The first time I had to look for a job that didn't involve babysitting kids or coaching kids or camp counseling kids, it was 1994 and Michael and I had just moved to Oregon. I'd recently graduated from college with a fine art's degree in papermaking and since Michael had just started graduate school in sculpture, it was a toss up as to who was going to make the money in the family. He was in school all day so I gave breadwinner a shot. Before moving to Oregon, I'd been babysitting for a family that I absolutely adored and had no experience doing anything else. I didn't know what in the world I was going to do to make money and I don't think I even had a resumé. I did have a picture of my wedding dress (which I'd made a few months earlier) and I thought maybe I could use it to get a job in fashion (this tells a lot about me and my way of thinking, I'm afraid).
I walked around downtown Eugene trying to find businesses that looked interesting and I found a cute little dressmaker's shop. I walked in and said hi to the 80-year-old woman at the counter and asked her if I could work there. I showed her the picture of my wedding dress and she said that I didn't sound like I was from Oregon but it looked like I had some basic sewing skills so she hired me. I didn't even know what she was hiring me to do but she told me she'd pay me $5 an hour to do it. When I commented on how low that was (you bet I did!) she said, This isn't Chicago, ya know. I took the job anyway because what else could I do? She told me to be there Monday morning at 8:00 am and that I had to wear a skirt, that everybody wore skirts there. I thought the skirt thing was really weird but this was during my long calico dress phase so I didn't care.
I was so excited to start work that Monday. It was going to be the fabulous start to my illustrious fashion career! I just knew it! You guys, it so, so wasn't. It only lasted two months but it honestly felt like 14 years. It was the most depressing work I've ever done. Yes, I knew how to sew my own clothes and I even liked sewing my own clothes but that was tailoring. Tailoring is awful. Becoming a tailor because you like clothes is like becoming a t.v. repairman because you like to watch t.v. They are two vastly different activities and one is vastly more enjoyable than the other.
Instead of making dresses, I was taking in waistbands of pleated trousers—trousers that were lined and had cuffs and pockets and a myriad of other things I had to pay attention to as I cut apart someone's beloved pair of pants. I also had to do it in such a way that you couldn't tell I'd done anything at all. The worst was taking in shoulders with shoulder pads. Ugh, I'm scowling just thinking about it. And to add insult to injury, the 80-year-old woman who owned the shop grew to hate me about as much as—or possibly more than—I grew to hate her. I don't know why she hired me. She made fun of the things I wore and asked me if I looked at myself in the mirror before I left the house. She criticized the things I said (which, trust me, wasn't much) and a co-worker told me that she harped to the other ladies about my work when I wasn't there. Why I didn't quit I'll never know, I would later quit far better jobs that aggravated me far less.
I worked at the dress shop from October through December (when she finally fired me) and on one of those chilly, rainy fall mornings, I said to the ladies, It sure does rain a lot here, doesn't it? They laughed and said that it was going to rain until next June. WHAT?! I exclaimed. They asked me why I hadn't bothered to find out what the weather was like before I moved here. A totally valid question, yes, but this was before Google and Wunderground and I had never met anyone who had even been to Oregon let alone lived here and I just assumed it had regular seasons like the rest of the world (my world). I asked Michael if he'd heard about all of this rain business and he said, Yeah, I think I heard someone mention it before.
Can I be honest about something here for a second? Okay, then, let me tell you this: I didn't believe them. I didn't believe the people who told me that it rained here. Ya know, the people who had grown up here, the people who had been here for 50 years or more. I thought they were messing with me. Or, I thought that the rain that had soaked the valley for decades was just a fluke, and that the real weather (my kind of weather) was going to be starting that year—the very year we arrived! Lucky for us!
Interesting logic, no?
So, the first autumn we spent in Oregon, it rained and rained and rained. And I didn't own a raincoat. I did not have a raincoat in my possession, not one. No rain boots, no umbrella, no nothing. I had a wool pea coat that I got from the Army-Navy surplus store on Madison Street and I had a pair of black Mary Jane's that I think were Alicia's from college. I remember being so mad that I had to buy a raincoat for $14.99 (almost three hours worth of work!) from Fred Meyer. I remember wearing my new raincoat, standing in the rain outside the dress shop one night waiting for Michael to pick me up, and trying to imagine living in a place like this and asking myself if I could do it.
Of course, hundreds of inches of rain have come and gone so I guess I've answered my own question. I now own a heavy raincoat and a light raincoat, a sporty raincoat, a dressy raincoat, and an everything-in-between raincoat. I have two pairs of rain boots, two pairs of wet weather shoes, a pair of rain pants, and three different umbrellas. And I guess I have to admit now that those people were right, otherwise why would I have all of this stuff?
Now, here's the crazy thing. I don't know why I do this but every October (especially when we're having beautiful weather like we've had this October), a tiny, tiny part of me believes again that those people are wrong. I fool myself into thinking that maybe this year will be the year that it doesn't rain, that the rain won't come. I am never, ever right about this, of course, and boy howdy, has the rain been coming down.
It sure is pretty here though…
ANY
