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Write On! Winners of the 2006 Annual Writing Contest Grand Prize Forever Young Spa, My Day Package ($120 value) First Prize North Carolina Writers’ Network,1-year
membership
($75 value) Second Prize The Eclectic Garden, $50 gift certificate Third Prize Harmony Farms, $40 gift certificate Fourth Prize Barnes & Noble, $25 gift certificate Honorable Mentions Carolina Woman t-shirt |
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Grand Prize Unlike the heroines of Chekov We walked to church on Easter Sunday, I was five. You were ten and thirteen.
First Prize Dust nestles on the higher planes of the house.
Second Prize The other night, I was trying to explain to my 7-year-old twin boys, Jared and Jasper, what an oxymoron is. “It's you when have a combination of contradictory words that just don't seem to go together.” I tried to illustrate with some examples like “jumbo shrimp,” “awfully nice” and “pretty ugly.” “Oh,” chimed in my 10-year-old daughter, Sydney, without missing a beat — “You mean like ‘cool mom?’” Hmm. Surely, I thought, she'd simply misunderstood the light-hearted literary form that we were discussing. However, the hands on hips, twisted lips and look of general disgust on her face told me otherwise. I was just about to really lose my cool and send her to her room for that sassy sentiment, when I realized that she might, in fact, be right! Can you keep your “cool” once you have kids, or do you immediately go from being a happening “It Girl” to a washed up “Was Woman” as soon as you give birth? I suppose one could argue that you can't exactly lose something that you never had in the first place. Maybe I wasn't all that cool to start with. But before I had kids, I lived in New York City in the ‘80s. I had big hair and boulder-sized shoulder pads in my dolman-sleeved Norma Komali sweatshirts. My mullet-maned mates and I even managed to get past the red-velvet ropes at some of the city's hottest clubs, on occasion. But, judging by my daughter’s gagging reflex from my scrapbook photos of this dance down memory lane, I can see now that even then I was more than six degrees away from anything remotely registering as cool! I guess today I’m getting even colder when it comes to cool. The only thing I’ve purchased recently that says “Juicy” comes in a six-ounce, square box and has very little to do with “Couture.” Reality aside, at least Sydney used to think that I was a cool mom. Cool was a cinch when all it took was a song and dance with her and her little buddies to one of Barney's brain-boring songs. I’ve learned the hard way that this tactic no longer cuts it. Today, if I’m caught humming or moving rhythmically in any way to her ever-blasting boom box when her friends are around, she shoots me a panic-stricken look, as if I were convulsing with a grand mal seizure. Syd used to play dress up for hours and hours, trying on all of my clothes and shoes. Now, however, according to a recent inspection, she insists that everything in my closet must immediately be burned or buried. Those matching mother-daughter outfits at the mall are a thing of the past. Even admitting that we're mother-daughter at the mall is a thing of the past. In my defense, I grew up with an un-hip mom of my own. Shirley Partridge and Carol Brady were my only real “cool mom” role models. This may, in part, explain the cool conundrum that I find myself in right now! But today’s Hollywood moms make it look so easy. I wonder if Jamie Lee Curtis, Teri Hatcher and Madonna are ever forced to follow a detailed doctrine of approved talking points when conversing with their kids’ cliques? Heck, it seems that Demi Moore's daughters not only let her hang out with their friends, they even let her marry one! “Certainly,” I pleaded with Sydney, “you can think of one mom who has held on and can still qualify as cool?’” “That's easy,” she said, pointing to my very own mother across the room. “Grandma!” I put my hands on my hips, twisted my lips and, with a look of general disgust, replied, “Mark my words, my darling daughter, one day you may have children and become an oxymoron of your own…and guess who will be the cool Grandma then?” She about lost it. That was cool!
