skirt! Greenville November 2011

C o nve r s at i o n s

with Computers

Cover copy by Nikki Hardin, Art by Nuno Da Costa

You Were Calling.

“Can we talk?”

Joan Rivers

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Nov

embe

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theConversation issue

Women make more than 80% of all purchasing

decisions.

Women spend almost 2 of every 3

healthcare dollars.

Women control 2/3

of the nation’s disposable income.

Women influence 80%of all car sales.

Women make more than 85% of all purchasing

decisions.

Women spend almost 2 of every 3

healthcare dollars.

Women control 2/3

of the nation’s disposable income.

Women influence 80%of all car sales.

Essays

Chopped Liver

Risa Nye ........................................................................................... 10

Talking to Myself

Danita Berg .................................................................................... 13

Profile: Rhonda Rawling

Newsworthy ................................................................................. 20

Profile: Deb Sofield

Well Spoken .................................................................................. 22

Profile: Myra Ruiz

Tube Talk .......................................................................................... 24

Mincing Words

Stephanie Hunt .......................................................................... 28

Features

From the Publisher and Editor .............................................. 6

Calendar ............................................................................................. 7

Skirt of the Month........................................................................ 8

F-Word ................................................................................................ 9

skirt! loves .................................................................................... 14

Skirting Around Town .............................................................. 17

SPOTLIGHT: A Shade of Red ......................................................18

He’s So Original with John Oliver......................................26

Seeing Spots .................................................................................. 31

Meet... Caroline Robertson .................................................. 32

Browse .............................................................................................. 33

Planet Nikki .................................................................................... 34

November Survival Guide ................................................... 35

skirt! is all about women...

their work, play, families,

creativity, style, health and

wealth, bodies and souls.

skirt! is an attitude...spirited,

independent, outspoken,

serious, playful and irreverent,

sometimes controversial,

always passionate.

Publisher

Nikki Hardin [email protected]

National Art Director

Caitilin McPhillips [email protected]

National Editor

Margaret Pilarski [email protected]

Greenville Editor

Sheril Bennett Turner [email protected]

Sales ExecutivesDenise Nelson864.551.7295

[email protected]

Sarah Page864.356.2903

[email protected]

Graphic Designers

Shelli H. Rutland Shearer Wludyka

Photographers

John Fowler 864.380.9332

promoimaging.com

Sheril Bennett Turner

Sales: 864.551.7295 FAX: 864.260.1350

skirt! is published monthly and distributed free throughout

the greater Greenville area. skirt! reserves the right torefuse to sell space for any

advertisement the staffdeems inappropriate for

the publication. Unsolicitedmanuscripts must be

accompanied by a self-addressed,stamped envelope.

Letters to the editor arewelcome, but may be edited

due to space limitations. Pressreleases must be received

by the 1st of the month forthe following month’s issue.

All content of this magazine,including without limitation the

design, advertisements, art,photos and editorial content,

as well as the selection,coordination and arrangement

thereof, is Copyright © 2011,Morris Publishing Group,

LLC. All Rights Reserved. Noportion of this magazine may

be copied or reprinted withoutthe express written permission

of the publisher. SKIRT!® is aregistered trademark of Morris

Publishing Group, LLC.

Calendar SubmissionsSend information or mail to [email protected], or mail to skirt! Greenville, 1708-C Augusta St. #335 Greenville, SC 29605.

Letters to the EditorAll letters must include the writer’s name and city/state.

Writers & ArtistsOur guidelines are available online at skirt.com. Submit artwork or essays via e-mail to [email protected].


November 2011

T h e C o n v e r s a t i on

I ss

ue

Some of the most important

conversations we have in life are the ones we hold

with ourselves.


From the Publisher

Sheril [email protected]

From the Editor

I was the child who had to write 1,000 times on the blackboard, “I will not talk in class.” Not much

has changed since I was a kid, except now I can talk as much as I want because I get paid to talk, plus

I don’t have to write on a blackboard anymore. This month for The Conversation Issue, we feature

some really talented talkers, those who also make a living speaking, bantering, chatting, conversing

and engaging in public tête-à-têtes. Some say conversation is a lost art, but as the author Robert C.

