Pennies from Heaven

Unexpected gifts in unexpected change

The day my life changed forever started like most other days. It was the first day of a new term, and after an exhausting year of prepping new classes, I was looking forward to teaching four months of familiar and much-loved art history. For the first time in years, my personal life was stable, my finances seemed secure, my health was good. I was content and grateful in my roles as mother, teacher, friend.

One thing about that morning stands out in my mind: the gold Sacajawea dollar on the classroom lectern.

Random coins have special meaning to me. When a penny appears on the sidewalk at my feet, or a dime sits on the bus seat beside me, something in my lizard brain says, pay attention. I am fully aware that our minds see patterns where none exist. The fact that I attribute meaning to spare change amuses me—it’s my own personal form of augury, a less messy alternative to reading sheep entrails, less complicated than charting the movements of birds across the sky. I view this behavior as relatively harmless, a way to give false but comforting meaning to the otherwise random chaos of my life.

I picked up the coin, meaning to ask the other instructors if someone had left it there by accident. I never got the chance. Now as I remember, I think of Judas, of his 30 pieces of silver.

Even Jesus trusted bad guys.

At my cubicle, there was a brief email from our HR director, requesting a 2:00 meeting. I thought nothing of it. I chatted with colleagues, helped faculty members with minor course issues, answered questions for students, thinking how fortunate I was to have meaningful work that I enjoyed, that changed lives.

Two months later and twenty pounds lighter after a stress-induced diet of near constant vomiting and sleepless anxiety, I celebrated my fortieth birthday in a way I never could have imagined. After years of hard work, sacrifice, and a level of organizational commitment that in retrospect was definitely unwarranted and possibly insane, I was an out-of-work single mother of four children.

On my fortieth birthday, as I walked home from my yoga class, the early spring morning unwrapped itself like a gift before me. I was not surprised to spot a worn penny on the ground. I picked it up, turned it over, noted with satisfaction that the date, 1972, was the year I entered this world.

I started yoga just a week ago, after my doctor called as I was picking up some milk at Fred Meyer.

“The results weren’t good,” she said. “You need a biopsy, soon.”

The words washed over me as a sickening wave of memories: green antiseptic walls, sterile mask pressed against my mouth, my father, pale-faced, trembling, fighting for breath. This is what words like “biopsy” mean to me. At that nadir, I was ready to curse God and die.

Instead, I put back the milk, picked up a yoga mat, got $20 in change (to which I added a bright copper penny that mysteriously appeared beside the door to my car), and headed straight for Bikram Yoga to try out their “20 Days for $20.”

In that first week of heat and sweat and pain and postures my body argued were impossible (or at least very implausible, my instructor’s comments that I must have done yoga in a former life notwithstanding), I discovered that what I had viewed as purgatory was actually an unexpected and welcome gift: the gift of time.

I have always charged headlong through my life, sprinting a marathon of calculus and ballet and Bach and Chinese and Thucydides and behavioral economics and cloth diapers and peach canning and sewing baby clothes and learning family law and managing other people's problems and…The truth is: I am tired. Weary. Exhausted.

There has never been enough time for me.

Now, faced with days that should have been filled with work, instead I have time. Time to spend with my children, who are growing quickly and will soon be gone. Time to rest, to read, to write. Time to learn a Bach prelude and fugue that challenged me for 20 years. Time to complete a book design project for a friend who soon will die. And yes, time to try yoga.

Yoga. Those of you who know me are laughing out loud.

But the truth is that I have never felt better, not in my entire life, than I do today, at the age of 40. I am confident, smart, talented, strong, determined, beautiful. Sure, life has knocked me down more than once, and will doubtless knock me down again.

Bring it.

Strip all the externals—the relationships, the career, the false sense of security those provided—and what am I left with? Me. I am left with myself. A tautology, of course, but isn’t self what we spend our whole lives trying to define? In my unexpected gift of time, I have discovered that I am the sum of more than all my parts. My work, my children, my relationships—these are all good things. But they are not me.  In these painful months, I have focused inward, and I have found strength and yes, even joy far beyond that which anything extrinsic could ever provide.