Third Prize The show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” premiered quietly August 1999, during a slow week usually devoted to summer reruns. Producing the show was cheaper than paying the royalties to replay sit-coms. Another game show, ho hum. No one expected it to rate a regular time slot. No one expected a national obsession. Some fanatics follow fads, but I was never caught with such an affliction. I had never even played Trivial Pursuit. My brother, Tom, and his college buddy, Matt, could talk about jazz for hours, singing riffs from different tunes and recalling the ensemble musicians on albums. I looked askance at such excess. But here I was buying any magazine with host Regis Philbin on the cover and testing myself with the sample questions in Good Housekeeping. As I set my watch to see the show nightly, my other interests waned: I became a quiz-show addict. Used bookstores had always been a temptation to me, but now they were irresistible. I purchased texts on flags, presidential scandals, the best of country music and the top 100 events of the 20th century. Research provided the perfect excuse to stuff two shopping bags at the Durham Library book sale, including a trivia encyclopedia. I collected packages of flashcards, too, on topics from women writers to famous last words. All of these were organized into one box, then two, then three. When driving, I absorbed books-on-tape versions of Walter Cronkite’s biography, the Kennedy family and famous poems. Omnivorously, I borrowed videos from the library and devoured the details of “A Fun Hobby — Numismatics,” “The History of the Louvre,” and “Great Sports Moments of the 1980s.” Always vigilant, I believed every conversation could present a possible answer to a million-dollar question. I tried to be subtle as I injected, “What year was that, exactly?” I’m proud to say I’ve predicted many questions that have appeared on the monitor. Indeed, ABC should’ve hired me to write questions. I had some good ones: What is Ouagadougou? A. a bird, B. a fish, C. an ancient curse, D. capital of Burkina Faso. Where did Albert Schweitzer do his missionary work? A. India, B. China, C. Guam, D. Gabon. These questions (both answers are D) are just a smidgen of what I know about Africa. As I collected trivia, I also amassed much worthless knowledge of the show itself. It wasn’t filmed live but taped a week earlier. Filming a one-hour show required two to three hours. One commercial cost $750,000, and host Regis Philbin earned $20 million annually. Over 300,000 hopefuls called the hotline daily to qualify for a random drawing for a 40-person telephone playoff to determine the 10 final contestants who were flown to New York City. Fate had foiled my attempts, but all was not lost by my quixotic crusade. I confess, the main reason I joined the Internet before the new millennium was to log on to www.abc.com. From this Web site I learned that one must designate only five phone-a-friends before the game. This destroyed my scheme to keep the entire university faculty on call as my phone-a-friend. Also, on the Web, ABC announced schedules and sold hats, T-shirts, and a home game. Before Christmas, my brother hinted about buying me a gift, “There’s even a CD-ROM “I have it,” I informed him. “Released yesterday.” Glued to the computer, I rehearsed. With stereo sound recreating the set, virtual I groaned. They hit my blind spot. I needed to study the Republican Party or find a conservative phone-a-friend. (Answer: Leroy) Rosie O’Donnell, who was devoted to the show, called the hot line daily to play, and, boldly, she offered to be anyone’s phone-a-friend lifeline. I made a note: “Pop culture: Rosie O’Donnell — search net.” Madonna’s best friend, Rosie knew pop culture intimately. “No way. Forget it!” He declared, “I don’t want that responsibility.” “What if Regis calls you with a kayak question?” One of the hot-seat contestants was from Durham. Gee, I thought, someone should tell A week later, while I was eating dinner on my periodic-table place mat and poring over the terms of proper etiquette, my brother called. “Matt is going to be on the Millionaire show! He asked me to be his lifeline, but I told him he needed to call my sister.” Instantly, I rose like Don Quixote wielding a sword and shield, a pencil and pad. Galloping around the house, I gathered my resources and practiced swinging at windmill questions of psychology, poetry and biology. Matt phoned to plan his strategy, and I gave him the ace up my sleeve: Edison’s phone number. “You need him,” I coached. “He’s already been in the hot seat. He’ll give you the scoop.” Politely, I left a message for Edison, too. “I hope you don’t mind speaking to my friend when he calls.” Miss Manners terms that a “letter of introduction.” Monday night Matt called with the final line-up. “You’re on deck. I got a sports guy, film buff, civics teacher and my father-in-law. I released Tom, Edison, and the math professor. You are it for science, medicine, psychology and mythology. Oh, how about geography? I need help with Africa.” “OK,” I rallied, reaching for my atlas, flashcards and maps. He tested me, “What’s the capital of Ethiopia?” “Addis Ababa,” I replied, blithely. On Tuesday, March 14, 2000, 5 p.m. EST, I