Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

I confess I've struggled with that stop-and-smell-the-roses thing this week. After a nerve-racking freelance drought when I couldn't scare up work with a stick, I am suddenly covered up in deadlines—a good, good thing for our bank account. But it's all due at about the same time—a challenge for the work/life balancing act. And it never fails—when I have plenty of time for my own writing, I can't chase a single idea out of my head, but let me have NO time for it (like now) and suddenly I have a gazillion ideas I want to work on. I dreamed up a children's book series while I stir-fried chicken last night:)  Listen to me with my terrible problems. My financial and creative needs have been supplied. I'm whining about . . . blessings. At the same time, I have dear friends who are dealing with real problems, with sickness and loss in their families. Nothing else on our to-do lists is as important as reaching out to those around us when they're hurting. My mother has always had a ready cure for self-pity and for what she calls "the mullygrubs" (that's when you feel a little down and blue for no apparent reason): stop dwelling on your own problems and do something for somebody else. FYI, she also recommends gardening:) More than anything, she always tells me—with absolute assurance—that if I'll lift up my troubles and struggles in prayer, I'll find my direction and my comfort:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Matthew 11: 28-30

Hank's Book of Cat Philosophy: #23

In moments like these, one must paws, look deep inside oneself, and say, without judgment or regret:

"Seems like a big waste of energy to walk all the way to my litter box."

Sunday Morning Serenity

Tragic news and senseless loss—we've seen a steady barrage of it this week, from Texas to Boston. I went to graduate school in Waco, and West was among the great small towns in the area. It's heartbreaking to think what the people there must be going through. And Boston. I read headlines this morning about the many questions authorities have for the bombing suspect who survived. They want to know why. We always want to know why when something like this happens, but the answer never makes sense. I keep thinking about the families of those lost and about the many innocent people who set out for a great race and ended up fighting for their lives in Boston hospitals.

Yesterday morning, I realized that I was just a chapter away from the New Testament as I make my way, chapter by chapter, through the Bible. And I thought that would be a good thing, given that I associate the New Testament with hope and renewal, which I sorely needed after the past week. So before sunrise this Sunday, I read Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. According to my study Bible, after Malachi died, God's prophets were silent for 400 years, until John the Baptist began preaching and prophesying of the coming Messiah. And in Malachi, I found this . . .  

"You have said harsh things against me," says the Lord.
Yet you ask, 'What have we said against you?'
"You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What did we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty?"
Malachi: 3: 13-14

. . . and this:

"But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings . . . "
Malachi 4:2 

 

Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

[Image by Paul Christian Geletu @ Freerangestock.com]

 

Mama Says: "She laughed till she couldn't catch her breath"

Aunt Oneva was one of those rare human beings who approached everything and everybody with kindness. (That's her, on the left, with my mother.) She loved to laugh and have a good time, and she always operated under the assumption that you meant well—no matter what happened, you meant well, which made her very forgiving and understanding. My mother loves recounting a certain family gathering, many years ago. She was pressure-cooking a turkey in my grandmother's tiny kitchen, and Aunt Oneva happened to be in there when it was time to take the lid off and get the turkey ready to serve (to about 40 hungry family members). The turkey was "nowhere near done"—and Mama had forgotten to remove that pouch with the giblets and other assorted . . . parts. As she tells it: "Oneva thought that half-raw turkey with all that stuff floating around in the pressure cooker was the funniest thing she had ever seen in her life! She laughed till she couldn't catch her breath!" (Ever the trouper, Mama just slapped the lid back on and kept cookin' till it was done.)

Many years after The Turkey Incident, I drove my mother and Aunt Joyce to Aunt Oneva's funeral. So many people said such wonderful things about her that, on the way home, Aunt Joyce got a little concerned: "Do you think anybody will say anything that nice about me when I die?" I promised her that I would. She needn't have worried, though. The church was literally standing-room-only when we celebrated Aunt Joyce's life. I sure hope she liked my remarks—because if she didn't, I'm gonna hear about it Over Yonder.

Who knew a 4 a.m. breakfast would totally wipe me out? Lesson learned.Always commence ye ole poke-her-in-the-face-with-paws routine at 3. That way you can squeeze in a longer nap before lunch. And she probably needs to get up early anyway.  