Every day I survive, with a little more hope, a little more appreciation for grace. The coins I have found in the past two months have been harbingers of change. They have also been messages of hope.

Change is painful. Change is frightening. Change is often beyond our control. But if we embrace it, submit to it, learn from it, change is good. That is the message I have taken in my valley of shadows, from random coins found at random times and places in the inauspicious beginning of what will prove to be my best decade so far.

P.S. If the biopsy turns out badly, I am going to look damn good in my coffin! Oh wait, I want to be cremated…

The Truth about Love

Straight from a six year old’s mouth

Valentine’s Eve, 1982, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A girl, just six years old, with golden Shirley Temple  ringlets and dimples, sits at a kitchen table, pen held awkwardly in hand, frowning over a pile of homemade Valentine’s Day cards.

Her father, corporate attorney, Mormon Bishop, marathon runner, is in Denver trying a case. Her nine-months pregnant mother is busy wrangling three wailing boys under the age of four who are all in diapers and formula simultaneously. Her older sister (that’s me) is poking her, grinning, and running away.

(Of course, the older sister’s Valentines are already done, with perfect penmanship and delicate lace doily trim, composed in iambic pentameter. Of course, the older sister has been crowned Valentine’s Day queen of her classroom).

This is my favorite Valentine’s Day story of all time. It’s not a story about love. It’s a story about the truth.

My sister, six years old, does not know what to write on her Valentine’s Day cards. So she asks our mother. “Write something heartfelt, something you mean,” mom tells her in a distracted tone, balancing the baby on her swollen belly and comforting two whining toddlers tugging at her pant legs. My sister nods gravely and begins to write.

Fortunately for all involved, the annoying older sister (that's me) is unable to keep from meddling and proof-reading (some things never change). Here are just a few of the things my sister wrote on her classmates’ cards:

“Dear J, I think you are fat. Love A.” And “Dear K, you would have more friends if you weren't so mean. Love A.” And…you get the picture. Tell a precocious six-year old to write something she means, and you may get more than you bargained for.

My sister has grown into a lovely and successful woman. But she still has golden Shirley Temple curls. And she still has a disconcerting habit of saying exactly what she means sometimes.  She is single, like me. I think we have both discovered that our frank and literal natures may not be well-suited to the white lies that glue romantic relationships together.

With luck, I will manage to dodge the strange and ancient ritual of Valentine’s cards and decorated boxes this year—my children’s stepmother, not knowing (or not believing) my housewife history, does not think I am capable of anything involving the domestic arts, so she usually “helps” me by sending in the boxes and cards early.

But if I have to create Valentine’s Day cards with my own six-year old tonight, I will definitely pay attention to what she writes. Because the truth, like love, sometimes hurts. 

The Greater Good

On Teen-Age Drinking and Situational Ethics

It was 10:12 p.m., right in the middle of the brief thirty minutes I reserve for myself each day. My kids were tucked in their beds; their oldest brother was engrossed in Halo on the living room sofa. I was two minutes and a text message away. Sweat poured down my face as I worked my legs on the elliptical machine in my apartment complex’s small gym, devouring a trashy sci-fi novel to take my mind off my burning muscles.

Then with an icy blast, the door flew open, and a girl, naked from the waist up, staggered in and slumped against the wall, moaning, her amber hair spreading out to cover her breasts.

This wholly unexpected apparition was almost immediately followed by a slightly more coherent and more clothed young woman, who slurred, “Sammy, Sammy, are you okay? Come on, we have to get home.”

And two seconds later, a young man joined the party, with backwards baseball cap, low riding denim shorts, and a vocabulary laced with Marine Corps-style expletives. “Get Sammy in my car, Holly. Get in the goddamn motherfucking car. Jesus, I cannot fucking believe this. I have to drive you home now. My dad will go apeshit if he comes home to this.”

For about a second, which felt more like an hour, I really wanted the drama unfolding in front of me to be someone else’s problem. My precious half hour with the elliptical and some escapist fiction is about the only thing I have to look forward to in an otherwise frantic day of work and kids and studying for my Ed.D. program.

