Memory and Control

Clothes have always played a critical role in my memory, and remembering them, or recalling where I was, and with whom, in a certain outfit, helps to anchor my past for me. I don't look to previous clothes as symbols of bad or good fashion or as relics of material culture, but rather as deeply personal expressions of self that I recall with affection. 


It continues to happen. Last summer, longing for the right pair of espadrilles that wouldn't cost a fortune, I recalled that I had exactly the right espadrilles back in the mid-1980s that I bought at a store called Tano, then on Main St. in my hometown of Ridgefield, CT. I remembered how they were hot pink, and had several strips of narrow grosgrain ribbon in green, yellow, and lavender across the top of the shoe, and how those narrow ribbons then tied around my ankle, like a toe shoe would in ballet. They weren't the most comfortable or the most practical shoes, but I'm hard-pressed, lo these many years later, to think of something cuter. 


What I didn't remember is that there was visual evidence of these fabulous shoes, so I was lucky to stumble upon this old photo the other day. Here I am in my living room at 13 years old in 1984, holding my foster sister Na Young Park and preppily attired in an Izod Lacoste shirt, some kind of Lilly Pulitzer-like skirt, and my beloved espadrilles:

These days, though, clothes don't just anchor my memories. Certainly, thrift store and consignment shopping has always, always been a sport for me, as many can attest. In high school I often used to show up for dinner at my friend Kate's house wearing my latest finds, one of which was once a strapless magenta Victor Costa dress. And I suppose I get something of a high from the finding, and from the "construction" of well-coordinated outfits.


Yet clothes have taken on a new significance in the year since my diagnosis, and I realized recently that it's all about control. If I have been reminded of anything over the past year, it is that control is mostly an illusion. Yes, I can and do make good decisions about diet and exercise and the like, but I cannot control when my tumor will start to grow again, as it surely will, despite last year's surgery and the wonderfully advanced radiation I was fortunate enough to receive. Cancer does not discriminate. Similarly, no amount of prenatal testing (not that I opted for any at all) could have predicted that my daughter would be born with severe meconium aspiration syndrome and spend the first month of her life in NICUs, learning to breathe and eat on her own. 


What does this all mean for me? Well, it's that I have accepted that I have to cede control over these big issues of life and death (literally), and will do so as long as I am able to exercise smaller controls such as choosing my clothes with care and loving my wardrobe perhaps more than I should. To do so, I believe, is an affirmation, and celebrates this fragile life in the face of my - and our collective - absolute and certain mortality. 


Two recent moving and brave, brave pieces underscored, once again, this lack of control; how truly living also means acknowledging that we are letting go. Terry Gross could interview a mute donkey on "Fresh Air" and I'd still listen - she's that good an interviewer. Her conversation with poet Marie Howe, who often writes about loss, was one of the most honest I've ever heard  about death, grief, and, to use Howe's phrase, "what the living do." Along the same lines, Emily Rapp's wrenching essay for The New York Times chronicles what it's like to parent a young child with a terminal illness. Rapp's son has Tay-Sachs disease, despite prenatal tests that (falsely) came back negative, and he will die before he is three years old. Listen, read, weep, and join me in affirming the beauty and difficult truths in each. 


To return, perhaps mundanely, to my own celebrations of self and life inherent in my wardrobe choices, here are some recent pictures of what I've been wearing:

The orange pants strike again in a little cord on cord action. 

Shades of brown in my all-consignment ensemble: Trina Turk capelet 

(as seen on "Gossip Girl" several years ago), Tory Burch skirt, and Sigerson Morrison boots

J. Crew cashmere sweater and turtleneck (consignment) 

and THE BEST EVER bright orange down vest by Lilly Pulitzer (Wheeler School clothing sale)

There may be things about cold weather that are really unpleasant, 

but not the lining of this vest! Lions and tigers and Lilly, oh my!

Finally, there is an apple blossom on the tree in our yard. It is the end of October, so it won't last - like so much - but it was too beautiful not to stop, appreciate, and document.

Namaste. 

Dress well.