Bits and pieces

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I found out I failed my glucose tolerance test again shortly after posting the New Year's Resolutions. So cutting back on sugar is now more of a prerogative. My numbers were only slightly elevated, as they have been for 3 other pregnancies, so I'm not overly concerned, but now I have a source of motivation. Of course, all I've wanted to do since hearing the diagnosis is eat candy and cookies. My husband threw out the last of sugar cookies (horrors!), but I have a stash of M&M's and a Toblerone bar from one of the kids. My mom also pointed out that dark chocolate is low on the glycemic index, and if you pair them with almonds, the protein helps balance the sugar intake. Sounds like a perfect snack.

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I subbed the first three days of this week and loved it. I liked having a purpose to get dressed each morning. I liked spending time with the students and the teachers.  I liked having direction to my days. The kids were fifth graders - interesting, curious, but still rule-followers, not rule-stretchers like the middle school kids.  Surely, sixth to eighth grade has got to be the most awkward stage - not quite big kids but not little kids either.

As much as I enjoyed the days at the school, I'm relieved to have a morning at home.  So still not any closer to deciding whether to commit to a certification program.  I was thinking the other night about how vanity plays into my desire to have a job.  I want to be able to say "I'm a teacher," or some other label, when someone asks me what I do. It's a desire to be known and understood, and hopefully, loved, even if those things really don't have anything to do with a "job" as my husband likes to point out.  But is identity revealed in the choice of our vocation? Are we known by the things we do, not what we say and think? Is doing what creates identity and memory - and objects of beauty - more than "being"?

When I meet other women who stay home with their kids, I don't think twice about their choice to work or not, and if anything, I always wonder "how does she do it?" when I meet women with younger children who work full time.  However, knowing what someone does is a way of knowing them, even if it isn't really a shortcut to friendship.  Perhaps if we didn't move, I wouldn't feel this urge to prove myself by having an identity linked to a profession, but I can't really blame it on that as much as a lack of humility. I'm embarrassed by how often I catch myself thinking of what I'm going to say instead of really listening to some one else. Instead of worrying about what image I'm conveying, I should feel content to let others lead the conversation.

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Related:  I had a moment of self-awareness the other day when I was aimlessly carrying on some small talk with a slight acquaintance about how lucky we are in California not to be effected by the "Polar Vortex." We don't have to deal with all that cold weather clothing.  Of course, it set me to reminiscing about how the weather in Guam was even better:  "In Guam, we never had to change from flipflops and shorts."

How many times do I start a sentence with "In Guam" followed by something awesome?

On Saturday I was talking to someone about the running club.

On Tuesday I was talking about pancit and balutan.

Over break, I talked to someone about the bunelos dago after midnight Mass.

Have I started to become annoying?

Controlling my tongue should be another New Year's resolution.

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In an unrelated train of thought the other night, I was thinking about how much I value the paintings I have from my great-grandmother after my sister posted a picture of one of her paintings.  I love the recipe cards I have written in my grandmothers' handwriting. I love the quilts my sister-in-law has made, and I love the hats we just received from my other sister-in-law. I have a little dress hanging in the girls' closet that my cousin smocked for my first daughter and the dress she smocked for me for my baptism when I was 7. I have all the doll clothes my mom made for our Sasha dolls that my girls redress every now and then, and that reminds me that I also have a box with one of my mom's dolls and her doll clothes that I should let the girls use since they aren't doing any good resting in a box.  The doll needs new rubber bands, though - hers rotted some time ago so that her head and appendages are unattached.

If I love these handmade things so much - and I don't think at all about what profession these women were, although they all worked at one time, (one of my grandmothers once worked in the game room at Ayres when she was young and was a club president when she was older, the other was a patient representative at a hospital in her middle age, my mom and sister-in-law were nurses and my cousin a dental hygienist. And I think I heard at one time that my great-grandmother who painted was a secretary for her second husband's office, but now I don't trust my memory.) - why aren't I making things? What will my children and grandchildren treasure?