Gallagher once said, “Anyone who thinks the art of conversation is dead ought to tell a child to go to

bed.” Enjoy the crisp November weather, Thanksgiving dinner, and this issue of skirt!.

Nikki [email protected]

theConversation issue

Blah blah blah

US!VISIT

The United Skirts of America

The United Skirts of

America was founded

on the blood, sweat

and estrogen of our

foremothers, who

won us the freedom

to choose...to break

The Rules, to wear

combat boots or high

heels, to run for office

or run a marathon,

to form our own

rock groups instead

of being groupies, to

shatter Glass Ceilings

and Glass Slippers, to

shoot hoops instead

of settling for hoop

skirts. The ones who

came before us made

it possible for our

daughters to dream

bigger, to have the

chance to grow up to

be President and turn

the Oval Office into

the Ovary Office. In

the United Skirts of

America, every day is

Independence Day!

Cover ArtistNuno Da Costa

Nuno Da Costa is a London-

based, self-taught illustrator spe-

cializing in fashion and beauty

imagery. Nuno’s illustrations fall

mainly in two categories, color

and black and white brush

work but always retain their

up-to-the-minute sense of style.

His illustrations are hand-drawn

and painted with water colors

and gouache and then scanned,

retouched and painted in Pho-

toshop. Having worked with

top fashion creatives, Nuno’s

illustrations have been seen

in Vogue, Wonderland and The

Daily Telegraph. Nuno was also

appointed as exclusive fashion

illustrator to designer Melissa

Odabash on her first Ready to

Wear collection.

I believe with all the fervor of a Luddite that technology has eroded our ability

to connect face to face, and yet I am as addicted to my iPhone as anyone I

know. Particularly to texting, in which nothing very meaningful or lengthy

can be said. It’s the quickie, the one-night stand of conversation. Short and

sweet, easily erased from memory. Like the instant gratification of downloading

books to my Kindle, texting provides instant communication, a way to stay

in touch and yet be private and untouchable at the same time. Even better is

being able to abbreviate interaction by tapping out messages in Future Speak,

in which complete sentences, articles, capitalization and punctuation have been

jettisoned in favor of 21st century hieroglyphics (u r 1NAM). As an introvert

who tends to freeze up in difficult conversations or confrontations, texting is

just 2G2BT. Face to face, I can’t tap out a shorthand for “I’m falling in love with

you and it scares me,” or “You have hurt me so deeply I want to drive a nail in

your head,” so I often swallow my words rather than reveal too much. But no

matter how difficult it can be for me to get naked in a conversation, I know it’s

better than retreating to a kind of impassive Morse Code to signal an emotional

shootout at the O.K. Corral. I miss the whole-body vibration of involvement, the

exhilaration of a back-and-forth volley that comes with in-person conversation.

Without the possibility of intensity or emphasis, I find myself resorting to the

dreaded multiple exclamation marks in email simply to signal my availability

for a lunch date or schedule a meeting. I mourn the loss of tone of voice and

the nagging feeling that email and texting are chipping away at my ability to

write true sentences. But I’ll worry about all that L8R; in the meantime, I need

to upgrade to the 4S iPhone that makes texting even easier.


14-15. Part of The American Place Theatre’s Litera-ture to Life Series, The Secret Life of Bees by author Sue Monk Kidd is inspirational. peacecenter.org

19-1/1. 100 acres magically decorated with millions of twinkling lights, plus herds of live animals and more at Hol-lywild Animal Park’s Annual Holiday Lights Safari Benefit. hollywild.com

24-12/30. ‘Tis the season to enjoy a magical holiday ex-perience as you drive through dozens of light displays and visit Winter Wonderland with Santa himself at Roper Mountain Holiday Lights. ropermountain holidaylights.com

Relay Time Ho,Ho,HoTradition!A Must!

