Bellows

I sort of gave up on her.  No, not sort of, I really did give up on her.  My house, that is.  She is heaven on earth when we move in, just a babe at barely 5 years old.  I fall so in love with her abundance of big windows I can’t bear (or afford) to cover them. The regal pedestal sink in the powder room and the tub in the master bath made to soak a mermaid’s tail make me feel like a newly crowned princess not quite sure she’s deserving of such luxury. Fifteen years later the honeymoon is over. She’s lost her polish, her girlish figure, doesn’t bother with make-up anymore and sits around in yoga pants like she’s been living with an absent spouse, the one who walks in the door and doesn’t really see her anymore.

 

I’m a designer by both education and birth, but only glimpses of this are evident anymore between these tired old walls.  She’s weathered climate change over the past decade, much like slow global warming breeds wicked flooding, tumultuous natural disasters borne by a family reinventing themselves. We’d become reclusive by our own standards and bad behavior. While the high water has long since receded, we’re still picking through the wreckage, bewildered at times about out how to let the outside world in.

He shows up on my doorstep one crisp and cold March day, a friend of a friend of some random repair guy Nick plucks from the phonebook, and he immediately breathes new life into us. I’m a fixer by nature, of complex business operations and relationship challenges, yet I don’t have a clue how to fix anything with my hands. He does. My house knows this and I can feel her sigh in relief.

Today he and I are in the midst of creating a new bathroom.  I say “he and I” loosely, as he is pulling me along.  He is doing the work and I am letting him.  It’s all I’m capable of after the storms the house and I have weathered.  I awake in the morning, pretty regularly now, recalling snippets of dreams about being exposed.  Remodeling scares me.  It’s something about tearing off the packaging, the façade, whether it’s shiny and new or dull from years of wear, until all that is visible are the bare bones.  The flaws in construction are revealed. It’s time to critique quality at the very core. Will she measure up?

We are learning how to work with each other.  He is frustrated when I won’t describe my style.  It’s always been hard for me to ask for what I want.  But here it is:  I am vintage, retro, a subtle mixing of unexpected textures and patterns.  I’m bright colors, mercury glass, shiny metal and crystal light fixtures.  I’m tiny glass tiles requiring extra grout and care to install.  I’m a statement and I am quality. When the next couple tears down what we create, I want to reveal good bones eliciting nothing short of admiration, and work that demonstrates we care about what’s on the inside; we do the right thing even when no one is watching.

He believes in prep work.  He indulges me with my design composed of three sizes and types of tile, drawing life-size elevations on the walls until we’ve worked out a finished product maximizing factory cuts while still resembling the vision in my head. He temporarily wires my light fixtures and mounts them at standard height so I can take a look with the white-washed walnut and chrome mirrors to make the final call on placement.  He’s been doing this forever; he’s experienced every customer revision and regret.  His patience for this project, for my house, and for me is boundless.

As we get reacquainted, whittling away at the work she needs, I see her possibilities and I’m falling in love with her all over again. She’s been a dependable safe place, harboring me and mine, before I knew him, against the relentless pounding from a sea I wasn’t sure would ever calm.  There’s a part of me wanting to abandon her and all evidence of the struggle.  And there’s another part of me compelled to restore her to a glory so richly deserved, tenderly removing her rags, touching her core with his hands and rebuilding her with the same degree of care and courage that goes into rebuilding me.

He wonders sometimes how I can put so much of myself into something I’m going to sell to a stranger who may want to dress her in completely different clothes.  And I don’t know how I can possibly give her, when she’s so wanting and warranting of a new wardrobe, one that’s just basic and plain. She's so much more than that, and so am I.

Suffrage

Being the political junkie he is he experiences the moment live, his television tuned in to any and all coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month.  Me, I google it.  But I can’t say it’s any less powerful on the small screen:  The faces of the 43 men who have served as President of the United States, culminating in Hillary Clinton breaking the glass as our first female nominee. She is a symbol for how far we women have come.

Yet in some ways our progress feels glacial:  The nineteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified on this day in 1920.  It’s been nearly 100 years since women in America won the right to vote, and we’re just now getting a shot at the highest office in the land. Really?  But when I think about the resistance we’ve had to fight, the power and passion around denying women this right, and the behavior change still unfurling today to fully embrace all it encompasses, I’m not surprised.

 

I can’t say I appreciated the magnitude of the movement until watching “Suffragette”, a movie about the battle for the same in Britain.  Women weren’t just looking to cast a vote, they were second-class citizens seeking the power to change laws materially diminishing the quality of their lives. And those few but mighty voices leading the charge paid a heavy price for the justice they would not be denied.  Getting to where we stand today is in large part thanks to these courageous women willing to speak up for human rights, to repeatedly raise their voices until they are heard, to stay strong in spite of threats to their existence.

