money I make doing the work I love, it would have been cheaper for me to stay home.

Jong writes,

Indeed, although attachment parenting comes with an exquisite progressive pedigree, it is a perfect tool for the political right. It certainly serves to keep mothers and fathers out of the political process. If you are busy raising children without societal help and trying to earn a living during a recession, you don't have much time to question and change the world that you and your children inhabit. What exhausted, overworked parent has time to protest under such conditions?

This is a faulty argument. It is true that most people are working too hard to look up and participate in politics. But that isn't the fault of choosing an attached style of parenting. It is because we set our lives up within a capitalist framework, all nuclear family, atomized, isolated, and most importantly, overly materialistic. 

Besides, working outside the home means paying for childcare so we can work outside the home. Most women have to work a lot to make that financially worth doing. Why Jong assumes the "working" mother has more energy and inclination to participate in politics after the outside workday than she would as a stay-at-home mom, I have no idea. Nor does she account for the great many women and men who become actively engaged in local politics after becoming parents.

Jong continues, Attachment parenting, especially when combined with environmental correctness, has encouraged female victimization. Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It's a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women's freedom as the right-to-life movement. . .Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole. But the entire planet is a child's home, and other adults are also mothers and fathers. We cannot separate our children from the ills that affect everyone, however hard we try. Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach.

But the "environmental correctness"  Jong disparages is in itself an active a form of political  progressiveness. In our political climate, environmental concerns are of paramount importance. To enact practices at home that support environmental sustainability and social justice is far from an avoidance strategy: it is one way of actively engaging with the world as a responsible citizen. I have no desire to be a "perfect parent." I want to live as a responsible world citizen. My choices in what I buy, what I boycott, how I use natural resources in my parenting are only one manifestation of my personal politics.

At the end of the day, attachment parenting is only anti-feminist if you define feminism as a woman's ability to participate in the work force in exactly the same ways that men do. I would say I expect more from Erica Jong but that isn't true. As a second-wave feminist in the United States she is only saying what I would expect her to say. American feminism has forgotten that equality in the workplace isn't the only right worth having. American feminism has done wonderful work with regard to reproductive rights, but it has forgotten that mothers are women too.

We forget to work for decent maternity leave, perinatal health care, support for families - particularly for single mothers, but for all families. Instead, we denigrate those who choose to work, or who choose to stay home.  We forget that for many people there simply isn't a choice, and that for others the choice is made from a place of blind immersion in a capitalist construct. We don't acknowledge (or we fail to realize) that our problem isn't how we choose to balance home and work, but that by equating freedom and success with paid work we allow work to take precedence over nearly every other concern. Family, children, and planet included. We forget there may be other, more sustainable (and dare I say, more fun) ways to live.

This is why, as crunchy granola Lefty as I tend to be, I always hesitate to call myself a feminist. It seems to me that feminism aims too low; it seeks only to have equal access to everything that men have. I'm not satisfied with what men have, and I don't think men should be either. We need to stop infighting (men vs. women; "working" vs. stay-at-home-moms; attachment- vs. other parents) and turn our attention to places where we can affect change that benefits everyone. "Environmental correctness," far from an imprisonment for mothers, is good for everyone and seems as good a place as any to start.

'Life's too short to be living with regrets'

Last week my son was in his first school play. The three of us walked across our small town to the high school's "Little Theater" and watched a good half of the environmentalism-meets-Frankenstein-themed parade of cute. My son, part of the youngest class, was one of about 20 little ones (aged 2 to 3) who opened the play with a little dance number set to a song about "raining like magic." They wore their raincoats and boots on a sweltering early evening and set the scene for the older kids' story about a green misfit Frank N. Stein. Pastiche for days, the play follows Stein's journey to the Emerald City, an enviro Shangri-La, with his three little multicultural human friends. Flying monkeys and Tesla coils! Musical numbers were lifted from other, major musicals. You don't know surreal until you've seen a mess of 4-year-olds perform kid-washed selections from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Let's do the Earth Warp again!

Anyway, during intermission I wandered the high school's halls and took this:

The week before, we took the kiddo to the local science museum in San Francisco. Well worth visiting; I've been a few times for corporate holiday parties but I hadn't been there during open hours since I was a child. My favorite exhibit was a little room full of postcards written by museum visitors asked to answer,

This was by far my favorite:

I agree with these writings on the wall.

Pas Chic

Here's what is not chic: being broke, owing money, living in clutter, being afraid to open the mail.

I am dedicating this weekend to finishing up my taxes, geting my practice promoted and thriving again, paying employees, finding a renter. In short: GETTING IT DONE.

Closet reorganization is screaming my name and the new garment rack I bought is calling to me, "Argentée, set me up and transform la boudoir into a lovely boutique of only your prettiest things." Alas, I am ignoring the garment rack in favor of this less exciting paperwork. Today is about deferred gratification.

And strong coffee.