Y’all Come

Fun Run

5-13. Adapted from traditional folktale, Wiley takes a journey to outsmart the ter-rible Hairy Man and realizes his greatest potential in Wiley and the Hairy Man! scchildrenstheatre.org

3-12. Foxfire is the homespun story of an elderly couple in the Appalachian Mountains near Greenville and fea-tures live bluegrass music. greenville littletheatre.com

7-8. The Griffin Theatre Company Production’s Letters Home puts the war front and center by bringing to life actual letters written by soldiers currently serving. peacecenter.org

10-13. Transport in time to an enchant-ing Victorian Holi-day Marketplace at the 30th Annual Dickens Christmas Show & Festivals in Myrtle Beach. dickenschristma sshow.com

11. An evening of Broadway, from Gershwin to Sondheim, with the winner of four Tony Awards and star of TV’s Private Practice, Audra McDonald. peacecenter.org

11. Don’t miss Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, with special guest Frankie Ballard. bilocenter.com

Road TripFor the Kids Heartfelt

Classic

Best of Broadway

International Calendar Awareness Month • National Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention Month • National Write a Business Plan Month • National Tie Month

Winter Squash Month • Safe Toys and Gifts Month • Worldwide Food Service Safety Month • Hi Neighbor Month • National Stress Free Family Holiday Month

Come enjoy an old-fashioned, fun-filled weekend as 25 hot air balloons take to the air at Balloons over Ander-son Hot Air Balloon Festival! balloonsoveranderson.org

Adventure

23-27Young Zoé is bored; her parents ignore her. Seek-ing to fill the void of her existence, she slides into an imaginary world—Quidam as told by Cirque du Soleil. bilocenter.com

22Don’t miss the Big Brothers Big Sisters Annual Clem-son/Carolina Pep Rally at the Embassy Suites in Green-ville. Proceeds will benefit the one-to-one mentoring organization. bbbsupstate.com

4-6

1-6. Tony Award nominee Cathy Rigby takes flight in an all-new produc-tion of Peter Pan! peacecenter.org

12. The Caine Hal-ter Lungs4Life 5K features a Free 1/4 Mile Children’s Fun Run for children 6 and under, a 1 Mile Fun Walk and a 5K Run/Walk. lungs4life5k.com

19. The HOPE Relay is a run-ning and walking adventure cre-ated to support the programs of Project HOPE Foundation. projecthopesc.org/hope-relay


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f-word[ Feminism Free-For-All ]

It’s been 91 years since

women won the right to

vote across the coun-

try, and yet after nearly

a century, women still

make up only 17% of

Congress and 23% of

state legislatures. And

the numbers are falling—

in 2011, the number of

women in state legisla-

tures fell to its lowest

level since 2007.

Who says feminists don’t have a sense of humor? We

can’t stop laughing at feministryangosling.tumblr.com

and in the process, laughing at ourselves.

The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to three women who are working for peace and women’s rights in Liberia and Yemen: Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni protest leader Tawakkul Karman. Despite the dangers (authorities in male-dom-inated Yemeni society tried to silence Karman by sending threats and even vowed to kill her and kidnap her children and throw them from a mountain), these women kept their eyes on the prize and persevered.

Brianna Amat was not only the first girl to make the Pinckney Community High School varsity football team at her high school in Michi-gan, but she was also voted homecoming queen within an hour of making a winning field goal against a rival team on the same night. Instead of wearing a dress like the other girls in the homecoming court, Brianna was wearing her No. 12 uniform when the tiara was placed on her head at halftime.

Marcia Anderson was promoted from brigadier

general to major general, becoming the first

African-American woman given a second star

as a general in the U.S. Army. Her most recent

post was as deputy commanding general of the

Human Resources Command at Fort Knox. At her

promotion ceremony, Lt. Gen. Benjamin Freakley,

Fort Knox Commander, told Anderson she is “a

role model, not only to me and those that worked

with you, but to countless soldiers.”

