A Work In Progress

Most of you who have vicariously accompanied me on my fashion odyssey already know that I've been feverishly writing my memoir.  Although I am only one quarter through it, I am really trying to complete it by summer's end.  I've got plenty more writing to do.  But I thought I'd share an excerpt with you as a sort of a sneak peek.  Please post a comment and let me know what you think.  Remember, this is my life and it reads a lot different than the blog.

Peace & Fashion!
 



Aunt Patty & Me celebrating our birthdays
 with my Grandma



A few days before I attended my senior prom, I lost my grandmother to cancer.  My senior prom and my grandmother’s passing are two milestones blended together in some kind of fuzzy mix of ebullient joy and profound sadness.  I came to know death intimately, its embrace impossible to escape.  And its thoughtlessness left me adrift searching for anything that might steady me.  The smother of cancer is inescapable and all-consuming.  Sorrow metastasized like the disease.  I watched powerless day after day as my grandmother’s condition worsened.  The ugly and bleak memory of her suffering has lingered over the rest of my days.  Grandma had always been one of my staunchest supporters indulging me the way a grandparent does.  Ours was a special bond and she would take me out to fancy dinners and Broadway shows.  Her zeal for life was legendary as she was the epicenter of every party and at each birthday celebration, including hers, she would loudly declare, “Happy Birthday To Me!”  Elegant yet pragmatic, I adored and worshipped her fortitude and glamour.  Grandma was beyond reproach earning her the moniker Right Rolene.  She was an avid and worldly traveler who would send me postcards from each of her destinations.  Now so many years later, I look over the yellowing cards inspecting her familiar handwriting and I am transported back in time.  I couldn’t wait for her return from vacation when my mother would pack us into the beige Nova for the ten minute ride to her house where we greeted her enthusiastically and listened intently as she regaled us with stories of African camel rides and Spanish bullfights and Mexican pyramids.  Maybe two weeks after her funeral, on a sunny afternoon, immediately following the pomp and circumstance of my high school graduation ceremony, I was presented with an envelope inscribed “Love, Grandma” filled with several one hundred dollar bills.  I bawled and shook and sobbed loudly as the procession of tears streamed down my face. Unstoppable and unrelenting, I cried for all the things about her that I would miss and I cried for our future that was cut too short.  Now without Grandma’s strong physical presence, I contemplated how my life would turn out.