I used to see my life in capital letters. When I was a teenager, I thought I was going to do something with My Life. It was going to Mean Something. One day I would Meet Somebody, and we would be Soul Mates (just like Bo and Hope on Days of Our Lives). "My Life" was like a book that I would spend maybe 25 years or so reading and understanding, but after that, I'd have the answers to everything. As it turns out, I was WRONG. That's not how it works. But that's actually a good thing because it means we have countless opportunities to learn from our mistakes, to grow and change, to become more aware of our own shortcomings and hopefully, as a result, become a little kinder, a little more understanding, a little more forgiving of other people. 

Dave and I spent yesterday at a family wedding (Dave's side, in case any of my cousins are reading this and wondering why they weren't invited:) My mother and my aunts always used to tell me, "You don't really know somebody until you've married him." Very true, because marriage, like life, is ever unfolding. Nobody gets married. You become married, over time. The wedding is the first baby step, and even if you take it when you're just shy of an AARP card, as Dave and I were, it's still a journey, with all manner of twists and turns that you have to get through together. Some of those are hard and painful; some are filled with joy; all of them, together, marry you to each other—daily.

Kodak had a great commercial in the 1970s, built around a song called "The Times of Your Life," and I love the plural "times"—the idea that of all those moments—past, present, and future—are constantly making you who you are. I'm flashing back to the add-a-bead necklaces that were so popular when I was in college. Am I really about to say that life is like an add-a-bead necklace? Why, yes, I think I am:) Maybe we don't know what it will look like when it's finished. We just know that each little addition makes it worth that much more.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3: 5-6 

Sometimes you can find a treasure trove in the most unassuming places. Not long ago, in a frenzy of painting and cleaning and rearranging, I emptied a desk in our dining room and found a worn manila folder with a bunch of pictures inside. At some point, I had apparently singled them out from boxes of family photographs, intending to do something significant with them. But I guess I never figured out what, so they got tucked away in that drawer. I still don't know exactly what they mean. I just know they're special. Like this wonderful shot of Aunt Joyce. I don't remember ever seeing it before, but I must have because I pulled it out of the heap and filed it under "special." If you look closely, you'll see a glint of mischief in her eyes. I see her stylish coif and immediately hear my mother's voice: "Joyce was always so good with hair. I never could do a thing with mine." 

The next picture I spotted was one of Aunt  Vivian sharing a secret with Granny, my paternal grandmother, whom I often called "Ms. Eagar." It's not that the two of them would ever gossip. They just liked to share information of interest. About other people. Especially people who had "gotten into something." And given the serious focus of this discussion, whatever they were covering must've been especially juicy—I mean intriguing.

Finally, here are two companion pieces of cousins Abby and Adam. As a little boy, Adam loved to tease Abby, just like his dad used to relish teasing her mother and me when the three of us were children. Abby takes after Aunt Joyce, her grandmother, hence the take-no-prisoners look she's giving her cousin in this picture:

Fast-forward a few years . . . 

Abby's a junior in high school and Adam's getting ready for college in the fall. Sigh. How did those little cousins turn into young adults?

When I worked at Southern Living, my office walls were plastered with color Xeroxes of family photos like these. A friend walked in one day, looked around, and said: "You're working something out in here—I don't know what it is, but you're working something out." I guess I'm still at it:)

Behold "the jug painting." It was a college project, painted by my roommate, Missey. We met at our freshman dorm and quickly became more like sisters than friends. Due to an accounting oversight (we forgot to renew the lease), we lost our spot in the apartment complex where most of our friends lived and had to settle for a teeny-tiny, two-story unit nearby for our junior and senior years. I can't remember if we had the jug painting in our first apartment (Ging, you were there—do you remember?:), but I know we hung it in the second one. It practically filled our microscopic living room and became a conversation piece that helped us make new friends. We'd leave our door open in the afternoons as everybody went to and from class, and the painting (along with a ginormous fern my mother gave us) would stop passersby in their tracks. One day, we received two particularly telling comments on the painting. First, came a graduate student: "Great use of color. Your style, I think, is very reminiscent of Cezanne." Later that same day, an older gentleman from a construction crew working on the complex stopped by and offered his thoughts:  "D'you paint them jugs?" He brought us right back down to earth, lest we get carried away with our hoity-toity artistic selves. 

