Don't Waste the Pretty

It's what a beautician told me some years ago as she bent over my nails when I was half-crazed with the decision I had just made-- to leave my philandering then-husband and begin anew. Honestly, I didn't know what she meant.

"Don't waste the pretty?" I asked.
"Don't waste the pretty," she said again and proceeded to describe a man she was in a relationship with, the sex they were having (I believe up against the wall was mentioned), and the frustration with her pending divorce. I was still hung up on pretty. What I didn't really realize was, at 35 years old with two kids, no solid career, and a mountain of worry, that I was pretty. And that pretty could matter at that age and at that time-- to me. To someone else who could take that pretty and make me feel... dynamic. Apparently, I was pretty enough for this girl to see it.

A simple thing, a tiny gift, a piece of newness long after the years of trailing a wedding train down a church aisle of ribbons and blooms, promises and potential. I had forgotten what pretty was, and pretty isn't something a woman feels when she learns her husband has been banging someone else for two years. Pretty isn't something I thought about after tending babies and being an accessory to my then-husband's career-- helpful, but invisible, and ultimately, unappreciated. He had, at one time, bragged to his co-workers that he had married me for my smarts but that he didn't find me beautiful. It was a back-handed comment, particularly when at home he would insinuate that I wasn't smart enough to succeed in the world of business. I didn't just feel unattractive, I felt incompetent and abandoned. It was a terrible time. Who knew that pretty could be a defining moment?

But "don't waste the pretty" was the right and unconventional advice I was given at a time when my life was more questions than answers and more fear than foundation.

And I didn't waste the pretty, but I was choosy about it. My pretty blossomed in the attentions of the man I ended up marrying later, not that all stories should end that way. But "don't waste the pretty" gave me permission to break rules and convention and to be, for a little while, a girl again-- that unfettered girl awaiting a date on a porch trimmed in azaleas and twinkle lights, a girl smiling secretly with the knowledge that someone thought she was the poetic drug of love embodied in flame and flesh. A girl, a pretty girl, who could not just be loved, but be... craved.

Pretty is empowering.

A few months ago, I sat in my hairdresser's chair and asked that question that people usually only give the most untruthful answer to: "How are you?" In a conversation that resulted from our mutual discovery that things were for both of us very hard, very bleak, very overwhelming, I was able to turn to her and tell her as she described the end of her relationship and the circumstances surrounding it, the magic words she says she still finds herself repeating: Don't waste the pretty.

This young woman, a mother herself, is a sort of muse in the modern, alternative sense. At not even 30 years old, she is petite and lean with tattoos emblazoning her shoulders, chest, and the backs of her thighs. Ropes of dark hair trimmed with crimson spiral about a most delicate face. There is usually something artfully torn or fitted and leathery across her body. There are piercings. Somehow, running throughout her Suicide Girl image, she is soft-spoken, deliberate, hesitant, sweet, and innocent. I keep waiting for wings to break forth and lift her.  I just want to protect this girl. I tell her, as she asks questions about the things she is thinking about, that everything will be ok, that there is time, and that time is the answer. And I tell her again, don't waste the pretty.

Could a girl who has striven for her indie-punk appeal still be affected by pretty? When I see her, I see so much pretty and fragility. And while I know what century this is and that women aren't supposed to hang expectations for ourselves on armored men astride white horses, that there are those of us who just want, for five seconds, to put everything else aside and be pretty to someone, as she most certainly does. And as I most certainly do.

Those years ago, in what I refer to as my previous life, I sat in a church praying to God that I not waste away and grow old before my time-- unrecognized, unloved, and unappreciated. I felt my sexuality dissolving under the weight of laundry baskets, dirty dishes, needful children, and neglect. I was second to someone else's high-powered career, with his golf dates, expense accounts, slick sales talk, and business plans. I would later pack up my art studio and shelve those aspirations thinking that my goals were detracting from the family I was trying to hold together. I thought I deserved the hand I was taking-- the hand of someone who would rather indulge in Internet fantasy, office trysts, and dishonest business practices. Pretty was a luxury then. I was just trying to survive.

I thank the beautician who first brought back pretty to me, and to the young lady who is taking the turn I once took for reminding me again about pretty. To her, I pass the advice on. Don't waste it. Don't waste the pretty.

When to Say Enough Already

A conversation with my eldest child the other day. Not as good as hearing it, but still amusing. I have spent the last couple of years really trying to coach her development of logic and problem solving. I suppose this would require her to really listen, however.


Daughter: Can I ride to the bus stop?

Me: No, honey. That would require crossing the street and we need to work on bike safety first. No street! Today, you may ride your bike on the sidewalk around the block.

Daughter: But (insert friend’s name) is riding to the bus stop and back. Can I ride to the bus stop?

Me: No, you may not cross the street. You may not ride to the bus stop. You can, however ride around the block.

Daughter: Can I just ride here? (Child points to street.)

Me: No, honey. What did I just say?

