Mourning Person
If there was ever a time not to buy clothes, it is now. But I have a new office job after years of working at home. I need to pass as a professional woman. It is not just the bad economy muting my urge to shop—about a year ago my only son, Josh, died of an accidental overdose. I am told religious Jews observe a year of mourning, avoiding all public events. I’m not Jewish, but I find solitude and the ritual of wearing black comforting. However, as a fifty-six year old single self-employed woman living in New York with a mortgage and bills to pay, when a client offered me a job, I took it. And I need work clothes.
The dressing gene skipped a generation in my WASP family. My mother and son always looked effortlessly pulled together. I generally appear to have just walked across one of those old-fashioned fun house air vents. Luckily, my friend Sally Ann gives me her castoffs. She has great taste but I am about three inches taller. Before, when I worked for myself, I could leave meetings before anyone noticed that my pants were too short.
Now I need five viable ensembles a week and it can’t be the same five week after week. I am one of two white women in the Brooklyn office. My black colleagues are dauntingly elegant and discuss sample sales the way I imagine seasoned hunters track their prey’s scent. The standing compliment is "You better hold on to that—I have my eye on it." My Caucasian colleague and I surreptitiously check each other each morning, tucking in fly away labels and straightening seams, but it’s an uphill struggle for us to represent.
I checked the three thrifts stores in my neighborhood, thinking I would extend my Sally Ann Hard line with some more black pants, scarves and earrings and maybe a "signature" jacket or two. Back when it didn’t matter, I always found things that could pass office muster. Now that I care, everyone is looking for affordable options. East Village thrift stores are starkly picked over, leaving hoochie mama tops with dangling sequins, spandex slacks explicitly forbidden in our HR manual and flowery dresses with shoulder pads so extreme they should come with a complimentary set of Tammy Fay eyelashes.
It’s not just the procurement that is challenging, it’s the upkeep. This suiting up for work is relentless. Getting up early is not my problem. It’s what gets done with those first precious sparkling hours of the day. I used to stroll to the bodega in the morning dark for coffee, leisurely watching my block come alive, listening to the birds on the rooftops. Now, day in, day out: laundry and dry cleaning, button-sewing, sock-finding, shoe polishing—a seemingly endless string of things that must match—and all that is before you even get into makeup, nails and hair.
Given the current economy, I am fervently grateful to have a job even if the days at work sometimes feel like the occupational rehabilitation I imagine they offer at adult daycare centers, stringing macaroni necklaces or moving beads between Dixie cups. I am becoming a folk hero among unemployed friends. One sent me email the first weekend after I started, "You SO deserve it, you daily-commuting-salaried-employee- warrior you!"
I just have to remember how I used to fit life into the margins around the workday. Getting ready Monday through Friday gives me some foothold within this "new normal", while I sweep my scattered life into different shapes waiting for that jolt of recognition signaling What Comes Next. Besides, the new commute gives me time to take mental notes about what people are wearing.