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Saturday, November 26, 2005
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the womb room.
When I was the summer director of a children's camp -- before I took over as the year-round director -- I often had to spend a couple weeks on the island where our facility was preparing for our kids' arrival. Various staff would come along as the start date grew closer and the whole place would bustle with cleaning and prepping and pulling things out of musty winter storage.
One particular year, I went up even earlier than normal to attend to the preparations. Only two of my staffers came along: my friend Brad, a frequent co-worker of mine over the years; and Kristy, who was brand new at the time to our operation, but who ended up becoming one of the finest imports of the season and one of my dearest friends (and roommates!).
We were searching for a place to sit down and do our planning and strategizing, as I recall, and Brad suggested we go hole up in one of the staff lounges in a trailer-like building where female employees stayed when camp was in session. There were no females in residence quite yet, so this seemed like a great idea.
Once we got there, however, we realized that the spot might not be quite the perfect meeting-place we had in mind. The whole room, from floor to near-ceiling, was stuffed with mattresses of various kinds.
Hmm.
Presented with all this fluffy evidence, I remembered that they'd been stripped off beds long stacked and stored away in another place.
We knew we'd have to go find another location to spread out our papers and books, but for a second, I suggested that we crawl on in to the mass of mattresses and bounce around.
(Okay, so I'm five years old on the inside -- that actually made me a better camp director, I swear.)
This turned out to be so ridiculously fun that we kept coming back to do it again and again, and eventually, we ended up holding all our meetings there, files squished around us. Once you'd climbed into the foamy layers, all sound would disappear but that which was right in front of your face, and wherever you lay or leaned, you'd feel softness and a sort of gentle undergirding.
In other words, ahhhh. (And no jokes about padded rooms, thank you very much.)
We dubbed it the "womb room" -- in homage to the peaceful cushiness of it all -- and when it was cleared out a week later, we mourned the loss of our little den of escape. Even today, we find ourselves wishing for those soft surroundings now and again, in times of acute stress.
I would not describe my current state as acutely stressful. Frustrated, unsettled, a bit sad... sure. I'm not someone who can blink at the loss of money (I don't use credit cards, so backup is non-existent) and I don't like the feeling of my personal documents floating out in the ether.
But at the end of the day, it could be much worse.
In the comments in my previous post, everyone told their stories of break-ins and losses. Such thing are not unfamiliar experiences to me prior to yesterday. Our house was broken into two or three times when I was in high school -- once, they even took all my dad's hockey equipment!
The most ridiculous loss we experienced was when my dad's car was stolen after he accompanied me to a rec hockey league game in a primarily rural area about 35 minutes outside of Vancouver. I'd dragged him there to check out the skills of a boy I absolutely adored (but who vascillated between ignoring me and wanting to hang out all the time).
When we left the arena and realized the car was gone, my dad got on his cell and called for the police -- and a ride home for us. I wandered back into the arena, where my hockey crush was just exiting the changeroom with his buddies.
He looked surprised to see me again, but when I told him what had happened, he looked stricken. I'm not sure if that was because he thought I was going to ask for a ride, or because he was legitimately upset for me. I burst into tears and he looked even more horrified, until one of his fellow players yelled, "Well, hug her!"
Then they all went out to make sure their cars were still there, which they were. Including his.
My grandfather came to get us, and thus began the slow demise of said crush. Anyone who needed prompting along those lines was not the guy for me.
The car was found later, but not in driveable condition. And my dad ended up liking his newer car better, anyhow -- even if the boy turned out to be a dud.
All digression aside, and to bring me back to the point of this post, I managed to step into a 'womb room' of sorts after my rough day yesterday. My mom picked me up at work for a long-planned jaunt of fabric shopping and we stopped off at all the places the wallet might have gone (after I'd made phone calls all day).
No dice.
She took me for dinner then, which was comforting and distracting in the way that dinners with moms should be. We chatted about many things -- none of them lost wallets. And then onto the fabric.
My Christmas dress -- the one for my office party -- was something I decided on late last month, partly out of a desire to not shop for something to wear and partly because my mother makes gorgeous dresses, being a seamstress and tailor and all. She hasn't made one for me in nearly five years, so I was excited to dream up some sort of somethingorother with her.
And dream we did. It's so me. Or it will be -- once she makes it.
Black matte satin, corseted waist, full New Look Dior-type skirt down to mid-calf (with a moderate tulle crinoline), sheer, barely-there three-quarter length sleeves, a low-ish back, and a neckline that makes the most of my....er... assets. And when I say, "make the most of", I mean whoa.
It's so Audrey.
Yet so Sophia, too.
Not to mention a little bit Ava.
Mmm!
I can't think of anything better to suit my style. I'm never going to be Twiggy or any other icon of litheness. I'm far more Rosalind Russell than Annie Hall. I was born for glossy lips and sizeable hips and ankles peeking out from floating hems. Can I get an Amen?
Last night, after we'd found just the right material, we ended up at my parents' home, where my mother whipped up some guacamole, I chopped up some salsa, and we chipped and dipped our way through a holiday movie that always makes us laugh until we're ill: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It's horrible in the best possible way.
Afterwards, I snuggled up on the couch and fell asleep while my parents watched TV in the other room. Which reminds me of a good 17 years of my life -- again, in the best way possible.
When I woke up this morning, my mom made me a peanut butter-banana soy smoothie (rich!) and then my dad spirited me off to pick up a latte. Eggs and toast belly-filled upon my return back to their place and then we embarked on the dressmaking process of piecing together patterns, measuring, and confirming final details.
She is now sewing, I am now blogging.
I'm still tense. And frustrated.
But my parents have done more to buffet my stress in the past 24 hours than anyone could have possibly expected. I've chatted, eaten, commiserated, dreamed... and now I remain in their comfortable embrace for a few more hours while my confection gets underway. I'm eating salsa again, watching college football, and looking forward to a salmon dinner with the Canucks' game in the back- and foreground tonight.
Who needs a roomful of mattresses with a family like this?
Happy Saturday... love to all.
2:20:17 PM 
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© Copyright
2006
Meg Fowler.
Last update:
3/4/06; 2:30:20 PM. |
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