We were only 32 when Missey died. I still think about her every day, though it's hard to write about her—still, after all these years. I think she would get a kick out of my new living room color scheme, which is built entirely around "them jugs." Her family kindly gave me the painting, and it has been hanging in my dining room for years. But I remembered some advice from one of the magazine editors I used to work with—she said if you don't move paintings and photographs around now and then, you'll eventually get to the point where you don't see them any more. So I rearranged everything, and she was right—now I really see these treasures again. When one of our friends helped me move Missey's painting, he suggested we pull colors from it for our living room, which is now aqua with this deep red accent wall. I love the colors, and I will always love this painting. It reminds me of carefree college girls making their first home together. It reminds me of a wonderful time and place, when mortgage payments and life insurance and pension plans were far, far away. It reminds me of my precious friend.

As I had my first cup of coffee this morning, I tried to sort out the random thoughts swirling through my head. Did I forget to run the dishwasher last night? Where's Hank the Cat? Do I have any church clothes that don't need ironing? Do I have any meetings tomorrow? Should we paint the back porch brown? Are we out of Advil? 

Not exactly the picture of "focused." But now that the java is kicking in, I find myself zeroing in on the prophet Hosea . . . and Paul Revere. I know. Might need a second cup.

Yesterday, as I finished reading Hosea and Joel, I kept coming back to Hosea 11 again and again because it says so much about the nature of God. And that's something I wrestle with. It's easy to grasp the nature of Jesus because of His humanity—or maybe the word is humanness. But God is different . . . and yet the same. So I gravitate to any Scripture that helps me understand that a little better. Much of Hosea deals with Israel's faithlessness and ingratitude, the call to repent, and the threat of God's retribution. But then Hosea 11 comes back around to God's love for His chosen people, despite their profound failings. Verse 7 begins with what has to be one of the saddest lines in the Bible: My people are determined to turn from me. And yet, God wouldn't let His anger and disappointment separate Him from Israel: My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath. (Hosea 11:-8-9) All Israel had to do in order to change everything for the better was listen to God and follow His direction. All I have to do in order to change everything for the better is listen to God and follow His direction.

Which brings me to Paul Revere. There's a funny commercial on right now featuring the Revolutionary hero. He learns of the approaching British and sets off to warn his countrymen. But instead of mounting his trusty steed and riding throughout the countryside, he picks up his cell phone, dials, and says something to the effect of, "Hey, it's me—they're coming."

Point 1: Things don't have to be as hard as we sometimes make them. Point 2: The cell phone-wielding Revere reminded me of Longfellow's poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," which opens with the line Listen, my children, and you shall hear . . . Talking is so much easier than listening, especially when we're having a conversation with God. But if we're serious about following divine direction, listening is important. Listen, my children, and you shall hear.

[Image: St. Rosa De Lima church, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi]

My friend Lana and I recently discovered that we share an addiction to Say Yes to the Dress, a reality show featuring Bridals by Lori near Atlanta. Nervous brides, bickering bridesmaids, and bossy mamas visit the sweet but feisty Lori and her team to find that perfect little number in satin, taffeta, or chiffon. I try to plan my trips to the gym around it because the treadmills have TVs, and I know that if I can hop on one just as an episode begins, I won't even think about quitting early. (Who could leave without finding out whether Leigh-Leigh went with pearls or rhinestones on her cathedral train?) Talking about that show made me think about some of the OTHER significant dresses I've said yes to over the years.

Easter dresses, of course, are in a class by themselves. I especially remember a pretty purple dotted Swiss that Aunt Vivian made for me when I was a child. (I still treasure a picture of me wearing it, posing with my mother before church that Easter Sunday.) Other Easter frocks included an unfortunate baby blue polyester number with a tiered skirt and lots of lace (chalk that one up to my teen interpretation of the Gunne Sax/Jessica McClintock craze) and a channeling-Jackie-Kennedy tailored shift (complete with coordinating pillbox hat) that I begged Mama to make for me when I was in college. I like to think the former First Lady would've been proud.