Daughter: You said I could ride around the block.

Me: On the sidewalk. (I gesture, making a square shape to show that a block has four sides.)

Daughter: Yeah, on the sidewalk. Around the block. Ok, Mom! (Child scampers off with bike and returns fifteen minutes later.)

…

Daughter: Mom, can I ride to the laundromat?

Me: Well, what are the rules?

Daughter: The laundromat. I want to ride to the laundromat.

Me: I hear that, but what did I say earlier?

Daughter: Don’t cross the street.

Me: Good. I’m just trying to help you develop logic here, Chicken Little. So where is the laundromat?

Daughter: Around the corner.

Me: Good. Is it across the street?

Daughter: No.

Me: Good. Is it on this block?

Daughter: Yeah, but it’s around the corner. Is it okay to ride there?

Me: Child, what did I say? Did I say you can ride around the block, which would mean that you would be passing the laundromat? (Note, she would have ridden past the laundromat already on previous runs around the block.)

Daughter: Yeah, yes. Yes, you did. Can I go?

Me: Yes, you can ride AROUND the block. You may ride TO the laundromat. You may NOT go in there to play. It is not a play house.

Daughter: Ok! Can I ride across the street?

Conversations like these are exhausting. This is why most of the time, when asked for permission and why something is so, I lay down the rule followed with a blanket, “Because I said so.” It does not teach if-then logic, but it does save time. Maybe one day, my daughter will catch on a little faster. In the meantime, patience. Lots and lots of patience.

Motherhood and Image

One Saturday a couple of years ago at the park, I noticed a pair of twenty-something mothers. Did they consult each other before dressing that morning or were they in competition to out-hot-chick each other? Razored bobs and pairs of bedazzled sunglasses framed their faces. Taut black tank tops only barely housed generous portions of exposed breast (the artificial quality of which could be debated). Their jeans were torn and low-rise, and separated from peeks of flesh by sparkly black belts with studs. The only real differences between the two women were the graphics on their shirts, and only one of the women had visible tattoos. To have one such momma-candy on the playground would have been enough; two however were like a high-pitched ringing alarm. Several minutes passed before I could name the sensation rising inside me: I don’t want to be like the Hooters chicks on the playground. Interestingly enough, as the young women cavorted about, the other parents ignored them.

What is it about motherhood that makes some of us rebel in our image? Well, we’re moms, but we still look cool. There was a point in my life when a “hot mom” comment made me grin. Now? I’m in a different place. The last thing I want my daughter to hear is, “Your mom looks hot.” On a visit with a close friend months prior to the Hooters-at-the-park episode, she discussed her own appearance. She was no longer the string bean she had been in college. She’d become, well, a mom. The qualities I always had loved about her were present ten-fold: gentleness, wisdom, natural beauty that radiated from within.

“My kids don’t care how thin I am,” she said. “They just want me there to love them, want me soft when we hug. When you are loved like that, the other stuff doesn’t matter. Besides, the way my husband loves me, it doesn’t matter how much I weigh to him either.” For a moment I thought about the velveteen bunny and his desire to be loved, and therefore real. “When I take my shirt off,” continued my friend, “Joe still goes crazy.” Well, not so velveteen bunny all of a sudden, but I wanted this—the freedom to just be who I was, to be loved like that, and to not have my spouse measure his approval on the size of my waist, breasts, thighs, or even the length of my hair and nails. Later, when I was growling over the way my biceps jiggled, she glanced at me and said, “You need to live in a place where there’s less emphasis on appearance.” At that point, my whole life was changing. Little did I know how much it would change or how my vision of myself would change with it.

My girlfriend, by the way, was right about everything. I was living in semi-rural-suburbia meets matching-mail box-hell. Women in the neighborhood drove golf carts to visit each other. (Nota bene: no golf course in the neighborhood.) We had our tennis teams, our merchandise parties, pretty cars in the driveway. If one basement was being remodeled, everyone else’s basement was next. Workouts at the gym were light competition. We congratulated ourselves on being fit, firm, and looking younger than our mothers did at the same age. We said that we did this for ourselves. Knowing what I know now, that’s not true at all. It was a very shallow way of life and I was glad to leave it. And I left it all: the house, nicer cars, conspicuous consumption, gossipy neighbors, and sooty self –image. Gone. I have never looked back, and have found instead, an incredibly rejuvenating re-embracing of motherhood and everything that comes with it, internally and externally. What I used to worry about is baggage left behind in a three car garage and attached McMansion.

That day at the park, as I relaxed against the bench and watched my kids play, the two young women chasing their kids struck a chord inside me. When I returned home, I emptied my closet of every item of clothing I still had that was tight, too short, too clingy, too young, too unbecoming of a mid-thirties mother, and I gave it all to a twenty-one year old family friend. It was the last bit of any image associated with my previous life, anything that I tried to be and was not. I felt like a new person: respectable. Not a trace of Hooters waitress anywhere and no need to earn a mate’s approval by looking that way. Better yet, proud and thankful to look like a mother.