waited for the phone to ring while my friends David, Richard and Cindy ate pizza and provided support. I rehearsed what I would say for my 15 seconds of fame. “Hi, Regis! I’d like to buy a vowel.” I imagined he would sputter, “Wrong show.” I would retort, “Then Matt is out of luck!” As time passed, I doubted Matt had won the Fastest Finger Round of 10 contestants. At 6:15 p.m., the phone rang. I let it go three times, as I was instructed. “This is ABC. Matt is in the hot seat. You may be called soon.” Instantly, I felt an icy bolt of terror. Too late I realized I didn’t want this responsibility. Nervously, I spread out my resources — a map, a dictionary, chronology of world religions. I prayed the question would be easy. I visualized myself answering with aplomb, “Final answer. Slam dunk! Done deal.” I cringed at the thought of my greatest fear: humiliation of forgetting a simple fact in front of 274 million people (that is, the population of the U.S.A.). I started to hyperventilate. My pals reassured me. “Don’t worry. If you faint, we’ll answer the phone and say, ‘Regis, she’s not here right now. The ambulance just drove away.’” At 7 p.m., the phone did ring. My eyeballs popped out of their sockets. Chest pounding, I stumbled to the hot line, reminding myself to catch my breath and wait for three rings. Pen in hand, I picked up the receiver. “Hello. This is ABC. Matt is up to $64,000. He’s guaranteed to take home $32,000, but the taping is over for today. Will you be available at this number between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. tomorrow?” “Sure,” I said, thinking to myself, “If I don’t die first.” My pulse was fluttering. Matt called that night. The questions were a blur to him. He had asked the audience about a movie he hadn’t seen. There was a simple medicine question about calamine lotion for poison ivy. Any mythology? Any geography? No? “Not yet,” I deduced. This is how I became certain one of the final questions would concern the geography of Africa: 1) There had been no geography questions yet. 2) The CD-ROM game had asked about the capitol of Djibouti (Djibouti). 3) If there is a geography question in a difficult range, it would be from the continent with the most countries (Africa, 53!). After paging through an anatomy manual, I began to memorize the countries, capitals, rivers, lakes, deserts and mountains of Africa. I brought my flashcards to work. At lunch time,I realized, not a contestant, I did not need to memorize all this, and, instead, I alphabetized the information for easy reference. Wednesday, 4:45 p.m. EST, the phone rang at my house. “This is ABC. We want to confirm you’re ready. Matt is first.” My friends arrived with food. I ate minuscule bites which could be swallowed the split second the phone rang. The more time passed, the less chance he would call. At 8 p.m., I sighed. The game must be over. Despondent, Matt called later that night. He had used the 50/50 and phoned his father-in-law, but he had answered wrong, reducing his winnings from $125,000 to $32,000. “Let’s pretend I called you. You have 30 seconds. Which president was also speaker of the House? Ford, Wilson, Polk or Andrew Johnson? The 50/50 narrowed the choices to Ford or Polk. What would you say?” “It’s not Ford,” I reasoned. “We barely knew him when he was appointed.” Originally, Matt had guessed Ford, but he remembered that Nixon had had a Democratic Congress. Therefore, the speaker of the House would be a Democrat, not Ford.” When Matt chose “Polk,” Regis injected some doubt. “You’re going against your initial instinct.” Rattled, Matt called his father-in-law, his ardent Republican phone-a-friend. “Definitely Ford,” he said confidently and incorrectly. “Polk,” David whispered in my ear. “Polk was from North Carolina. I think he served in Congress after his presidency.” Compounding Matt’s misery, the next hot-seat contestant won the million. What was the million-dollar question? I was convinced it would be African Geography. “Which insect ‘shorted out’ an early super computer and inspired the term ‘computer bug?’ A. moth, B. roach, C. ant, D. Japanese beetle. “A moth,” David, an engineer, stated blandly. “A moth! How do you know it’s a moth?” I exclaimed, desperate for a resource. “Doesn’t everyone know it’s a moth?” David yawned. That’s when I started to hate the show. As a writer, I used to look and listen for metaphors everywhere. As a game-show crazed potential contestant, I heard million-dollar questions everywhere. I experienced obsession, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” itself was a casualty of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks. After those hijackings, ABC seemed reluctant to fly contestants to New York City. The ratings fell when sports celebrities and supermodels, rather than real people, competed. This paved the way for other reality shows with real people — “Survivor,” “The Apprentice” and “Joe Millionaire.” Before my show’s demise, however, I did savor the satisfaction of one small Pyrrhic victory. Someone else won a million for a geography question: What is the one country that is completely surrounded by one other country? (Answer: Lesotho, formerly Basutoland, surrounded by South Africa.) That, my friends, is my final answer.