But it was not somebody else’s problem. It was my problem. I leapt off the elliptical, parked myself with hands on hips, and gave the three teens my best “don’t fuck with me because I have gone through childbirth four times and am way meaner than you are” stare. “Nobody. Is. Driving. Anyone. Anywhere. Except. Me,” I declared.

The two teens who were still capable of some cognitive processing stared at me in confusion. “Are you gonna call the cops on us, lady?” the boy asked.

The thought had definitely crossed my mind. “No, I am not,” I replied. “And I am also going to spare you the lecture on underage drinking that you all desperately need. You are going to get some clothes on that girl,” I pointed to the bare-breasted one who was so out of it she couldn’t tell what was going on. “And I am going to drive you girls home.”

A million thoughts were racing through my head. Was Sammy too sick to transport? Should I call an ambulance instead? Her breathing seemed okay, and her pulse felt normal, but I am not a trained medic. What if she’d had more than alcohol? Clearly I had an underage drinking situation on my hands, at best. That the girls had been up to other underage things was also fairly obvious, given Sammy’s state of undress.

In the moment, I decided to deal with the immediate need—to keep that drunk kid out of his car and off the road. And to get those girls home.

“Get your things together,” I told them. “I’ll run home and grab my car.”

I jogged to my apartment and started to say to my 14 year old, “If you EVER get so drunk at a party that you’re almost ready to pass out, so help me I will…” Then I stopped.

“You will what, mom?” my kid asked.

“I will drive you home,” I said slowly. “Anytime, anywhere. No questions asked. Please don’t drink, because you’re too young. But if you do, just know that I will come and get you.”

“You’re weird, Mom,” he shrugged, turning back to his Halo game.

I took the car back to the gym, where we managed to get Sammy into the backseat and strapped her in. She was still moaning, but seemed a little more lucid. Holly sat in the front seat and gave me directions.

“Do you think my Mom is going to know I’ve been drinking?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure she will,” I replied.

“What should I tell her?”

“I guess if it were me, I would tell her the truth.”

As we drove, Holly told me a little about her life. She said she wanted to stop partying, but she just didn’t know how. She felt really bad about letting her mom down.

“You should find something that makes you happy and do that instead,” I told her, adding, “Those boys you were with tonight, they’re total losers.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” I said grimly.

By the time I dropped Holly off, Sammy was sober enough to give me directions to her house as well. I walked her up to the door and knocked, hoping desperately someone would be home. Someone was. I briefly explained the situation, deposited the girl in her mother’s arms, and left.

When I got home, my son and I did some research about teen drinking and driving. The statistics are a little frightening. According to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving website (http://www.madd.org/statistics/): 

• One in five teenagers binge drink, while only one in 100 parents believe their teens binge drink. 
• Car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens, with one in three fatal accidents involving alcohol.
• High school students who drink or do drugs are five times more likely to drop out of school or feel that grades aren’t important.

Clearly the situation I faced is an all too common one, and parents are in total avoidance mode. So what can we do? First, I think we have to have some uncomfortable conversations with our teenagers. And secondly, in moments like the one I encountered, I think we have to climb down from the moral high ground and embrace the reality of the situation. We have to keep drunk kids from driving.

The “SafeRides” program is one way that communities are saving lives by preventing teens from driving drunk. The program uses volunteers to provide rides for intoxicated teens, with no questions asked. We don’t have a program like this in Idaho, but I would definitely consider working with other teen parents to start one.

Similarly, parents and teens involved in Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD) sign a “Contract for Life,” in which the teen promises to call the parent if he or she is too drunk to drive, and the parent promises, like I did with my son, to give the child a ride, no questions asked. Local SADD coordinators can be reached at this website: http://www.sadd.org/scoordinators.htm

I teach ethics at my college, and while I know that we have to address the morality and legality of teen drinking, I also believe that I have a duty, in a crisis situation, to set aside morality in the abstract, and to act in a way that provides the greatest good to the greatest number of people. Which means that no matter how I happen to feel personally about underage drinking, in the moment, I had to keep the underage drinkers from driving.

