Again

Again

“I’m too old to start again.” Standing at the mirror, a full length one at that, Adele agreed with her reflection.“So, we won’t. We’ll start something much bigger. Just you and I.” Adele Marie Wilmington had been a successful business woman. Retirement came to her with a surprise. She, and her staff, thought she would be carried out the door before she would accept retirement. The clothing design company had been her baby. From her mother’s kitchen table designing ball gowns for paper dolls to school fashion shows and on to a Master’s Degree in Fashion Design, she never stopped looking at clothes and fabrics. Often quoted with her directive to staff: “You can’t have one without the other. Fabric makes the garment and the garment makes the fabric.” There was one day when she knew she was done with the whole business. She had a special love for natural fabrics: real cotton, real wool, real silk. Business models had made it necessary that she bowed to the synthetic world of fabric. So much so that even business felt false and synthetic. When she heard herself being called a legend, and ‘the grand dame of fashion’, at first she was proud but slowly she heard it in a different light. For some she’d been put on a pedestal, for others……well, she saw the smirks, overheard one or two snide comments about ‘too old’. Most of her contemporaries had either retired to Florida or some island in the Caribbean. Unfortunately she’d had to attend too many funerals. The C.E.O.’s she dealt with were young enough to be her children and even one her granddaughter. The day she retired, she came out of her office above the cutting room floor and called for silence. A very large room, it took the supervisors time to rush around and have all scissors and measuring tapes put down. The models, in various states of undress or draped in Adele’s cherished fabrics, impatiently did as they were told. She spoke into a microphone “I have an announcement to make, but first I want to thank everyone for your hard work. I know some of you have been here since I began this company. Your leadership bringing everyone else on board has been invaluable. For everyone else who has joined us, you have made this company what it has become. My dream.” A catch in her throat, she hesitated, dabbed her eyes with her ever present delicate cotton handkerchief. Continuing she said “Today, I am retiring effective 5pm. I will no longer be in the office but will work from home until I decide who should take over from me. My secretary, Annie Fitzgerald, will be in charge along with the floor supervisors.” A gasp rose from the floor in unison. Then the murmurs about who and what and why today began. Adele clapped her hands. “Everyone, please, return to your work. My office door will be open for anyone that has questions or concerns.” Her secretary had been informed that morning of an ‘announcement’ and had a light lunch and coffee ready for her employer. Adele’s office, at the level of a second floor suite, had a small balcony where she retired to after the tension of her bold action. There, looking out over a city park, she breathed deeply of the air that felt fresher, even with any traffic fumes. Her shoulders felt lighter. She hugged herself, preventing herself from cheering to the people below, like Scrooge on Christmas morning.

Now here she was at home, her shocking white hair pulled back in her signature bun, wearing a long, flowing white silk caftan, gold slippers showing her pedicured toes. “What big thing are we going to do?” She and her reflection laughed out loud. “We’re going shopping for crayons and paper dolls. If I have to go to Toronto, Vancouver, Paris or New York City to find just the right ones, that’s what we’ll do. I have to find myself all over again because none of us are ever too old for that.”

“It’s never too late to go out and get that feeling back.”

~ Loretta Switt