Fourth Prize I often realize that in a room full of women, I am the one with the most makeup on. I also realize that I always have makeup on.from two minutes after I step out of the shower in the morning until two seconds before I jump into bed at night. When my daughter was born, my obstetrician told me he had never walked into a room during morning rounds and found a new mother sitting in a hospital bed with a full face of makeup. But that's how he found me. Many boyfriends of my past, including one who became a husband - the first one - complained that they like the natural look better. All those complaints fell on deaf ears, strategically positioned behind a cheek full of blush - Clinique Pink to be exact. Many have questioned my excessive use of face paint. Am I attempting to cover some horrific flaws, some ask? Maybe I've never shared the reason until now. But it's quite simple. During my elementary school years, my mother was, in fact, the Avon Lady. Yep, as in "Ding Dong, Avon calling." I spent hours upon hours playing in her sample bag as a child. I can still feel the texture of the bag, the blue burlap feeling ridged and uneven under my small fingertips. My favorite items in the bag were the little white lipstick samples. They were perfectly pointed, shiny pieces of color that served as lipstick for me, lipstick for my cats, blush for my baby dolls, and crayons for my color books. Sometimes even now at flea markets and antique stores, I see the bottles from different types of Avon scents. My mother's bag smelled of them: Skin So Soft , Somewhere , Occur , Topaz , and others - names that mean nothing to most folks today - but names that have the ability to pick me up where I am and throw me back into second grade. My mother hasn't sold Avon in over forty years. This was a job she could do with my sister and me in tow when we were little; we would sit in customers' homes and try to remain quiet. If we were lucky, there would be children there, which meant toys, or there would be a dog or a cat, and we would be entertained. But after we reached middle school age, my mother went to work in a real estate office, and that's where she's remained, until her retirement this month. Retirement has been a big adjustment for her. We knew it would be. Still reeling from Daddy's death a little over a year ago, and with no job to occupy her time, my mother has become a little depressed. I have encouraged her to hop on a little-old-lady bus to Branson , Missouri , or somewhere comparable, but it has been really difficult to get her off of her couch for the past few weeks. A couple of times I've stopped by to visit late in the afternoon, only to find her still in her pajamas. So today my sister, our husbands, and I visited my mother's house to participate in what we always call a "work day." There are so many adventures at my mother's house that require physical exertion. Last week, a huge tree limb, which could have been mistaken for the entire tree because of its size, fell and landed just in front of the porch. That needed to be taken care of. Also, her refrigerator light burned out, almost simultaneously with her microwave oven light and her dryer light. But my mother's most urgent request was that we help her clean under her kitchen sink and up in her highest cabinets. With her seventy-eighth birthday approaching, she knew that she would be unable to do the bending, kneeling, and climbing necessary to do the cleaning. So the only birthday present she wanted was for us to assist in her post-retirement fall chores. We immediately knew what we had gotten ourselves into when we peered under the sink. One thing we have forgotten: my father was alone in the house while my mother worked, for the entire six years that he was sick. We know that he had an interesting