I remember my grandmother occasionally treating my sister and cousins and me to a fashion show from the boxes she kept of clothes made by her family members. She had a grandfather's yellowed wedding vest that was over a hundred years old along with a letter with feathery writing. A cotton dress of her mother's that seemed sturdy but also attractive. Her own satin wedding gown we were allowed to try on and her pretty satin shoes. I wore a few of the wax orange blossoms from her head piece in my own wedding headband. There was also a white dress made by a great aunt that I wore to my own high school graduation, although to my chagrin, some of the delicate lace around the neckline tore away from the thin cotton fabric when I was taking it off. And my favorite: an elegant chartreuse formal dress that draped like a column. I think it had some silk floral adornment near the neckline. Maybe it was cotton chiffon? Not sure of what the thin gauzy fabric was. I just remember thinking it was the most beautiful dress in the world. Perfect for a princess.

(Leaving behind the work of their hands isn't limited to my female relatives: there is the bed my brother-in-law made. Hard to believe he's not making thousands making furniture full time. And cabinets from my father-in-law. Bookshelves, castles, and dollhouses from my husband.  How about honey from my dad?)

An array of crafty stuff on the bed made by my brother-in-law, next to which is a side table made by my father-in-law. My only contribution: The skirt the bitty twin is wearing.

Maybe I need to learn to knit.

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Some recent photos that have led to conversations lately :

Eastman Johnson's picture "Woman Reading." Who reads while walking in front of a harbor?
Someone calm and meditative, like this painting from the San Diego Museum of Art. Need we be anything more?

A view from the car of the Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry, inspired by sailing ships. Hope to go inside to a show one day, although the interior is supposedly not as iconic.  Started a conversation with the teenagers about the purpose and value of modern art. Would you rather look at Eastman's painting or Gehry's building? The concert hall is kind of wedged into a busy space and is next to a parking garage. It's difficult to get a good view of it. Would it be better served in a more spacious area? Or does it provide a moment of delight to the viewer who rounds a corner and happens upon it, like some kind of fairy tale castle, completely fantastical and unexpected? LA seems to have so few pedestrians, unfortunately, unlike other big cities. 

What happens when you ask siblings to act like they like each other.

Attempting a panorama of the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the science center in LA. Millions
were spent for the heat resistant tiles that cover it and that had to be replaced
after each journey.  We debated the merits of the space program on our way home:
money wasted or well-spent for the germs of knowledge and the leaps of stimulated imaginations?
The most poignant memory of this trip: reading about William McCool, an astronaut who died in the Columbia explosion. The kids' school in Guam (!) was named after him.  Most crowded space: Around the space toilet. Voiding in space: infinitely fascinating.

What happens when I craft. My 11 year old daughter and I tried
to make this dollhouse chair from a kit she received for Christmas. Homage to the
favorite chair of my youth, where I spent hours reading. Also proof of our inability to manage glue.

Pigwidgeon and Juanito - newest members of our household. I find parakeets fascinating, much to my husband's bafflement, who finds them rather dirty and loud, although vieually appealing.  I can't tell if they are fighting or loving on each other half the time. They have different personalities: Juanito, the green bird, is younger according to the lady we bought him from at the flea market. He is more tame, but less assertive. Widgie is a bit of a bully, I'm afraid. I don't know that we'll be able to tame him and I fear he'll become a biter like his predecessor Percy. Attempting to tame slowly.

What, no muumuus?

When we found out we were moving to Guam, one of the first things to cross my mind was that I needed to go shopping for new clothes. I needed a new swimsuit. I needed new flipflops. I needed a sundress. I needed a muumuu. My mother-in-law lived here in the 60s and mentioned more than once how much she loved the muumuu she found and wore all the time.

See http://normatikadesigns.blogspot.com/2010/08/muu-muu-dress.html for patterns!