Our Constitution grants us freedom of speech in the very first amendment.  Each one of us has the right to say what is on our minds without fear of retribution, no matter how eloquently or tactlessly our words spill out of our mouths.  I hope that every one of us exercising this right demonstrates common courtesy and respect, but it’s not a requirement.  And somewhere along the way those with opposing views decided it is okay to squelch, even persecute those invoking this basic right.

Voicing a contradictory point of view can be a lonely place to be. A modern-day case study, “Shut Up and Sing” is the 2006 documentary film about the Dixie Chicks in the aftermath of a political opinion expressed from the stage of a concert hall that threatens to ruin the most successful female band of its time. A few small words strung together irrevocably alter lives in a flash:  For the Dixie Chicks it is, “I’m ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”  For those of us less famous, it is words like “I’m going to work for the competition.” or “I’m leaving you.”

  

Sometimes we know exactly what we’re doing, considering carefully our statements, contemplating expression until we’re ready to accept the consequences we foresee. Other times we forget we’re on a stage, or we’re the understudy shoved into the limelight at the last minute.  We underestimate the fear or anger our voices will unleash. Or we don’t expect our whisper to be overheard. May it’s not until we hear ourselves speak the words out loud that we realize our conviction.  When we’re called out we have two choices:  We can scurry back into the protective shell of the mainstream, scripting a half-hearted apology about how we didn’t really mean it and we’re deeply sorry.  Or we can choose to stand our ground, to own the elephant we’ve just put on the table, and to manage the fall-out our gumption creates. The repercussions aren’t always anticipated, fair or deserved, but they are there all the same, and our lives don’t move forward until we deal with them.

We take a giant risk when we utter an opposing opinion, watching doors close on resources and relationships we’re not certain we can live without. And sometimes we close the doors ourselves creating a self-imposed solitude borne from shame. It’s pretty normal to go underground for a while, to wonder:  Was it smart to speak up?  Maybe I should have just kept quiet?  But those of us with true conviction won’t back down.  We can’t. We’ll never again be the person we were before we showed ourselves. And so we begin the long process of reinvention to become a truer version of ourselves.

For many of us, the lengths to which our opponents will go to punish us for our views only make our voices louder.  The suffragettes became more determined than ever, and so did the Dixie Chicks. I’m incredulous, really, when he speaks of a friend who won’t vote for Hillary because she is a woman.  Tell me she lacks experience, tell me she’s focused on the wrong issues; tell me anything about her views, her record, her network, her approach.  But don’t tell me she hasn’t earned your vote because she’s a woman.

While it can take a while to embrace it, there is an undeniable peace and a power that can never be wrestled away from us when we stand up for what we believe in.  In being so fiercely and painfully heard, we find ourselves. Our world does in fact change when we raise our voices, yet what we don’t expect when we raise our voices is we change, too.  

Salt

I spend 90 minutes a week, sometimes 180 if I’m really being good to myself, gazing intently at my reflection in a full length mirror, sweating profusely through 26 yoga poses.  My hair pulled from my face in a sloppy ponytail sticking up on top of my head, I don’t bother with make-up.  The first time I taste it on my lips after practice I’m startled; washing away the residue on my face I wonder how it’s possible my skin could feel so soft.

 

Most newbies practice in the back row.  I started there, too.  The instructor promises we will get used to looking at ourselves in the mirror, and she is right. I choose to be front and center all the time now, finding it easier to concentrate on what I’m doing when I’m closer to myself. I’ve become comfortable with who I am in the hot room.  It is its own kind of beauty.

Yet interestingly enough, outside it’s a different story. I’m desperate to run again, to rekindle my love affair with this most efficient and effulgent elixir that tamed and toned me when my world came crashing down. Yet my knee buckles and my hips stiffen in protest each time I try.  I know I’m pushing my luck, and need to surrender quietly before I’m forced to kneel.  But doing so means making a home for the uninvited pounds I’ve tried to tell myself won’t be staying for long.  I’ve become that woman with a closet full of clothes she can’t part with because someday they’ll fit again. As the muscle tone erodes from my limbs I wish for winter with her long pants and cozy sweaters.  I look better with lots of clothes on.  Except in the hot room.

I don’t understand my dynamic these days.  How can I be happy with my appearance as I sweat through yoga but nowhere else?  All I can attribute it to is my state of mind.  At yoga I believe I am enough.  I believe I am strong, tenacious, determined. I know I don’t have to be perfect, striving is where it’s at.  I know I will not wilt; I will not panic; I will not quit no matter how hot it gets. I can hold my poses, I can stretch just a bit further. And throughout it all I can maintain a peaceful confidence.

She calls it mirror work. And work it is. It’s the practice of studying your reflection in the glass and liking what you see. 

Her name is Nayyirah Waheed. She writes about the beauty in ourselves we absolutely must see:

you.

are

your

own

standard of

beauty.

          --mirror work