Should I have called the police? First responders? Maybe so. I chose in the moment to look at a bigger picture. Holly and Sammy will have some hard conversations to face with their parents. I hope they can have the courage to confront their problems, and to turn their lives around. But because of the sober choice I made, one thing is sure: they lived to tell about it.

The Book of Broadway

"South Park" creators go for easy laughs over hard truths.

The Book of Mormon, a musical from ”South Park” creators Trey Park and Matt Stone, has been the talk of Broadway and beyond since its premiere in March 2011. The sold-out show plays to a packed house at the Eugene O’Neill Theater seven performances a week with plenty of laughs and well-choreographed song and dance numbers that pay homage to everything from Guys and Dolls to 42^nd Street to the Sound of Music. But while The Book of Mormon has moments of brilliance, it’s also fundamentally lazy.

I flew to New York to see the musical at the invitation of my college friend, Adam, who, like me, went to Brigham Young University and who is now, like me, a post-but-not-anti-Mormon. Adam served a foreign mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—I did not, but I was a Sunday School teacher for several years and am raising my children in the church. Clutching our tickets and ready for a hilarious send-up of our former church, we were the “sadder but wiser girls” of The Music Man with all the “let’s go to the movies!” excitement of Annie.

I’ll concede that perhaps we were not the intended audience. But I’m not quite sure who is. People expecting an attack on the Mormon faith will be disappointed—the writers treat Latter-day Saints downright fondly. It’s not sharp satire, it’s not effective parody, and with its prolific use of the F-word and other vulgarities, it’s not a show that will find ongoing life in high school drama productions, on cruise ships, or in homes with children (mine included).

My critique of the musical takes two forms—artistic, and thematic. Let me first say that I enjoyed the experience and laughed out loud throughout. The Book of Mormon is an essentially good-natured, but not particularly pointed Bildungsroman, and what subject could be more perfect for a “young man coming of age” tale than the ubiquitous, clean-cut, earnest Mormon missionary? But in the end, it’s not always clear whether the musical is a clever homage or a derivative formula with a cute but canned and unsatisfying message—the artistic equivalent of Diet Coke.

What is clear is that Parker and Stone love musicals—and they like Mormons. “Two by two, we’re marching door to door, ‘Cause God loves Mormons, and he wants some more,” the chorus of young missionaries sings in a rousing number that sets the tone for the play. This first musical number is good clean fun, with echoes of Loesser’s brilliant “Fugue for Tinhorns” that opens  Guys and Dolls (a more deserving “Best Musical” Tony winner). The scene takes some artistic license with the actual Mormon missionary process—the Elders  are told where they’ll be going while at the Missionary Training Center (in reality, the call comes before the missionary leaves, and increasingly, Elders do their MTC time at a training center in the country where they serve). These inaccuracies are distracting for those who know better, but forgivable dramatic license, especially when the larger picture they paint is true.

For example, “Turn It Off,” in which a senior missionary advises a newbie to put his inappropriate feelings into a box, then “crush that box,” was another number that spoke to both Adam and me. Like one of the missionaries, Adam is gay, so he identified with that aspect of the message, while I related to theological conundrums that Mormons have to compartmentalize or ignore (the frequent references to “Lord of the Rings” made me laugh—I have used Tolkien on more than one occasion to counter the Mormon argument that Joseph Smith simply couldn’t have come up with The Book of Mormon on his own).

But not all the numbers are so effective, especially in Act Two, where Elder Price, who feels that he has been sent to Uganda by mistake (he should have gone to Orlando), has a “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream.” This was the nadir of the show for me, both artistically and thematically. I could imagine Parker and Stone sitting around saying, “Hey, we need a big production number here. Let’s put in a South Park hell scene with dancing Starbucks coffee cups.”