So far I haven't seen any muumuus. Lots of colorful sundresses are for sale that could be said to be inspired by muumuus - loose through the body, but fitted up top. But I'm not much of a spaghetti strap wearer. 

Although I’m not a fashion trendsetter myself, I’m not immune to the feminine habit of checking out what other people are wearing. I can appreciate a pretty dress and a nice pair of shoes as well as the next lady.  I admit to falling prey to the temptation to fit in, chameleon-like. I don’t want to be the one who stands out in the crowd.

So the other night, when I had to attend my first spouses’ club event, I had my first clothing crisis since we moved.  I needed a cute muumuu to wear...  I had packed plenty of clothes, and while on the road, I even bought a few of those things: a swimsuit, new sandals, and a couple sundresses – things that said “beach living” - all on sale, of course, or from Goodwill.   

When you are living out of a suitcase, getting dressed usually is relatively easy. And since we only have one car, I haven’t been going out much. But this was one of those events that could require something dressier than shorts and a t-shirt. Choosing my attire was complicated by the fact that I had to leave early to go to a football game at a muddy field.  And since we’re new, I wasn’t sure if Guam fashion was going to be like Virginia where the wives dressed more casually or like Mississippi, where getting done up was a regular event.

Of course, a muumuu isn't really appropriate for a Saturday night dessert and coffee party.  In the back of my mind, I was remembering the advice from the 1968 Welcome to Guam magazine that my mother-in-law shared with me when we were visiting.  This magazine suggested packing gloves and hats for wives’ club functions.  No longer necessary, although I think I miss that more proscribed dress code.

From what I can tell so far, the style here is an interesting mix. When we were staying at the hotel, we were surrounded by Japanese tourists. I couldn’t get enough of checking out the Japanese women’s clothing. They have a recognizable style, but I’m not quite sure how to describe it.  Very feminine. Very lightweight, gauzy type fabrics. They wore mostly skirts or dresses in bright colors or pastels and flirty cuts – ruffles, drapes, bias cuts. Even when they wore pants or shorts, they wore them in a feminine way: body hugging styles, cute shirts and accessories. Then they layered on lightweight sweaters or scarves and leggings in bright hues without regard for other colors they were wearing. Even their shoes were multi-hued.  Since most of them appeared thin and graceful, they seemed to float as they walked. I felt like a clumsy moth around butterflies.

But down on this end of the island, there aren’t a lot of tourists. Clothes are serviceable.  At the Mass on base, the military wives are a shorts, t-shirts, and flipflops crowd. Last Sunday at the nearby Church in town, the older ladies wore a lot of polyester that looked like it had been around a few decades. And the younger ladies had on a lot of polyester that looked like it wouldn’t last more than a few weeks.   Next to flipflops, the most popular shoes were slinky high heels, paired with tight jeans - a vampy look copied even by little girls without any curves to flaunt. 

Not my style. I guess I’ll have to stand out in the crowd if we go back to Mass there.

Of course, at church no one is supposed to be noticing.  Our minds are not supposed to be on the shoes of the people going up to Communion in front of us.  I can't help but think that if we all wore muumuus, we'd hardly notice anyone's shoes. It would be like wearing a habit.

In the tourist area, I assume, one of the main pasttimes is noticing what others are wearing and planning or shopping for clothes for yourself.  Since I’m not much of a shopper, I never bought anything, but I did wonder where the Japanese women bought their clothes, because I didn’t see anything similar in the stores here.

So back to the night in question: I ended up wearing capris and a button-down shirt. Unremarkable – easy to slip out early without being noticed.  The attire of the other ladies varied from shorts and t-shirts to dressy sundresses, but no muumuus, so I shouldn’t have worried about being too casual or too dressy.  The irony is that I haven’t worn those beach-living sundresses that I bought back in Indiana. Although I thought I could recraft an identity, I just don’t feel like myself in those clothes.