storage system as we have found many of his treasures boxed here and there and wrapped in old newspapers held together with black electrical tape. We didn't know that he was seemingly collecting various types of cleaning fluids: the lack of storage room under my mother's kitchen sink was mostly due to the fact that there were multiple bottles of Windex, Fantastic and Comet accumulating there. We tossed, we arranged, and we re arranged. Finishing that chore, we moved on to the cabinets. The higher ones have always been a problem; it's just impossible to reach them from the floor. Without hesitating, I hoisted myself up to walk on the counter, just as I always did as a child. I immediately noticed that my knees didn't seem quite as interested in pushing me up there as they did when I was sixteen, but I made it, and I turned to see what adventure waited. We hadn't looked at those top shelves in years. What I saw took a while to process. While it seems that I felt puzzled for several minutes; at the same time my brain said one word to me - "Daddy." His handiwork lay before me, I knew, but what I was looking at eluded me. Lying on top of, and around, a couple of random bowls and mugs were twenty or so "packages" of various shapes. Some were wrapped in aluminum foil, and some were wrapped in plastic wrap. Some of the plastic wrap was clear, and some of it was pink. It was a bizarre spectacle, a contemporary art project gone wrong, one of those sculptures made of trash that some famous artist gets thousands of dollars for while we normal people think I could've made that. I said, "Guys, I'm not sure what's up here, but I'm sure I know who's responsible." My mother and my sister spoke together, "Daddy." That word means so much when we discover things. I began handing my sister the wrapped objects one by one. My mother got up from her chair and came to join us. "What's in those?" she asked. My sister began unwrapping the foil, slowly..somehow we were all thinking, If he wrapped them, maybe we shouldn't un wrap.he's not here.maybe we should just leave them. As the first one was unwrapped, we knew what he had done. He had tried to preserve history and safeguard pieces of our beginnings; he had taken precious items, items that people now sell for profit, and placed them in the only wrappings available to a homebound cancer patient. One by one, as I handed, my sister pulled wrappings off of forty-year-old Avon bottles. The actual bottles were not that much of a surprise. What was surprising was my mother's reaction. She was smiling, laughing, almost childlike in her response to each separate surprise. "Oh, that's Cotillion ," she squealed. "That's Here's My Heart ." I watched her smiling for the first time in days and thought that maybe this was her birthday present. Once again, my Daddy had figured out a way to send a message, to show us that he's not really gone. I stood on that counter, unable to move, and watched my sister open the last one. I tried to memorize the moment, to spin between picturing my sick father pulling off bits of aluminum foil and wrapping them around these treasures and this moment when my mother looked almost like the mother I remember, the mother who carried the blue Avon bag. When the wrapping fell off, I gasped silently and said nothing as I looked at the bottle that held the perfume. This one, like many others, had a name that included only one word, but this word was the most meaningful of them all - an old Avon fragrance called Unforgettable . I made my way to the last cabinet and found one aluminum wrapped gift sitting in the middle of some spices. I lifted it out and handed it to my sister. She opened it, laughed, and showed it to me - a box of birthday candles. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. Happy Birthday, Mama.