The first dress I remember just DYING for was made of what we called "crushed velvet" in the 70s. Is that even legitimate fabric terminology? I was probably in the fifth grade or so, and to me this dress just screamed "Marcia Brady cool." It was purple, with rhinestone buttons, a scoop neck, and an attached choker. Don't breeze by that last part—an attached choker. I wore it with a chunky heeled platform shoe that laced up. MAN! Talk about "kinda hey, kinda now, kinda Charlie!" (And if you're too young to remember Charlie cologne, ask somebody with a mood ring to explain that reference to you:)

One of my most memorable outfits ever was a career-girl purchase. I was about to go on my first solo business trip to New York, and I was absolutely terrified. I would be sitting around a conference table with "colleagues" from magazines like Time, People, and Sports Illustrated. I did not feel like their colleague. I felt completely clueless and had visions of sophisticated New Yorkers looking at me like I was from Mars. In truth, I needn't have worried. They were very gracious. But I needed a serious boost of sartorial confidence to face them alone. After wasting time shopping at cheaper stores, I headed for Parisian, which was, I guess, the last of Birmingham's great old family-owned department stores. "Can I help you?" asked a seasoned sales rep—the kind who used to be able to quickly size you up and send you to the fitting room with at least five dresses that were just the thing. I told her my dilemma. She checked me over, nodded and said, "Come with me." Thanks to her, I set off for New York in a classic navy-and-white herringbone that made me feel like, well, Jackie Kennedy. I felt worthy of that plane ticket, ready to take my place at the table. And when I entered that conference room and felt my confidence falter, I just took a look around and did a fashion assessment. Sure, that savvy sister to my left might have Manhattan on a string . . . but bless her heart, she might want to rethink those pantyhose . . .

 

Hank's Book of Cat Philosophy: #22

Who knew a 4 a.m. breakfast would totally wipe me out? Lesson learned.Always commence ye ole poke-her-in-the-face-with-paws routine at 3. That way you can squeeze in a longer nap before lunch. And she probably needs to get up early anyway.  

Sunday Morning Serenity

I used to see my life in capital letters. When I was a teenager, I thought I was going to do something with My Life. It was going to Mean Something. One day I would Meet Somebody, and we would be Soul Mates (just like Bo and Hope on Days of Our Lives). "My Life" was like a book that I would spend maybe 25 years or so reading and understanding, but after that, I'd have the answers to everything. As it turns out, I was WRONG. That's not how it works. But that's actually a good thing because it means we have countless opportunities to learn from our mistakes, to grow and change, to become more aware of our own shortcomings and hopefully, as a result, become a little kinder, a little more understanding, a little more forgiving of other people. 

Dave and I spent yesterday at a family wedding (Dave's side, in case any of my cousins are reading this and wondering why they weren't invited:) My mother and my aunts always used to tell me, "You don't really know somebody until you've married him." Very true, because marriage, like life, is ever unfolding. Nobody gets married. You become married, over time. The wedding is the first baby step, and even if you take it when you're just shy of an AARP card, as Dave and I were, it's still a journey, with all manner of twists and turns that you have to get through together. Some of those are hard and painful; some are filled with joy; all of them, together, marry you to each other—daily.

Kodak had a great commercial in the 1970s, built around a song called "The Times of Your Life," and I love the plural "times"—the idea that of all those moments—past, present, and future—are constantly making you who you are. I'm flashing back to the add-a-bead necklaces that were so popular when I was in college. Am I really about to say that life is like an add-a-bead necklace? Why, yes, I think I am:) Maybe we don't know what it will look like when it's finished. We just know that each little addition makes it worth that much more.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3: 5-6 

Treasure from an Old Desk Drawer

Sometimes you can find a treasure trove in the most unassuming places. Not long ago, in a frenzy of painting and cleaning and rearranging, I emptied a desk in our dining room and found a worn manila folder with a bunch of pictures inside. At some point, I had apparently singled them out from boxes of family photographs, intending to do something significant with them. But I guess I never figured out what, so they got tucked away in that drawer. I still don't know exactly what they mean. I just know they're special. Like this wonderful shot of Aunt Joyce. I don't remember ever seeing it before, but I must have because I pulled it out of the heap and filed it under "special." If you look closely, you'll see a glint of mischief in her eyes. I see her stylish coif and immediately hear my mother's voice: "Joyce was always so good with hair. I never could do a thing with mine." 