Elegance is as Elegance Does

I love reading others report on "chic sightings" in their cities. In fact I spotting a truly glamorous femme d'un certain age this morning on my walk to work. She had forty years on me but she lacked in line-free skin she more than made up for in posture, comportment, understated accessorizing, and general easy style. I wish I had asked for her photo to post here. I didn't, so I will offer this:

. . .which came from this article.

On the other hand I generally don't enjoy reading other bloggers' assessments of the un-chic behavior of others. I figure, it's all a process. Some people prioritize looking good and being turned out well. Others don't. As long as no one is hurting anyone else I fail to see why it matters if someone is overweight, uses the wrong fork, or wears jeans inappropriately. We are all doing our best to whatever extent we can. I'm working on feeling better in my own skin, and while I wouldn't wear jeans to have cocktails at Maxfield's I have better things to worry about than if you do.

Politeness, on the other hand, counts. Politeness always counts. It dawned on me many years ago that though I am female I endeavor always to act the part of a gentleman. It's just ingrained in me: In conversation I position whomever I am talking to in his or her best light (by asking questions that lead them to speak well about themselves);  I say "good morning," and "please" and "thank you." I show up when I say I will. I give up my seat on the train to anyone who is older, more pregnant, more infirm than I am. This just isn't done where I live. A man in his 30's will sit with nose deep in his Blackberry avoiding the gaze of an older woman or a man on crutches. But if you are lovely and 20 and wearing heels too high for comfort there is a good chance his seat will be yours. 

I also hold doors open for people. Not so for Mr. Tweed Suit Older Man in my building. MTSOM let the door slam in my face this morning as I entered the lobby. With my self esteem issues, I of course chalked it up to my not being pretty enough. Ridiculous, right? But that's where I go. Someone's sheer oblivious rudeness translates to my somehow not being good enough.

I ask you, would Argentée (yes, I like silver, so lets name my IFG, shall we?) allow herself to feel less-than in the face of someone else's bad behavior? No, she would not. But it just goes to show how living in a culture in which men and women so completely disregard each other unless there is something to be gained from the exchange. . . well, it isn't a nice way to live, is it? It isn't fun and it may even encourage a fair bit of neurosis. Perhaps a bit more politeness, even a bit more regard for each other as women and men, might make everyone feel better all around. I have read (was it Jamie Cat Callan again?) that not flirting is considered disrespectful in France. Such an interesting idea to me, coming up as I did in radical politics and gender-neutral Northern California.

So I don't live in Paris. And I am surely not going to confront the man for behaving poorly (talk about pas chic). So I did what anyone would do: as we walked into the elevator (him first, of course!) I made sure to hold the door and wait for two others who were coming far behind us. They lagged with their bursting morning bags and briefcases, and as luck would have it they both chose lower floors than us. Let him wait. In my opinion Monsieur Tweed needs to learn to slow down a bit.

And then there was Day Three

Today, a more normal day of hustling the kiddo to and fro. Trips to the park, the school, the health food store. I put a great deal of thought and labor into business promotion today. It was a bland day, but sweet, and the balance felt right. I continue on my eating plan, one that I'm beginning to call Paleoh-la-la, steeped as it is in evolutionary principles as translated by a fledgling bonne vivante.

Par example, a celebratory dinner for two, with just my kid and me: pork roast (sustainable from our meat CSA) with raw sauerkraut and braised spinach and chard from our little container garden. This was after we went out for his special post-play rehearsal treat of ice cream at our little town's main see-and-eat-cream place. Despite his bossy three-year-old mandate that "I eat MANGO and YOU eat CHOCOLATE, mommy!" I had no such thing.

Not today. Not forever, just not today.

Becoming is a long process.

I wrote the following for the Yahoo French Chic/Je Ne Sais Quoi group in 2004. Seven years later, I am interested in exploring what has come to happen and what can still use work. Here is the essay, an exercise in manifesting my ideal inner self:

Who I am (becoming)

She has finally stopped calling herself a “girl.”  She hasn’t felt like a girl since she was in her teens, anyway; always assumed older because of her height, her throaty voice, her voluptuousness, and the fashion sense leaning toward the styles of her mother’s and grandmother’s generations. Now, entering her 30’s, she is finally coming into her own.

She organizes her life in the old fashion: She takes time with her possessions, gently tending to each lovingly chosen pair of shoes, each carefully ironed garment. After all, she buys new clothing exceedingly rarely, and only after careful consideration of what each piece will bring to her life.  Will it make her feel beautiful, confident, comfortable in her skin? or will it just end up taking up space in her tiny-small closet?  As a result of this careful consideration, her wardrobe is pared down to the basics: Two pairs of tailored, flat-front black trousers; a pair of good-fitting, dark denim jeans; two black skirts (one long and clingy, one sexy and retro-chic, reaching just below the knee, and black, like Marilyn Monroe’s on the poster from “Bus Stop”); a couple of light sweaters, in deep sapphire, black, and crystal blue; one soft, black angora turtleneck, perfect for foggy San Francisco summers; a long fitted coat in supple black leather; a fun black coat in kicky corduroy; a vintage black cocktail dress; a very small handful of scarves and silver jewelry; and a selection of fitted tees in black, grey and white. The tees take her from work to yoga to the gym, which may not be chic but is a necessary bi-weekly ritual to keep her from going from curvy to doughy—a real possibility, given her passion for good food.