Rape

Football QueenFreedom Fighters

Feminist Fellow

Female Forces


My parents had dragged me to a Bar Mitzvah in San Francisco—the kid was the son of a family friend and I was not given a choice about attending. As a sophisticate of 17, I had no interest whatsoever in being there. When the cer-emony ended, I separated myself from my parents as soon as I could, dodging

past the bejeweled and well-coiffed women, the balding middle-aged men, and the packs of 13-year-olds who jockeyed for position in front of the mounds of chopped liver and towering platters of cookies. I piled a few items on my plate and headed toward the far reaches of the room so I could sit alone and wallow in my adolescent angst.

An elderly lady, balancing a cane and a plate of goodies, had the same idea, and sought a chair next to mine. Great, I thought; now I am stuck talking to a total stranger who is also older than God. Maybe she won’t bother me.

But no, she struck up a conversation, beginning with all the usual questions about school and my interests. There is never a good answer to the “How’s school?” question when you are a teenager. Which day do you mean? Which hour? Whatever I said seemed to satisfy her, so I turned my attention to my plate, trying to decide whether to eat the little bagel first or start with the lemon bar.

I stuffed the lemon bar in my mouth and braced myself for the next inevi-table question from the old busybody. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

Oh, boy, did I ever. And he was part of my misery. For some reason, I opened up to her about this guy who either made me swoon with desire or infuriated me, with not too much middle ground. So I told her about this boy I thought I was in love with. I told her about the movie dates where he would buy his ticket and then wait, avoiding eye contact, while I fished around in my purse for money to buy my own. I told her about the way he would pull up in his car and sit there in the street with the engine running and wait for me to come out. I told her about the other girls I knew he was seeing behind my back. I told her that he could be very romantic, but that he usually needed a couple of drinks first. I told her that he was tender and sweet in private, but totally ignored me in public, especially around his

friends. I told her how he called me a million times while I was babysitting once and the kids must have told their mother because she never asked me to babysit again. I felt bad about that. I told her that he made me laugh, when he wasn’t making me cry.

And I also told her that there was this other guy, a friend. He was a good listener, laughed at my jokes, and he had good manners. He and I went to a movie together, just as friends, I pointed out, and he came to the door when he picked me up and he paid for my ticket even though he didn’t have to re-ally, and he didn’t mind when I cried through the whole thing, including the credits.

And then I talked about my boyfriend’s eyes and his hair and his life story, and maybe I tried to explain what was so irresistible about him, leaving out the part about how I loved the way he kissed but how he wouldn’t hold my hand. I didn’t talk to her about things we did in the dark, how his hands traced my body’s curves, exploring every inch. She wouldn’t have understood anything about it. Probably never felt that way herself, or was too old to re-member if she had.

“He wrote poetry for me,” I explained. I was helpless to resist him when he was around. Romantic, poetic, Irish, exuberant, quick with quips and snap-py rejoinders.

“Sounds like he’s got the gift of gab,” she said, like it wasn’t such a great thing.

After listening as I chattered some more about the boy I thought I loved, she held up her hand, leaned over and looked right into my eyes. Her mouth was tight, and her lips formed a thin line.

“You should never take a back seat to anyone,” she said. “You don’t let people treat you that way. Not a boy, not anyone.” Her index finger pointed at me. “You know what I mean?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. My family wasn’t too big on fostering self-esteem, and I had never thought about how I might deserve to be treated.

She leaned back in her chair and took a thoughtful bite of rugeleh. “That other boy, the one who took you to the movie, he sounds like a better bet. Stick with him.”

I broke up with my boyfriend soon after my conversation with the wise old woman. The breakup was painful, dramatic and final. We went our separate ways. There was one awkward encounter some years later. It just made me sad to see him.

As for me, I got over feeling like chopped liver. And I decided to stick with that other boy.

Risa Nye

Risa Nye lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California. That other boy has been her husband for 38 years.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”


The Conversation

Issue

More HUGS!

What’s one thing

I could change about my life today?


What’s the best thing

that happened to me today?