Newsflash, boys (and audience): Mormons don’t believe in hell. Not even for apostates like Adam and me, who have left the church. The worst we could get is something called Outer Darkness—no spooky red Satan, no Hitler, and definitely no dancing coffee cups. Mormons may have guilt complexes that rival Catholics’, but one of the major selling points of the church, from a theological standpoint, is its extremely rewarding afterlife: Be a good Mormon in this life, and you get your own planet (the Celestial kingdom). Most good people, Christians included, are going to exactly the kind of heaven they already imagine (the Terrestrial Kingdom). Screw up in this life, and you’re still going someplace so awesome that if we knew about it, we’d commit suicide to get there (the Telestial kingdom, and I’m paraphrasing Joseph Smith himself here).

Another big gaffe—the portrayal of the mission presidency as rigid, unsympathetic characters who say things like, “Praise Christ” (I have never heard this particular phrase come out of any Mormon’s mouth). Underneath their helmet hair, mission presidents and their wives are charismatic, humble, hard-working, sympathetic, life-changing people. Ask any Mormon missionary (Adam included) about his or her mission president, and you’re sure to get glowing reviews. The church leadership calls truly extraordinary people to this important role.

Another aspect of Mormon culture that Stone and Parker did not grasp is that for aspiring Mormon missionaries, a foreign mission, even (or perhaps especially) to Uganda, is always preferable to a domestic one. A real Elder Price would feel shortchanged with a calling to Orlando, unless perhaps it were Spanish speaking. (The Singles Ward, a Mormon comedy, captures this trope for Mormon audiences when one of the characters is called on his mission to Boise, Idaho, eliciting big laughs and some sympathetic grimaces).

A word about the vulgarity: every popular play since Aristophanes has it, and so does this one. Whether you think it’s too much depends on your tolerance level for it. Do not expect the cleverly metaphorical sexual and scatological references of Shakespeare, but rather the constant, loud, and obvious profanities of the creators’ “South Park.”

Adam and I both decided that the musical was essentially a nice draft, but not something worthy of 14 Tony Awards.  In fact, we both want a rewrite. I think the musical would be much more culturally pointed for both Mormon and non-Mormon audiences if it were set in the Deep South (think Romney vs. Perry), and Adam wants the missionary group to include native Africans, South Americans, or female missionaries (no other modern musical would get a free pass for drawing such unreal gender and racial divisions). The baffling hell dream could easily be swapped for a dystopian vision of the Celestial kingdom where bizarre notions of planets and plural wives would be hilariously in context.

Were Adam and I setting the bar a bit high? What is a musical, after all, if not easy caricature, predictable story arc, and popular images set to catchy but familiar tunes? Or were we, despite our distance from the church as adults, not entirely able to tolerate a joke at our own expense? Perhaps we have to concede some ground on both points, but our expectations are not unreasonable. Musicals can be smart and true while being funny. And no one is more apt to laugh at an honest joke than its subject. This musical scratched out some obvious nuggets of humor, but Mormon life and the missionary experience are richly veined with un-mined absurdity. The world still waits for a Mormon Woody Allen.

The sad truth about The Book of Mormon is that Parker and Stone can get away with being lazy, because the audience’s expectations are so low. As the current political “debate” about religion has shown us, it’s still culturally acceptable in America to call Mormons a cult, and this musical, while generally kind to the church, plays into that backward mentality. “I can’t believe any intelligent person would believe those things,” Adam heard one woman remark as we left the theater, entirely missing the point of the musical—that all religions are equally delusional but harmlessly so if practiced with a pure heart. But another group began to say loud and effusive positive things about the Mormons they knew. “Mormons aren’t like that at all!” one woman said, glancing nervously back at us (with our blonde hair and blue eyes, Adam and I look as Mormon as we are—culturally speaking). Actually, Parker and Stone get Mormons pretty well. It’s just too bad they took the low road.

(Thanks to my friend Adam for suggesting this play, hosting me for the weekend, and providing many of the more clever quips in this review. As he notes, we make a pretty good team. Maybe we'll write our own musical version of The Book of Mormon someday.)