Her cooking regimen is as simple as her wardrobe: Fast food, boxed food, and fake food never make it into her kitchen. She prepares her meals only from scratch, using the bounty of fresh ingredients from the little markets in her colorful city neighborhood: Deep, golden olive oil, creamy, whole-fat yogurt and fresh free-range eggs from the Greek market on the corner; fresh gorgonzola, stilton, and pungent black olives from the cheese-maker’s; a deep cabernet or a sweet Riesling from one of the million little vineyards represented in her cozy local wine seller’s shop; sweet plump berries, deep green spinach and fat red tomatoes on the vine from the Korean produce market.  Far superior to the other produce shops in the neighborhood, it is bit up a little hill and farther than other some of the others, but well worth the walk for benefit provided to her calf muscles, her wallet, and her palate. 

Once home with the ingredients of the night’s meal, she leaves her shoes on a rack by the front door and the woven straw bag on the entryway table as she changes into her house shoes (a chic, clean pair of black tapestry slippers brought back from a friend’s trip to Bali years ago.  They’ve never been worn outside; they are simply too delicious to set foot on a city sidewalk. And bien sur, the city streets are filthy in America; why let the outside in to her cozy and clean private abode?).  She admires the painting that hangs above the table: it is large, done in muted grey tones in a formidable wood frame.  She has been paying it off, in small monthly increments, for over a year.  The money helps her friend, the painter, and the piece brings a shock of joy to her every time she passes it. She considers this joy a good investment.

She pads across the honey-colored hardwood floor, over the cushy flokati rug and into the small, white-tiled kitchen. She unpacks the day’s wares onto the sparkling tiled counter.  She washes the vegetables and fruits one by one before storing them in pretty wire and ceramic bowls, ready for use in tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch.

She prepares the night’s repast.  For her: a lovely spinach salad with blue lake beans, sweet shredded carrots, and cold leftover organic chicken and garlic from last night’s meal, served with a little scoop of red lentils with diced cherry tomatoes on the side.  For him: all of the above, plus a scoop of wild rice with shallots and chanterelle mushrooms, another savory leftover.  They talk about the day, careful to not dwell too long on workaday things, sharing instead their impressions of the books they are reading, the coming election, the environmental action group to which they both give their time.  They linger a bit over a glass of wine before they pack the leftovers into containers to bring to work for lunch the next day.

After dinner, she pours herb-infused oils into a hot bath, which she has drawn for her nightly beauty ritual. She brings her Italian textbook with her to the claw foot tub, along with the language tapes she puts into the bathroom’s little portable stereo, tucked behind a stack of fresh, white folded towels, their tidy plush stacks reminding her of the northern spa she visits twice a year: once in the winter, just after Christmas, and once in the summer, on her birthday.

As she relaxes in the bath, conjugating verbs after the voice on the tape, the herbal mask dries on her face, plumping her skin with fresh organic ingredients that feel wonderful and smell divine. She soaks a bit longer, inhaling the relaxing scent of lavender and lemon balm, practicing the rolling r’s, the musicality of the language that comes more naturally to her—she must admit—than French ever has.  Still, like beauty, intelligence is also pain, and to learn is often to struggle; so she still practices her French, a bit every day.

After the bath, she attends to her face, dissolving the mask with cool water and finishing with a simple swipe of her homemade herb-infused apple cider vinegar.  It is good for her skin type, at a fraction of the cost of a commercial toner.  She flosses, she brushes.  She dabs a bit of sandalwood oil on her pulse points and heads off to bed in a vintage kimono from a flea market years ago.  Tomorrow night she will meet friends for dinner at an inexpensive little Vietnamese noodle place, followed by a band at a local club.  Tonight she is totally happy to be staying in. The bed is warm and covered with soft jersey sheets and a fluffy white eiderdown. She lights a candle and nestles in, grateful for the day.

Day One

Day one of my little experiment in formalized self-improvment. It's been all right. For being entirely under-slept and over-committed I feel well and happy.

I ate a solid paleo diet today, with not too much coffee. I went to a therapy appointment and recognized that I've honestly made some breakthroughs this past week. And so much of that has stemmed from me remembering to use the tool of manifesting my ideal self as an "Inner French Girl."

For specific goal setting with regard to cultivating a more elegant life, a more chic manner and appearance, I've decided to select some random style tips and give them each a week to take shape.

More tomorrow, and more detail. For now I wanted to check in quickly before giving the apartment a post-dinner sweep - a new nightly goal to manifest a shiny wooden floor, beginning now.