The Conversation

Issue


Danita Berg is an assistant professor of writing at Oklahoma City University, where she also directs the Red Earth Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Her work has been published in journals such as Redivider, Southern Women’s Review, Quay: A Journal of the Arts, Black Market Review, and The Houston Literary Review,

among others, as well as the non-fiction collections Press Pause Moments: Essays about Life Transitions by Women Writers and Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: An Oklahoma Writing Anthology.

This is supposed to be relaxing. I’m allow-ing this woman to press her fingers into my face. She’s criticizing the parts of it I already overanalyzed in the bathroom mirror this morning before plastering my features with foundation and spackle and hoping for the best. “Your skin is dry,” she tells me. “You need to take care of your-self.” I squirm under her touch. Funny, I thought I was taking care of myself. Nev-ertheless, my facade seems to be cracking.

“You have circles under your eyes. And spider veins in your eyelids. The sun has darkened areas on your forehead and cheekbones. You need …” She begins listing the various creams and lotions I should purchase from her to stave off the inevitable. A part of me scoffs; the other part wishes I had a suitcase of small bills. She’s right; I need.

I am getting older. I am not old—39 is not old—but yes, my face teeters on the crevice of cave-in. I see little puckers on my jaw line where the skin is threatening to sag. I’ve grown two pronounced wrinkles above my nose, a devil’s horn crease that announces both that I’m nearsighted and have led a somewhat naughty life. A deep line runs up my right cheek because I’ve dared to sleep on it for almost four decades.

I’m not vain; at least, I didn’t think I was. My face and I have an under-standing: it remains pleasant enough to keep people from screaming as they encounter me on the sidewalk, and I continue to sport it. But now my face is betraying me, for no other reason than I have continued to wear it out. If I look at my face too closely, I pull my cheeks towards my temples and wonder if anyone would notice if I Scotch taped them there, into my hairline. When I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror, I slump down until I can only see my eyes. My eyes are young, reflective of who’s still inside.

The woman is wiping something off my face that she slathered on just a minute before. “You know what extractions are, yes?” she asks. I do. The woman begins pushing and shoving at my skin again. God knows what is coming out, what she’s witnessing. I’m exposed to her, sans makeup, and now she’s probing deeper. If she pushes hard enough she might excavate my secrets: my regrets, my affairs, my divorce. I have problem areas. I have clogged pores. If only a good skin cream could cure them all.

On the way home from the facialist I stop at the drugstore for milk and beer. In a clearance cart I spot an anti-aging cream on sale for 75 percent off.

I hide it behind my milk carton, the way I might have hidden tampons or con-doms twenty years ago, and just as guiltily put the cream on the counter. The checkout rack offers magazines featuring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Halle Berry—all older than me, all better looking and far less in need of airbrushing—and I begin to see the appeal of Botox and fillers and plastic sur-gery. These women are my competition in some sort of race for which I don’t remember signing up. But they are aging too and they are doing it better than me. They seem happier or at least less paunchy. Somehow they have managed to not only stop the clock but also to twist its hands firmly backwards. Why do they get to look better with age while my face clearly shows its fissures?

I’m supposed to embrace my aging, Oprah tells me, wear Chico’s clothes, learn to love jazz music and stop going to rock concerts, where I’ll embarrass my students if we run into each other holding cheap beers in plastic cups. Obligingly I’ve begun to wear the fashions of a woman who would embar-rass herself in low-slung jeans, but still my heart clings to the hard-thumping music, the concert T-shirts that my soul requires. It is not ready to be soothed with tasteful, ass-hiding pants and a more modest neckline.

My friend Lisa, a six-foot-something thin blonde we should hate for being hotter than us at age 46 than we were in our 20s, points to her neck. She’s growing a wattle, she declares. I detect nothing. We should hate her more for that, but I get it. The skin under my own neck feels heavier, like a pendulum.