An American Hero, an American Tragedy

I am called to a strange ministry. Whenever I fly, I know that at some point, someone who needs to talk about something painful will sit down next to me. We’ll exchange pleasantries, I’ll open my book or start working on my laptop, and that person will begin to talk. And talk. And talk.

I’m not complaining. I really do see my airline role as a calling. I’ve counseled people to work on their marriages, talked teens into giving their parents a second chance, advised people on difficult life decisions. Today, on the flight from Salt Lake City to Chicago, the doors were ready to close when a young family made their way down the aisle. The father was unshaven, clad in a filthy jacket and torn jeans. The mother was visibly pregnant and exhausted. The three year old daughter, still in her Disney Princess pajamas, was crying. “I hate this fucking airline,” the young man muttered, looking for help, ANY help, and not finding any as passenger after passenger refused to meet his eyes.

There was, proverbially, no room in the inn. No one was willing to give up a seat so the family could sit together. At last, one woman reluctantly relinquished her window seat and moved to a middle one so the mother and daughter could be together two rows ahead of me. But the smug young man on the aisle refused to give up his seat to the father, who ended up in the middle seat beside me.

I made some conciliatory welcoming comment about what a cute daughter he had, and how frustrating it must be to not be able to sit with his family. I asked him where they were headed. His eyes welled up with tears. “My sister was just killed in Afghanistan,” he replied. “We are trying to get to Arkansas for her funeral.”

He had come straight off a 12 hour shift in the copper mine in Ely, Nevada (which explained the stained jacket and jeans), then driven four hours to the airport in Salt Lake City. The funeral, with full military honors, would be on Saturday.

His sister’s name was Sarina Mills Butcher. She is an American hero. Sarina was a member of the Oklahoma National Guard who died when her convoy hit an IED. She would have been 20 next week. She joined the military so she could pay for her schooling—she wanted to be a nurse. Sarina leaves behind a two year old daughter, Zoe.

“Zoe—that means ‘life,’” I told him. His eyes filled up with tears again. We talked about life, the randomness of it all. He told me about his own time in Iraq, how he couldn’t help but feel guilty, like he should have been the one to die. Sarina was going to come to Vegas on her next leave and meet him there to celebrate her 20^th birthday.

It was a sobering flight. I’ve lost people I love, so I know what it feels like—that initial stage of shock, the overwhelming sense of loss. “You have to be strong for your mom,” I told him. He nodded.  As we parted ways, I told him I would light a candle for Sarina. “Thank you,” he said, and shook my hand.

As I entered the terminal, I couldn’t help but notice the smug young man who had refused to give up his seat. I did not have kind thoughts for him. But I know we all make selfish choices sometimes, when we lack information (or sometimes even when we have information). In a way, I was grateful for his stubbornness, because I got to learn firsthand about a young mother who died too soon in the service of her country, to celebrate her life and to mourn her passing.

We’ve been at war for more than ten years.  The Roman poet Horace wrote “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” But there are few things that are sweet about the loss of a young mother.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2057545/Sarina-Butcher-Teen-soldier-mom-killed-Taliban-bomb-Afghanistan.html

My Late Father

Seventeen autumns ago, we buried my father too soon in the frost-hardened ground. The night before his funeral, my sister and I went for a walk. The late afternoon sun blazed hot and bright in the cool air; the promiscuous trees flaunted every hue of crimson and gold against the brilliant blue sky. Beneath our feet, the sharp crisp crunch of leaves marked the passage of miles like a metronome.

After some time, we found ourselves at the cemetery where our father would be interred the next day, in a single plot beneath the shadow of mountains, overlooking the Great Salt Lake. The cemetery was a well-manicured oasis of green lawns and cool grey stones, a museum of the dead where stories were distilled into a set of dates: b. and d. My father’s story—b. Feb. 22, 1944. d. Oct. 23, 1994.

Seventeen years later, autumn has come late but brilliant to my town. At church, on the anniversary of his death, the gospel reading seems chosen for my father—the first commandment, and the second: "Love your neighbor as yourself"—Jesus's elegant, simple solution to the enduring problem of Self and Other.