I’m always a little frustrated with myself for worrying about clothing. It seems vain or lacking in humility. Why should I care as long as I’m clean and covered up? But on the other hand, we so quickly judge people based on their clothes, and here I am in another new place, wanting to make a good impression.  Maybe I can order one of those engravable circle necklaces with “Do you want to be my friend?” on it.

Happily, I’ve already met a few women whom I like in the neighborhood.  Everyone seems really friendly and welcoming. Maybe because Guam is such a small island, people are especially welcoming to newcomers. Since we’re homeschooling the younger kids again, I’m hesitant to reach out for too many opportunities to socialize anyway.  I’m glad to have the excuse to stay home, even if I don't have a muumuu to wear around the house in the hot weather.  No need to get a new outfit – just wear a friendly smile.  I’m hearing that song from Annie on the soundtrack in my mind.

My 2 cents

The moment to jump into the conversation about the immorality of pants has come and gone, but can I still add a p.s. to the discussion? I know I can’t come close to being as funny as Mrs. Fischer or the Darwins or my sister, but I keep replaying the argument (and I guess Mrs. F did too, because she wrote 3 entries...). So now I want to say something even though while I was busy doing other things everyone else got over it.


When I first encountered the pants vs. skirts debate several years ago, I knew you weren’t supposed to wear shorts to churches in Rome, or clothes that revealed your underwear, and on Sundays you tried to dress your best, but who thought about clothes as a moral issue? My mother let us wear tube tops and tube socks. I ran around in short shorts and singlets in high school and college because that’s what runners wear, like swimmers wear swimsuits and ballerinas wear leotards.


Although for a short time I was into wearing clothes as an identity statement, I was never as fashion conscious as my sister Betty.  I had to be reminded to brush my hair and at least to try to match my shirts and socks. And I needed help with my makeup. But I did join my sister in pouring over Vogue magazine, mostly looking for good models to draw rather than clothes to wear. I don’t remember being shocked by it; it was Seventeen magazine that was scandalous for its tutorials on French kissing and how to get the boy from math class to notice you.

Last spring when my mom and sister came to visit, they toted recent issue of Vogue; I took my turn browsing it, too. When my mom held up a photo of two lightly clad femmes on the beach with their arms draping over each other, she held it up and said “Isn’t this awful?” but I had seen the same photo and thought, “Oh, look, looks like me and Betty almost!”

But back to the story: a few years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Dressing With Dignity. The author, Colleen Hammond, makes a powerful argument for skirts, but all I could think was, “She’s from TEXAS! She never has to wear panty hose or tights!” I had recently moved from the north of Chicago hinterlands where I had suffered every Sunday from September to May about what to wear to Church. I like wearing skirts, but tights are like ancient torture devices. But we had moved to Virginia, so I bought a few skirts and practiced wearing them during the week. I felt pretty and flirty and impractical. Wrong effect.

Shortly thereafter, on a camping trip with some different friends who knew the book, we had a great conversation around the fire. Vogue got slammed by the blog criticizing professor, but his sister-in-law, 7 months pregnant and looking fabulous clad in a long black belly hugging dress – too fabulous for a campout – made the great point that the way you dress is something of a calling. Some people are called to live in the world, while others are called to be more withdrawn, more contemplative, even if they aren’t called to the religious life. They have their own domestic monasteries. And for them long skirts are appropriate. But for most of us, dressing according to cultural norms is no moral issue. If we were African natives of a certain tribe, we’d go topless. If we were Muslim, we’d wear Burqhas; if we were Inuit, we’d wear parkas. But since we are Americans, pants are acceptable tribal wear.

That said, modesty is a real issue, and wearing clothes that let your muffin belly hang out or show your undergarments is immodest and just plain unattractive. And to a certain extent modesty depends on where you live and your body shape. I let my little girls wear sleeveless sundresses to church because they look cute and don't have hairy armpits. I wear v-neck shirts without feeling immodest because even four finger-widths below my neckbone you’re not going to encounter any cleavage. Someone else might need a different shirt. It’s one thing to dress nicely, and it’s another to dress like you’re working in Vegas.