Honorable Mention my mom's-- and mine--
Honorable Mention She awoke Yet, weighted reality The morning's beauty
Honorable Mention The perfect bra is the Holy Grail for women. From the time we grow enough bosom to need covering up, to the last day we can still do our own shopping, most women are on a constant quest for the Perfect Bra. The Perfect Bra is so comfortable we must rush to the Ladies Room several times a day and pull up our blouses to make sure we are wearing a bra. It has magic shoulder straps that always stay up and never dig in. We can twist ourselves inside out like a Cirque du Soleil acrobat, or take deep breaths that expand our rib cages to their fullest circumference, and the band of the Perfect Bra will never bind or slip. The Perfect Bra is beautiful to look at and touch. Beneath its silky fabric, our skin remains cool and dry, even in the slimiest weather. The Perfect Bra lies seductively beneath the surface of our sheerest blouses, like Bali Hai peeking out through a low-lying cloud, yet never reveals the size and position of our nipples. The cups of the Perfect Bra have miraculous, invisible seams that hold our breasts up to impertinent heights. Is there really such a thing as the Perfect Bra? I want to believe that the Perfect Bra exists-that somewhere out there is a bra that will look pretty, that will make me look great, and will be comfortable to wear. However, I am pragmatic enough to accept a less than perfect bra if only it were comfortable, or at the least, if it didn't make me miserable. One out of three ain't bad. My first step on the quest to for the Perfect Bra began when I was barely twelve years old. My first bra was an omen of failures to come, but I had not the wisdom to understand its portents at the time. I had just come back from a week at summer camp and was wearing a new white T-shirt. My mother looked at me strangely, pulled the neck of my shirt away, and peered down inside. "You need to start wearing a bra," she said. A bra. A small thrill began to simmer inside my narrow ribcage. Grown women wore bras. I was growing up, finally. My mind filled with thoughts of the privileges of adulthood soon to come-makeup, nylon stockings. Voting. In my room, I examined myself carefully in the mirror. Two dots glowed darkly through the T-shirt material, like misplaced punctuation marks, below the red letters "L" and "S" of "Lark's Camp." I pulled the back of the shirt tightly behind me and turned sideways to admire my new breasts, and then became disheartened. I had mosquito-bite welts bigger than the swellings on my chest. A few days later my mother handed me a small pink box with "My First Bra," or "Training Bra," or something equally humiliating printed on it. The smiling blond girl on the cover seemed to be as happy about wearing the beginner's bra as she was about making a cupcake in her Easy Bake Oven. My mother fastened me into the training bra like she had fastened me into little-girls' dresses. "It's too tight," I said. "You'll get used to it." "It's too tight," I insisted. She snapped at me, and I knew better than to pursue it. She had been out of steady work for over a year, and had a short fuse. After thirty minutes, I tested her mood. "It hurts," I whined. "I can't breathe, "Oh, all right," she said. "Take the damn thing off." Before she could work herself into a stream of profanity, I whipped off my shirt and the bra. Angry red lines ringed my chest in exact outlines of the training bra. I poked a finger in the rut chiseled into my flesh. My mother found a tape measure and flung it around me. At almost-twelve, I was several inches taller than she, and obviously a few inches wider than the 28-inch chest size marked on the bra box. I enjoyed a few more braless days of life until she brought home a bra extender. If the first bra was a symbol of womanhood, the bra extender symbolized defeat in my quest for the Perfect Bra. Years later, I would realize that my first bra probably cost as much as three packs of cigarettes did, and at that time, my mother needed a smoke more than I needed a bra. I have finally come to appreciate my mother's own quest for the Perfect Bra. She used to swear at a lot of things, but she swore by Peter Pan bras. Beneath her circa 1959 hems, which she would not shorten even though much older women were running around in miniskirts, she wore lace frothed panties and slinky half-slips in any color but white, and beneath the frilly lingerie she wore white, utilitarian Peter Pan bras. While most women were wearing bras that honed their breasts into sharp points like the tip of an Atlas rocket, my mother's silhouette was softly rounded. When the Peter Pan bras wore out and she could no longer travel to cities that sold them, she resigned herself to buying more commonly available brands. No matter how many hours of comfort their advertisements promised, all other brands of brassieres became "son-of-a-bitching things" that my mother would divest herself of, the moment she came home from work. Watching her, I learned the art of reaching up under a shirt and unlatching a bra. Presto, chango. Shimmy, shimmy, squirm. Pull the bra out of a sleeve like a magician pulling a rope of scarves from a black hat. This trick never fails to amaze men, who usually learn that if they keep pawing long enough at a bra snap, a woman will give in and undo it herself rather than risk having a good bra stretched out. I didn't develop much worth training, but at least outgrew the training bra before starting junior high gym classes. In the girls' locker room, I would