This second commandment was one my father intuitively understood, and every man, woman, and child he met was his neighbor. The practical result of all this love for others was that Dad was late to everything. It's not enough to give a homeless man your change. You have to squat down in your suit and tie, look him in the eye, and listen to his story.

Dad was even late for his own funeral. Given a terminal sentence of leukemia in the early autumn of his life, he “raged against the dying of the light" for three years, the time it took for mindless cancer cells to choke his formidable will to live and love.

I have felt his absence keenly through the years, on big occasions—at my wedding, when my children were born, when I divorced, when my books were published—and at small ones.

Pathetic fallacy: the day we buried the sack of skin that was once my Dad, a cold winter wind stripped the trees of all their glory, brought leaden skies to weep over his casket as we said goodbye.  I could not help but feel that in this loss, God had forsaken me.

On this day, the day of his death, with my small son, I light a candle for my father, imagine him in a community of saints where he belongs. As we walk hand-in-hand from the church, I tell my son the story of a man who knew what it meant to love his neighbor as himself. This is my father's legacy to me, the true meaning of his life’s story. In his too-brief life, my always-late father learned (and taught his six children) to love other as self.  What greater story is there than this one?

Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante,
Que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix ;
Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante,
Qui la conduit à l'oubli de tes lois !—Cantique de Jean Racine, Gabriel Faure

Cheap Chic

Finds for under $40

A fabulous new fall look for under $40
As a single mother with four tech monster children, once I’ve paid my phone and broadband bills I rarely have any money left over to spend on myself. Unfortunately, given my chronic lack of funds, when it comes to fashion, I’m a brand snob who only wants the best. Fortunately, one of my most formidable superpowers is an uncanny ability to create something from almost nothing. 

My mission: find five distinct outfits that could fit in a backpack (I’m headed to New York in a couple of weeks, and I like to travel light).

Cute but conservative

The rules: 

1. The clothes had to be washable.
2. They had to make me feel like a comfortable cross between Sailor Moon and Condoleeza Rice—in my life, I routinely transition from soccer field to boardroom with just minutes to spare.
3. They had to meet a $40 budget.  

Yes, I will be running this meeting!

Yep, you heard me. I had exactly $40 to spend clothes for myself this fall. I started with one piece—a funky black and pink BCBG Max Azria knit poncho/skirt I inherited from a friend who has lots more money than me and amazing taste in clothes (cheap chic fashion tip number one: never turn down your friends’ hand-me-downs!) 


Three hours later, I had assembled the following:

1. Black leather Nine West knee high boots, Deseret Industries, $5.00
2. Hot pink Betsey Johnson tights, Ross, $5.99 (also included black herringbone patterned tights, not pictured)
3. Pink polka dot Italian scarf, Ross, $3.99
4. Adrienne Vittadini black scoop neck sleeveless dress/jumper, Ross, $13.99 (clearance)
5. Black and white striped elbow length Talbots t-shirt, Savers, $2.39 (I used my 20 percent off coupon when I recycled a bag of clothes).
6. Pink Ralph Lauren short-sleeved cardigan, Savers, $4.79



Channeling my inner Sailor Moon

7. Fun crocheted necklace, yard sale, 25 cents

Grand total: $36.40. With a long sleeved black t-shirt and a pair of black Ann Taylor slacks I already own, I am totally set for the Big Apple—and beyond!

Skirt or poncho? You decide!

The fun thing about these pieces is that they can go from casual to dressy, from edgy to conservative, depending on how I combine them. And they illustrate why I shop almost exclusively at thrift and consignment stores—for big brand fashions at budget prices, you are not going to beat a second-hand shop.

But this Thursday, I won’t be wearing any of these outfits. I’ll be all dolled up in a little white dress (for the 

second time) as I sign copies of Little White Dress: Women Explore the Myth and Meaning of Wedding Dresses. Proceeds benefit the Boise Valley chapter of Dress for Success. See www.dressforsuccess.org for more details about how your second-hand clothes can give women a chance at a first-class life. Happy fall shopping, y’all!