But all that history and reasoning weren’t really what I wanted to say. What I meant to get around to is a thought project I’ve toyed with before, and that’s the issue of how much time and attention and resources should we give to fashion anyway. Unlike my mother, I don’t like to spend hours shopping and when I do, I get frustrated and irritable (although I’m happy enough to waste time on the computer). Having an attractive home fits into this topic, too: I’m tempted to spend more money on home décor than fashion, so I’ve thought about the argument in terms of how to make a house look pretty and homey while being fiscally prudent and without getting obsessed about the house and the stuff so that you walk around yelling at the kids when they touch it. How much time and money can you invest in looking pretty or having pretty things before they become distraction? How detached should we be from material beauty?


I think you could make the argument that the desire to be attractive and to have attractive things is, to a certain extent, a theological issue. Beautiful things make us happy, they lift our spirits and hearts, and can lead us toward praise of God, if we’re disciplined enough to not turn the objects into the ends.



And then there is the issue of intent. If you don’t intend to attract a lover or make the other ladies glower with envy over your fine figure and stylish life, but rather just want to look tidy or professional or like a person someone else would like to be friends with or you just feel innately attracted to that particular sweater or whatever, and someone else looks at you with lust, that’s their sin. Calling pants immoral is a little like demonizing alcohol. Certainly, alcohol can be used improperly, but the sin is in the user not the object. I had a friend whose church not only forbid the ladies to wear pants and make-up to church, but it also refused to have musical instruments in their service because they believed the Bible instructed us to praise with the voice. (They weren’t supposed to dance or watch movies like Footloose, either.) And of course there were no statues or stained glass in their little brick building. But those objects are supposed to lead our thoughts to God, both in their content and in their form.



Anyway, it’s a fun topic to debate because when you come down to it, there’s no formulaic answer to the question of what constitutes modest wear, or what amount of money is too much to spend on adornments, or what will provoke admiration and pleasure versus what will provoke envy and lust. The human heart is too gloriously various.

Not like the lilies

Ran across an ebook called Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank from 1890 that tickled me. Love the photos of Mrs. Conde Nast in dress up clothes. Found it while searching for something else, along with too many distractions on Project Gutenberg’s site. Hours later …

Admittedly, I didn’t read the entire book, but skimmed a few paragraphs and looked at the photos and captions. The text is delightfully refined and formal – a tone not in fashion any more than these costumes are. I wonder at what we have lost in exchange for a more personal, conversational tone in our books. And what we have lost in a less formal style of dress?

Then again, what have we gained with our more casual styles? One of the epigrams at the beginning of the book is this

"When was that 'simple time of our fathers' when people were too sensible to care for fashions? It certainly was before the Pharaohs, and perhaps before the Glacial Epoch." W. G. SUMNER, in Folkways 

This book is primarily about how to dress in a costume, but it also says much about the psychology of clothing:

Has the reader ever observed the effect of clothes upon manners? It is amazing, and only proves how pathetically childlike human nature is.


Put any woman into a Marie Antoinette costume and see how, during an evening she will gradually take on the mannerisms of that time. This very point was brought up recently in conversation with an artist, who in referring to one of the most successful costume balls ever given in New York—the crinoline ball at the old Astor House—spoke of how our unromantic Wall Street men fell to the spell of stocks, ruffled shirts and knickerbockers, and as the evening advanced, were quite themselves in the minuette and polka, bowing low in solemn rigidity, leading their lady with high arched arm, grasping her pinched-in waist, and swinging her beruffled, crinolined form in quite the 1860 manner.

