Style in the Face of Adversity

Monday, October 19, 2009

I’ve broken my shoulder. I’d like to say that it happened in an exotic way -- as though I’d sacrificed my wellbeing while transporting endangered gorillas to safety; or in a way that suggested a kind of reckless abandon – dropped by helicopter to virgin slopes. Even the suggestion of rough sex would play better than the truth of stumbling in the kitchen with the cuff of my sleeve twisted in a drawer pull that pulled opened the drawer with a velocity that knocked me off my feet and yanked my shoulder out of its happy little housing. This was a fall, both too domestic and too freakish at the same time, to have any status.

The CAT scan indicated an alignment so lucky I didn’t need a knife, but a terrible sling was offered in its place. A blue so shallow as to already suggest just how nasty it would be once washed, had a Velcro band that cut into my neck. And this was something I had to promise wearing every day. Especially in public.

Amy Attas understood that my problem went far beyond pain. She’d had a serious run in with a cat in the line of duty, as New York’s chicest veterinarian, that took her hand and wrist out of commission for more than a little time. And she’d also been instructed to wear the dreaded sling. Nothing doing, she thought. And she made an adjustment and suggested the same to me. Hermes.

I have Hermes scarves from the late nineteen sixties, when my parents would bring them back from trips to Europe for me. I have the first I bought in Paris in my twenties and on my business trips to the offices of Pierre Balmain all through the seventies and eighties. I have the scarves Frank has bought me as he dashes through airports on his way home. I have Hermes scarves by the dozens. I have slings for every possible outfit!

And its fun to address to them in this new way. Fun to go back to my stash of scarves and find old friends in the stacks. And I almost don’t mind the fact that my arm aches and that I can’t close the car door or pick up a magazine with my right hand. Almost. But I’ve put a cheerful, stylish face on the problem – and that’s almost better than not having had a problem to conquer.

The wonderful Donna Mehalko has contributed a little sketch of me in my style overcoming adversity. Note the smile. It’s not a grimace.