I wore my grandma’s dress yesterday and liked it. What did you do?
Yesterday I wore my paternal grandma’s dress and shoes (in a guided visualization) while she played her violin. It was nice actually.
I was at a career coffee with dozen other parents from my son’s school. The topic was ancestral attitudes toward money and work.
We were asked to pick an ancestor that wasn’t central in our life so I chose my father’s mother, Florence. She’s been gone probably 15 years. I rarely think of her. I mainly think about the men, primarily my maternal grandfather, my father (somewhat reluctantly) and less frequently my paternal grandfather, my namesake. Occasionaly I think about my maternal grandmother, especially the black cloud that she carried around for much of her life. (That’s another story for another time.) So I chose Florence, my dad’s mom, and I remembered a few key details about her: she played violin as young woman; she was beautiful — coal black hair, curvy, a real head-turner — and she was by all accounts not unhappy with her life (which is not a common disposition in my family so far as I can tell). I don’t remember much about her other than she didn’t really complain much. She also didn’t do much. Didn’t like to leave her condo in Fort Lauderdale. And then there’s the music piece. And the physical beauty. The idea of being an object of desire and its connection to making and being beauty. And being at ease with it, none of which seems to have been passed on to her two adult sons, my father and my uncle.
I haven’t been talking to my dad for the last 8 or 9 months. Having this encounter with his mom seemed to implicitly give me permission to see him as a child. Period. No judgement. Just to accept him as I would a child. Forgiveness and acceptance. Nothing dramatic. All I need to do is take care of him. And stop being his kid. What the fuck did I think I was getting out of still being his child? If he wasn’t capabable of parenting when I actually needed it, what made me think that he would man up when I was an adult? Crazy, right? But that’s exactly how I have approached the relationship. Until now.
Oh yeah this was supposed to be about career and money. So what was my take away?
- Make your art, whatever it is, and stop worrying about the world thinks. Or trying to make money from it. Just make your art and that’s it. Separate it from money and work. Don’t kill it by squeezing a paycheck out of it or worrying what your Republican uncle thinks about a Master’s degree in Comp Lit. Just do/make it. Be ok with what ever it is.
- Embrace yourself. Own your beauty. Again, no need to worry so much about what everyone thinks. Just do it. You are beautiful. Classically beautiful. Like a greek fucking sculpture. Be that. Know that seeing and experiencing beauty in the world necessarily must start with seeing beauty in yourself. It’s not vanity. It’s compassion for yourself. How can you have compassion for the world if you don’t have compassion for yourself?
Oh and you’re probably wondering about the dress part. The facilitator asked us to imagine wearing our ancestor’s shoes. Ok fine I could do that. They were big and funny, almost jester like shoes with pointy tips. Super comfy and grounded. Then we were asked to put on our ancestor’s clothing. Wha, what? I didn’t sign up for this. But whatever. It’s not a big deal. I liked Transparent. I can do this. So I imagined donning this very simple but elegant light blue linen dress. Where did that come from? It was long and cut close to her/my figure. Curvy, but elegant. I thought about what it must have been like to be an object of desire, in a way that she must have been, and at the same time, I was amused by the fact that I could be beautiful and feminine and have a mustache too. Who says you can’t have it all? It wasn’t awkward, shameful or embarrassing in the least. I felt happy and completely at ease.
Goes to show that you can choose which ancestral messages you want to honor and broadcast on to the next generation. Be a chicken and egg farmer. Not a shit farmer. Make your art. Wear a pretty dress. Sport a soave mustache.
You’re welcome.