It’s not so much that we mind our aging. It’s our fallibility. We are march-ing on, like it or not, and our skin hangs looser from wear and tear. Lisa, who teaches high school, marvels at how her students can wear their skins so tightly. How can they move, she asks, when they are so tightly bound?

For me, time unwinds softly. I am almost halfway through my life. Perhaps I am further through it than I know. I have not found everlasting love. People I have loved have left me and there was not a thing I could do to stop them. I’ve lost homes to divorce and job loss, pets to age and diseases, friends and lovers to distance and misunderstandings. With every debacle my face shows a bit more deterioration for continuing to care, for wanting something secure despite a slow, increasing terror about giving someone or something else a chance. Surely an expensive cream from CVS will buy me a bit more time so I can continue to search.

My happiness, my security, is out there somewhere, if I can just hold my-self together tightly enough, long enough, for it to find me back. Until then, my friends and I wear our aging faces as we teach the generations younger than us—tauter, more hopeful, less burdened—and we hold each other and continue to hope.

The checkout rack offers magazines featuring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Halle Berry—all older than me, all better looking and far less in need of airbrushing—

and I begin to see the appeal of Botox and fillers and plastic surgery. These women are my competition in some sort of race

for which I don’t remember signing up

Danita Berg


WeLove!

Earrings by Marie-Hélène De Taillac

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Bula Bandito BeanieDick’s Sporting Goods 1125 Woodruff Rd. Greenville 864.284.6199

SherilEditor

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Nikkiskirt! Publisher

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DeniseSales Executive


How long has it been since I’ve learned something

new?

The Conversation

Issue


No One

Take Your Life in Your Own Hands

a terrible thing:

to blame.

WHAT HAPPENS?

Erica Jong

quotes worth tweeting & re-tweeting start a 140-character conversation


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Rhonda Rawlings | Newsworthy Although this New York native and Temple University graduate had worked behind the scenes on a variety of movies and TV programs

such as The Chris Rock Show, what Rhonda really longed for was a job front and center in news. Her wish was granted when she moved to South Carolina

and was offered the position of News and Community Affairs Director for 107.3 Jamz and Hot 98.1. “I’m living proof that is never too late to start doing

what you love!” says this talented gal who not only writes and reports the news for the Tom Joyner Morning Show and produces TJMS in the Upstate,

but is the host of Pause For the Cause, an hour long Sunday morning show. “Someday I would love to host a television

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Deb Sofield | Well Spoken“I realized at a young age that if you could sway the masses you could do anything, from politics to preaching,” says Deb with a laugh.

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Myra Ruiz | Tube TalkYou know her as the weekend anchor of WYFF News 4 Today, as well as for her spot-on reporting in the field. Blessed with camera-ready

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Nations, thereby putting her global studies and print journalism majors to use. Little did she know that a chance meeting with a TV photographer at a

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her lifelong love of travel with her work appeals to Myra. “Someday I’d like to focus on other parts of the world and make people really care.

I love immersing myself in other cultures, so I’d say social anthropology is something that really interests me.”


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John Oliver Exudes Eloquence.Next time you hear a sexy male voice coming from your radio or television, it could just well be Greenville’s own silver-tongued John Oliver,

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since the age of 16 when he started behind the mic at an AM station in his hometown of Tryon, North Carolina, and has since been used for commercials,

movie trailers, documentaries, video games and cartoons. He even personally created a CD of bedtime stories sure to help children—and frazzled

parents—get to sleep call Sleep E Stories. Locally known as the host of The Upstate Show on WORD106.3 FM, which used to air

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What do you love about skirt!?

“I love skirt! because they celebrate both the strength and beauty of women.”

How do you feel wearing a skirt?

“I finally get it now…I think this skirt does make my thighs look fat.”


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SKIRT! SAYS: Sugar highs defy gravity.


My mother’s trembly,

slurred speech was the first clue of what

was to come.

MINCING

Stephanie Hunt


Stephanie Hunt is a writer in Mount Pleasant, SC. Read more at alifestill.com or stephaniehuntwrites.com.