glance at other girls from the corners of my eyes, while they checked me out from the corners of theirs. I envied the girls with the red streaks blistering their shoulders where the weight of their breasts pulled the straps deep into the flesh. I also envied the petite girls with pretty bras in sherbet colors, proof that their families could afford to go shopping in the cities. We all stole glances at the famous eighth grader who was built like the proverbial brick outhouse. While the boys talked about her cleavage, we girls talked about the big safety pin holding up one of her bra straps. Looking back from all these years, I now realize she was just another vanquished seeker who had failed in her quest for the Perfect Bra and had clung to the last shreds of comfort. In those dark ages before the Feminist Movement, I came to believe that there was something wrong with me because I didn't grow a set of C cups. Every August, my grandmother bought me two new bras from the one department store in town that didn't also sell hardware. The bras came in standard sizes. I did not. The padded cups offered bright hopes for a few weeks, and then began to fold and collapse in reproof. By the time I entered college, either I fit into bras better or the bra styles available fit me better. I came the closest then to finding the Perfect Bra as I ever would in my life. Unfortunately, it was a bra slip, and could only be worn under dresses and skirts. Around the same time, I became friends with another freshman woman who was so well endowed that she had to buy her bras at a specialty corset shop in downtown Chicago . While her friends were waltzing into upscale department stores and buying B cups in psychedelic prints, she was being tape measured in a store that sold full-length girdles that practically stood up on their own. Just one of her under-wired, super-support bras cost more than I had made in an entire week at my summer job, working in a factory for $1.50 minimum wage. We envied each other. In the decades since, there have been brief moments when my hormones and weight were just right, when the planets in my horoscope aligned perfectly, and I found the nearly perfect bra. I would buy two or three of them at a time, all the same style and size. I would launder them in their own special mesh bag, and drape them carefully over a rack to delicately dry in the air. I would do all this, knowing that when the fabric finally wore away to tissue paper thinness, and the underwires bent into unnatural shapes and began to poke angry red scabs into my underarms, that I would never again find that particular bra style and size in any store, anywhere, ever again. Then I would take up the quest again and go bra shopping. From beneath the liner of my underwear drawer, I take out three different magazine clippings of "How to Determine Your Bra Size," and end up with three different measurements. I search the newspaper for announcements of the yearly visit by a professional fitter from one of the major brassiere companies. She only comes to pricey department stores forty miles away in the next county, on weekdays, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. A visit to the bra fitter means using a half day of precious vacation time. Apparently, only well-to-do women who don't have to work for a living can see the bra fitter. Resigned to the inevitable, I go bra shopping on a Wednesday evening, hoping for a little help from an underpaid department store clerk who must also cover infants clothing. I pick out five or six bras in various brands, hoping that a scatter-shot approach might hit one good one. They are all the same size, but none of them fit the same. I finally find something that might work. Not perfect, but maybe not bad. Last year, when I last went on the quest, the bra styles all had molded cups that made my breasts stand up at attention like they did twenty-five years ago. I looked great in sweaters-for one week. After the first washing, the first tiny ripple in the foam cup began to form, like a fissure cracking the earth's crust before an earthquake. I thumb pressed the wrinkle out, working the foam between the fabric linings. The molded cups dimpled and dented, yet still stood up high enough to catch in the drawer when I closed it. The next week, the straps began to slip down, and I went back to the one old bra that I had kept, "just in case." Recently, a morning program featured a segment on fitting bras. The perky announcers kept promising, "still to come," that they would show women how to buy the Perfect Bra. I waited through all the intervening stories of political scandals and world unrest for two professional bra fitters to come on and say that women don't know how to buy a bra in their correct size. Models wore before-and-after bras while the experts pointed out much better the "after" bra fit. No matter how much I yelled at the screen, however, the experts did not explain how to determine your correct size or where to find the Perfect Bra. I want to believe that the Perfect Bra exists, but if it does, then I must admit that I am unworthy to find it. If it does not exist, then I must accept a lifetime of misery. As the search for the Holy Grail was a personal quest for meaning by the mythic knights of old, so is the search for the Perfect Bra a personal quest for every woman.
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Carolina Woman ® - The Magazine for Women in the Triangle
Copyright 2006, Carolina Woman Inc. All rights reserved.
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