The next picture I spotted was one of Aunt  Vivian sharing a secret with Granny, my paternal grandmother, whom I often called "Ms. Eagar." It's not that the two of them would ever gossip. They just liked to share information of interest. About other people. Especially people who had "gotten into something." And given the serious focus of this discussion, whatever they were covering must've been especially juicy—I mean intriguing.

Finally, here are two companion pieces of cousins Abby and Adam. As a little boy, Adam loved to tease Abby, just like his dad used to relish teasing her mother and me when the three of us were children. Abby takes after Aunt Joyce, her grandmother, hence the take-no-prisoners look she's giving her cousin in this picture:

Fast-forward a few years . . . 

Abby's a junior in high school and Adam's getting ready for college in the fall. Sigh. How did those little cousins turn into young adults?

When I worked at Southern Living, my office walls were plastered with color Xeroxes of family photos like these. A friend walked in one day, looked around, and said: "You're working something out in here—I don't know what it is, but you're working something out." I guess I'm still at it:)

The Picture of Sisterhood

Behold "the jug painting." It was a college project, painted by my roommate, Missey. We met at our freshman dorm and quickly became more like sisters than friends. Due to an accounting oversight (we forgot to renew the lease), we lost our spot in the apartment complex where most of our friends lived and had to settle for a teeny-tiny, two-story unit nearby for our junior and senior years. I can't remember if we had the jug painting in our first apartment (Ging, you were there—do you remember?:), but I know we hung it in the second one. It practically filled our microscopic living room and became a conversation piece that helped us make new friends. We'd leave our door open in the afternoons as everybody went to and from class, and the painting (along with a ginormous fern my mother gave us) would stop passersby in their tracks. One day, we received two particularly telling comments on the painting. First, came a graduate student: "Great use of color. Your style, I think, is very reminiscent of Cezanne." Later that same day, an older gentleman from a construction crew working on the complex stopped by and offered his thoughts:  "D'you paint them jugs?" He brought us right back down to earth, lest we get carried away with our hoity-toity artistic selves. 

We were only 32 when Missey died. I still think about her every day, though it's hard to write about her—still, after all these years. I think she would get a kick out of my new living room color scheme, which is built entirely around "them jugs." Her family kindly gave me the painting, and it has been hanging in my dining room for years. But I remembered some advice from one of the magazine editors I used to work with—she said if you don't move paintings and photographs around now and then, you'll eventually get to the point where you don't see them any more. So I rearranged everything, and she was right—now I really see these treasures again. When one of our friends helped me move Missey's painting, he suggested we pull colors from it for our living room, which is now aqua with this deep red accent wall. I love the colors, and I will always love this painting. It reminds me of carefree college girls making their first home together. It reminds me of a wonderful time and place, when mortgage payments and life insurance and pension plans were far, far away. It reminds me of my precious friend.

Sunday Morning Serenity

As I had my first cup of coffee this morning, I tried to sort out the random thoughts swirling through my head. Did I forget to run the dishwasher last night? Where's Hank the Cat? Do I have any church clothes that don't need ironing? Do I have any meetings tomorrow? Should we paint the back porch brown? Are we out of Advil? 

Not exactly the picture of "focused." But now that the java is kicking in, I find myself zeroing in on the prophet Hosea . . . and Paul Revere. I know. Might need a second cup.