Mincing Words

Her words were the first to go, the initial loss of many losses, and now, as I clean out her home of 23 years, I find them everywhere. Words, phrases, sentences sometimes, occasionally short paragraphs, but mostly non sequiturs. Often re-quests or questions—“crush pills” or “bring wallet,” followed by stray comments: “too funny,” “not sure,” “had it once,” “see what you think.” Strings of words scrawled by weak, uncooperative fingers—you could flip the notepad pages and see her pristine, tight cursive becoming more and more unraveled and hard to read. Snippets of conversation left hither and yon—on notepads in her bedroom, on the backs of envelopes by the kitchen sink. Scribbled, untethered utterances, dangling participles, dangling modifiers that now leave dangling memories.

My mother’s trembly, slurred speech was the first clue of what was to come. Early on when she was becoming increasingly hard to understand during Sunday evening phone calls, we wondered if maybe she was having a second, or third, glass of wine in the evening. Her words on point and appropriate, only she could not articulate them, like Colin Firth with his mouth crammed full of marbles in The King’s Speech, ironically the last movie we ever went to see together. “Spasmodic dysphonia” was the otolaryngologist’s quick diagnosis. Think Katherine Hepburn’s gravelly warble. Nothing terribly serious, a little Botox (to the voice box) and things might get better and should not get much worse. If only he had been right.

When she went for the workup and evaluation before the Botox treatment, a neurologist suggested further testing, then several doctor visits, tests and weeks later, the diagnosis shifted from dysphonia to something more dys-everything. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—hard to wrap your tongue around even if your tongue and mouth work fine. ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease—even harder to wrap your mind around. “What? ALS is when your legs fail, when you lose arm strength. That can’t be right—Mom’s fine, she’s strong, it’s just something with her voice.” Then we quickly learned the bleak statistics: ALS affects 30,000 Ameri-cans, about 5,000 diagnosed each year, 10 percent of whom present with loss of speech and swallowing. Ninety percent of them die within two to five years.

Neither my two sisters nor I lived near my mother, who went to her follow-up doctor visit on her own the day he gave her the final diagnosis. “One of the hardest conversations I’ve had. I hated that she had to hear that by herself,” her gentle doctor told me later on the phone. But he also didn’t want to make her anxious for a week leading up to the appointment, which she would have been, had he suggested that she “bring someone with her.”

That was the first of what would be many difficult conversations. I still ache with sadness when I imagine her at the bustling Baptist Medical Center, getting that news by herself, when I think of what her 25-minute drive home must have been like. And I can’t even remember now how she eventually relayed the diag-nosis to us—I’ve blocked it out. But I clearly remember so many conversations that would follow in the next year and a half. Long phone calls to her doctor and Theresa, his perpetually reassuring nurse with her smiley Southern accent. A talk during Thanksgiving with all of us around my breakfast table, trying to get a sense of Mom’s end-of-life wishes—did she want to stay at home, move somewhere, if so where?—all the logistical whats/wheres/hows that we needed to know but didn’t want to talk about, but still were easier to broach than the emotional elephant in the room. And hilarious phone chats with Mom when she was still valiantly trying to speak but I could only decipher every second word. It was like a game of audio charades, in a foreign language. “You went where yesterday? To get film developed? To find mmm-what? To form mag-nets?? Oh…to the farmers market!”

When she’d lost all speaking ability, email became a lifeline. We tried vari-ous other technological toys—the cumbersome, horrid DynaVox that cost a fortune and blurted out phrases in halting, monotone computereze, the sleek iPad with its 99 cent “SpeakIt!” app that we thought would be a godsend (she got a real kick out of typing in “Go to hell why don’t you?” and choosing to “say” it in a snappy British accent—Mom as Emma Thompson). But the low-tech pen on paper, in the end, proved to be her best communication device. Even so, there was always disconnect between what Mom clearly could hear herself say in her head and her inability to say it. She’d start to speak before realizing it was useless, that she had to write it down. Rarely did she ever grab pen and paper first.