Some women, even girls of tender years, have a natural instinct for costuming themselves, so that they contribute in a decorative way to any setting which chance makes theirs. Watch children "dressing up" and see how among a large number, perhaps not more than one of them will have this gift for effects. It will be she who knows at a glance which of the available odds and ends she wants for herself, and with a sure, swift hand will wrap a bright shawl about her, tie a flaming bit of silk about her dark head, and with an assumed manner, born of her garb, cast a magic spell over the small band which she leads on, to that which, without her intense conviction and their susceptibility to her mental attitude toward the masquerade, could never be done.

If I got to pick which costume I’d go back in time for, I think it would be this one:

Mrs. Conde Nast in Garden Costume

Not only are the pictures entertaining, but the ideas are also thought provoking – I’m not one to give a great deal of thought to my clothes, but I try to be at least within a decade of the current styles. I’ve given up most of my mom jeans – except my favorite Gap classics that I’ll keep until they come back in style someday.

I’ve decided that not only is being stylish too expensive and too much work, but it also makes you unapproachable. The lady who looks immaculately put together intimidates me. I assume she is a woman who shops or who has money to burn, and then I assume that we don’t have much in common. Or I feel that she looks at me and wonders why I don’t take care of myself.

On the other hand, the frumpy lady doesn’t seem any more approachable. I’ve been known to avoid the woman in the long denim jumper because I assume that the woman who wears it is making a statement about her rejection of the world, a little like a nun’s habit, or an Amish woman's dress and cap. Perhaps there’s a part of me who thinks I’m just not holy enough to be this person’s friend.

Wrong to judge by appearances, I know. My first impressions are often wrong, thankfully: I have friends who are dowdy jumper wearers and friends who highlight their hair, don’t step out without make-up and always are dressed like a million dollars. But as the book says

"The world has the habit of deriding that which it does not understand. It is the most primitive way of bolstering one's limitations. How often the woman or man with a God-given sense of the beautiful, the fitting, harmony between costume and setting, is described as poseur or poseuse by those who lack the same instinct. In a sense, of course, everything man does, beyond obeying the rudimentary instincts of the savage, is an affectation, and it is not possible to claim that even our contemporary costuming of man or woman always has raison d'être."

So I try to find a balance in my closet. Without spending much time, money or thought on clothes, I at least try to put a little effort into wearing clothes that look pretty. Dare I say “attractive”? Vanity revealed. I like to think the persona I project is one who is not absorbed by appearance but who tries to look presentable. I’ve never considered myself the pretty girl, but I have wanted people to look at me and think, "That’s someone I’d like to be my friend." I want to attract not their attention, per se, but their kind regard.

"It is the woman who knows what she should wear, what she can wear and how to wear it, who is most efficient in whatever she gives her mind to. She it is who will expend the least time, strength and money on her appearance, and be the first to report for duty in connection with the next obligation in the business of life."

Not that I can't sympathize with the clothes' lover: some clothes are just plain beautiful. Most of the time, their cost makes something to admire from afar, not to own, like a museum exhibit or a book of photos, but the other day, I found a black chiffon dress adorned with a few jet bugle beads in a kind of a flapper girl drape (just right for my body type which is not in sync with today’s styles for Rubenesque ladies) in my size at the thrift store. Irresistable, especially since I gave away all but one black velvet formal when we moved from Virginia, and it’s likely we’ll go to the Seabee Ball next year. My new costume.

I wish I could find the “modeling” pictures my cousins and sister and I used to take when we were sending each other our homemade fashion magazine, Puella, an exercise in vanity, although it didn’t seem to harm my cousin who’s a habit wearing nun. There’s a pose just like this one of Mrs. Vernon Castle dressed as Spring:

Only not so lovely.

Melanie has a quote posted on her blog about dressing for the journey of life. And of course the Bible is the real authority on fashion:

Matthew 6:25-34 ESV :“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ... "


1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. "


1 Peter 3:3-4 ESV: "Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious"

Proverbs 31:30 ESV: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. "