Yesterday, as I finished reading Hosea and Joel, I kept coming back to Hosea 11 again and again because it says so much about the nature of God. And that's something I wrestle with. It's easy to grasp the nature of Jesus because of His humanity—or maybe the word is humanness. But God is different . . . and yet the same. So I gravitate to any Scripture that helps me understand that a little better. Much of Hosea deals with Israel's faithlessness and ingratitude, the call to repent, and the threat of God's retribution. But then Hosea 11 comes back around to God's love for His chosen people, despite their profound failings. Verse 7 begins with what has to be one of the saddest lines in the Bible: My people are determined to turn from me. And yet, God wouldn't let His anger and disappointment separate Him from Israel: My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath. (Hosea 11:-8-9) All Israel had to do in order to change everything for the better was listen to God and follow His direction. All I have to do in order to change everything for the better is listen to God and follow His direction.

Which brings me to Paul Revere. There's a funny commercial on right now featuring the Revolutionary hero. He learns of the approaching British and sets off to warn his countrymen. But instead of mounting his trusty steed and riding throughout the countryside, he picks up his cell phone, dials, and says something to the effect of, "Hey, it's me—they're coming."

Point 1: Things don't have to be as hard as we sometimes make them. Point 2: The cell phone-wielding Revere reminded me of Longfellow's poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," which opens with the line Listen, my children, and you shall hear . . . Talking is so much easier than listening, especially when we're having a conversation with God. But if we're serious about following divine direction, listening is important. Listen, my children, and you shall hear.

[Image: St. Rosa De Lima church, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi]

I Said Yes to These Dresses

My friend Lana and I recently discovered that we share an addiction to Say Yes to the Dress, a reality show featuring Bridals by Lori near Atlanta. Nervous brides, bickering bridesmaids, and bossy mamas visit the sweet but feisty Lori and her team to find that perfect little number in satin, taffeta, or chiffon. I try to plan my trips to the gym around it because the treadmills have TVs, and I know that if I can hop on one just as an episode begins, I won't even think about quitting early. (Who could leave without finding out whether Leigh-Leigh went with pearls or rhinestones on her cathedral train?) Talking about that show made me think about some of the OTHER significant dresses I've said yes to over the years.

Easter dresses, of course, are in a class by themselves. I especially remember a pretty purple dotted Swiss that Aunt Vivian made for me when I was a child. (I still treasure a picture of me wearing it, posing with my mother before church that Easter Sunday.) Other Easter frocks included an unfortunate baby blue polyester number with a tiered skirt and lots of lace (chalk that one up to my teen interpretation of the Gunne Sax/Jessica McClintock craze) and a channeling-Jackie-Kennedy tailored shift (complete with coordinating pillbox hat) that I begged Mama to make for me when I was in college. I like to think the former First Lady would've been proud.

The first dress I remember just DYING for was made of what we called "crushed velvet" in the 70s. Is that even legitimate fabric terminology? I was probably in the fifth grade or so, and to me this dress just screamed "Marcia Brady cool." It was purple, with rhinestone buttons, a scoop neck, and an attached choker. Don't breeze by that last part—an attached choker. I wore it with a chunky heeled platform shoe that laced up. MAN! Talk about "kinda hey, kinda now, kinda Charlie!" (And if you're too young to remember Charlie cologne, ask somebody with a mood ring to explain that reference to you:)

One of my most memorable outfits ever was a career-girl purchase. I was about to go on my first solo business trip to New York, and I was absolutely terrified. I would be sitting around a conference table with "colleagues" from magazines like Time, People, and Sports Illustrated. I did not feel like their colleague. I felt completely clueless and had visions of sophisticated New Yorkers looking at me like I was from Mars. In truth, I needn't have worried. They were very gracious. But I needed a serious boost of sartorial confidence to face them alone. After wasting time shopping at cheaper stores, I headed for Parisian, which was, I guess, the last of Birmingham's great old family-owned department stores. "Can I help you?" asked a seasoned sales rep—the kind who used to be able to quickly size you up and send you to the fitting room with at least five dresses that were just the thing. I told her my dilemma. She checked me over, nodded and said, "Come with me." Thanks to her, I set off for New York in a classic navy-and-white herringbone that made me feel like, well, Jackie Kennedy. I felt worthy of that plane ticket, ready to take my place at the table. And when I entered that conference room and felt my confidence falter, I just took a look around and did a fashion assessment. Sure, that savvy sister to my left might have Manhattan on a string . . . but bless her heart, she might want to rethink those pantyhose . . .