Mama Says No!

Mothers are my heroes. This story comes courtesy of one of my mom-friends whose ex-husband gave her twelve year old son a few air guns. It’s not a gift choice the mother would have made, but seeing as how the son lives with his father, she felt she could do little about it.


Not so long ago, the mom, the boy, and his sister went for a walk in the park by the river. The boy, shortly before leaving for the park, had asked his mother permission to bring an air gun from his dad’s house, and she had said no. He sulked for a while, and then, backpack in hand, smugly joined the group. Moments later at the park, the daughter complained of being shot with pellets. Mom found the boy, escorted him to the bank of the river, demanded to be given the gun, and promptly heaved the weapon into the water.

I love good mothers. I would have paid money to stand on the bank and watch the gun fly in a graceful arc from mother’s arm to the waiting waters. I’d pay more though, to hear that child as a grown man able to laugh at his own foolishness and celebrate his mom’s ability to stand her ground with him.

The gun story brings another one to mind. Some years ago, a boy and his sister were playing on my front lawn with my daughter. The girl was never exactly the sweetest child and had a reputation for being really manipulative. Her brother had a pellet gun and was about to shoot her with it when I leaned out the front windows of my home and called out his name.

“Son,” I continued, “I completely empathize with your desire to shoot your sister, but not on my front lawn. Get on now and take that gun home.”

Thinking later about how funny that had sounded, I was glad I had been the mom who had been home at the time to intervene in a potential eye-loss situation, but I would have loved to have been the actual mother of the boy to swoop in, grab the weapon, and heave it somewhere in the woods where we lived.

Don’t hold your breath too long. My son isn’t even four yet… his time is coming.

Thoroughbreds

I once read a short story where a woman describes her visit to a museum restroom at lunch hour in New York. She portrays the women, who elbow and sneer their way for counter space, as thoroughbreds. Periodically, I am struck with this comparison of chic, svelte, suited women with race horses. I have come upon them often. Like the narrator in the story, I do not consider myself among them.

This past weekend, I socialized with a group of parents from my son’s private preschool. The women I met had definite, real, measureable careers. Careers that come with steady paychecks, benefits, and 401Ks. They were confident with the labels they were able to paste upon themselves as to who they were and what they did. One in particular struck me as the lead thoroughbred in the group. An established lawyer for a reputable firm, she had a business helping the community on the side. It put her in the six-days-a-week worker bee category, which made me wonder who was raising her children, but I was a little green as she spoke about her accomplishments.

When people ask me what I do, I am always in transition, always starting over with a career that comes second to family. I am always trying to get somewhere. Just when my nose is moments away from the finish line, so to speak, I find myself pressed to the rail with a tragedy, a massive set back, a life change. Things that take more than a few months from which to recover. As a result, my resume, which reinvents itself constantly, has a massive amount of unusual work experience in spurts. It is this creativity to adapt that I have started to cite in cover letters over the last couple of years, but I still, in a room full of polished professionals who don’t flinch at the sight of their child’s tuition bill, feel like the shaggy pony that could never qualify.

I don’t think I really want to be a racehorse in the way these women are. I wonder if deep down, they cringe at the time spent away from their children. But, I have always had aspirations of being something, achieving things, and have in fact, done some pretty nice things that occasionally startle a prancing racehorse into asking just how did that happen.

People who work in the arts don’t fit with the Kentucky Derby lifestyle of the world around them. Most of us do not wish to anyhow. It is our uniqueness, our un-fitness, that makes us notable in our arena, but we don’t get rewarded in measureable, tangible terms most of the time. I have never stopped painting or writing—not really—not for more than months at a time as I addressed a family need (a new baby, hurricane aftermath, an illness), but my work has resulted in being published without pay, in exhibitions where the cost of framing and travel has outweighed profits, or where someone has been too broke to pay, so they have traded a service or merchandise.

I could use a Derby Day just once in a while. Merchandise doesn’t pay the medical bills. And it would not hurt to be put in direct competition with one of the slinky, well-dressed women in the community again. In the meantime, I’ll just keep working, doing my thing. This time, I am hell-bent to create my niche as a person that thrives in a constantly changing environment and who enjoys as much time with my children as possible. I want them to see that it can be done, and not at their expense. I want them to see that the limitations that I have put on myself due to my choice can also be something that fuels a different kind of career. I guess you could say that I am racing with extreme caution.

And speaking of thoroughbreds, Seabiscuit, for all his glory, scratched a lot of races that would have jeopardized his health or that would not allow him to perform under ideal circumstances. His trainer's careful selection of when and how he performed caused sheer scandal and gossip, but he eventually raced Man O'War and won. And he was, for all intents and purposes, a creature that resembled a cow pony with crooked legs. Who knows. Maybe, in a way, that's me-- racing selectively, in it for the long haul, and an unlikely champion.