And so we are left with trails of words. Notepads and notebooks scattered throughout her house, in her purses and pockets, in crevices of her car. Minced words, mysterious words, always only one side of the conversation, words that baffle because I have no idea who was there visiting when she wrote them or in what context they fit, and words that bemuse—her sense of humor intact till the very end. As we clean out her home, I readily make Goodwill piles of raincoats, knickknacks, Tupperware, but the handwritten notes I cannot toss. They are scattered crumbs, and I am Gretel trying to follow them, to listen for my mother’s voice, to find my way home.


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Meet Caroline Robertson, the feisty flame-haired Executive Director for Greer Relief & Resources Agency,

whose passion is to help families help themselves.

Favorite Restaurant:Café Rivera in Greer

Where I Shop Locally:Trade Street in Greer

My Pet:Tillman, the Welch Corgi

Favorite Shoes:Malindi Crocs

My Watch: Clemson Fossil

My Secret Ambition: Politics Favorite TV Show: The Good Wife My Muse: My faith in God My Workout: Chasing my boys Right Now I’m Read-

ing: A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne My Guilty Pleasure: DQ Cappuccino Heath Blizzard One Item Always In My Purse:

A scarf My Gadget: I love my iPad Where I Get My Coffee: Liquid Highway in Greenville, Starbucks in Greer I’d Like To Learn To: Fly a plane

Pho

to b

y Jo

hn F

owle

r


Bookswe are enjoying

Nov

embe

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Reasonsto get online

Excusesto catch up on a few blogs

Theconcernsofmindykaling.com Gusandlula.com Glossedover.com

“A minor sad irony in my life is that I love clothing, but I can’t put together an outfit for shit. It’s awful. Trying to layer is my idea of a nightmare.”

“In just three months, we were on our way to Ethiopia to meet our babies. It was surreal. A night, sleepless with preparations and anticipation, a plane flight, a crazy ride through a city like none we had ever seen, and then we were at the foster home.”

“Admittedly, dropping the how-to-please-a-man mumbo-jumbo would require a major overhaul of the magazine. But getting rid of the men-are-from-Mars nonsense would be Cosmopolitan’s most fun, fearless act yet.”

Rules of CivilityAmor TowlesNikki Hardin Publisher, skirt!

Worth Dying For: A Reacher NovelLee ChildSheril Bennett Turner Editor

Follow four fascinating New York women in the webseries Up &

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Nikki Hardin is the founder and publisher of skirt! magazine. She blogs at fridaville.com. Nikki Hardin is the founder and publisher of skirt! magazine. She blogs at fridaville.com.

planetnikki[ a v i s u a l j o u r n a l ]

Sunday spinning class, crossing the bridge,

to “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” loudly and hopelessly off key.

myself to write it down as a reminder for

One of those moments of irrational happiness in which you

harbor and white sails below, blue sky

Driving downtown for an

early

Making a promise to

when life seems all gray

tOneS.

and the lingering white after-image of the moon above,

singing along with Olivia newton-John

actually realize and acknowledge how happy you are.

A friend found this platter in the Anthropologie store in London and gave it to me for my birthday. Its Gauguin-y look is destined for the wall in my bedroom so I can dream of Tahiti this winter.

On constant replay: “Laura” by Julie London. Sad, haunting, noir-ish. It suits my mood right now.

My new favorite journal is Le Labo’s notebook handcrafted in France. With its smoky, leathery character, it only gets better looking with use. If you scratch the cover, a tiny whiff of their cult fragrance, Santal 26, is released.


Novembersurvival guide

Irish Coffee

Presidential Turkey Pardon

Day of the Dead

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

15 Minutes of Sun

Pomegranates at Whole Foods

My Week with Marilyn, Michelle Williams

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McDaniel Village | 1922 Augusta St., Ste. 112864.631.1919 | labelsonaugusta.com

Monday through Friday 10-6 • Saturday 10-5 • Sunday 1-5

skirt! Greenville November 2011

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Transcript of skirt! Greenville November 2011