sale.
“Stop!” Charlie had yelled, and Keith, who didn’t seem to have reflexes half as quick as hers, drove half a mile down the road before safely executing a U-turn and going back to the tag sale.
She had seen the table and chairs, then black, had bought them for twenty dollars, brought them home, spray-painted them white, and this was now her meeting area, her portfolio on an old whitewashed pine sideboard next to it, a stack of photographs to provide her clients with inspiration.
Not that Charlie needs to impress. The only flower stores in town specialize in what Charlie has come to think of as “gas station specials”—straggly bunches of gerbera daisies, chrysanthemums, cheap imported roses and sprays of gypsophila, all filled in with bunches of green, and in the most garish colors you can imagine: purple with yellow with orange with red, all in the same bunch.
Charlie is careful with her colors, careful to put together only flowers of the same tone. She may put purple with lilac and pink, but they will all be of the same family, will all complement one another.
She has banished ribbons from her workshop—if you want ribbons, she tells people, perhaps you ought to try one of the florists in town.
She ties her bunches with brown paper and raffia, displays her arrangements in simple frosted-glass cubed vases of varying shapes and sizes.
She can go bigger—for a wedding late last summer, a local girl marrying a Scot, she had antique Chinese rice carriers in the center of each table, filled to bursting with spiky pink heather, a hint of sphagnum moss drifting over the edges. They adored it.
Her workshop has become her refuge, the place where she is Charlie again. Not a wife. Not a mother. Not someone who spends all her time looking after other people, but an independent woman who loves her job.
And because she is so fulfilled by her work, she finds she is a better mother. She is more able to be present, to relax and be there for her children because she has had that time for herself.
The preschool part of Highfield Academy is from nine until twelve. No extended-day options available, which, had Charlie known that at the time, would have precluded her from even putting Emma in, but it seemed so much easier to have her in the preschool attached to the elementary school she would be attending.
However, the thought of spending every afternoon hustling Emma from playdate to playdate, or to music classes, or gym classes, or the museum, or the aquarium, filled her with horror.
She had already done it with Paige. She devoted herself to Paige for years, and vividly remembers the mind-numbing hours of sitting there watching Paige amuse herself, sinking into a coma of boredom, wondering whether she, Charlie, would ever have a life again.
And the playdates: sitting in mock-cheerful playrooms above garages that had been turned into fully equipped wonderlands, complete with enough plastic toys, indoor swing sets, Little Tikes climbing equipment that would put, and did put, their preschool to shame.
Forcing conversations with women she barely knew, trying to find some common ground other than they both had daughters the same age, knowing, by the end of that first playdate, whether you would become friends, or whether this was not an experience you would ever be repeating.
At least she and the other mothers were the same age then. Now, with Emma being almost ten years younger, Charlie has discovered that the mothers of the children Emma is in preschool with are also ten years younger.
They remind her of herself when she moved here with Paige, standing outside the classroom waiting for the doors to open every day, more small talk. But this time she isn’t invited to playdates, isn’t included in the mommy and me groups, not least, she suspects, because she is older.
She isn’t in workout gear when she goes to collect Emma, hasn’t turned up to the school fund-raiser (because she felt so out of place), has
“Stop!” Charlie had yelled, and Keith, who didn’t seem to have reflexes half as quick as hers, drove half a mile down the road before safely executing a U-turn and going back to the tag sale.
She had seen the table and chairs, then black, had bought them for twenty dollars, brought them home, spray-painted them white, and this was now her meeting area, her portfolio on an old whitewashed pine sideboard next to it, a stack of photographs to provide her clients with inspiration.
Not that Charlie needs to impress. The only flower stores in town specialize in what Charlie has come to think of as “gas station specials”—straggly bunches of gerbera daisies, chrysanthemums, cheap imported roses and sprays of gypsophila, all filled in with bunches of green, and in the most garish colors you can imagine: purple with yellow with orange with red, all in the same bunch.
Charlie is careful with her colors, careful to put together only flowers of the same tone. She may put purple with lilac and pink, but they will all be of the same family, will all complement one another.
She has banished ribbons from her workshop—if you want ribbons, she tells people, perhaps you ought to try one of the florists in town.
She ties her bunches with brown paper and raffia, displays her arrangements in simple frosted-glass cubed vases of varying shapes and sizes.
She can go bigger—for a wedding late last summer, a local girl marrying a Scot, she had antique Chinese rice carriers in the center of each table, filled to bursting with spiky pink heather, a hint of sphagnum moss drifting over the edges. They adored it.
Her workshop has become her refuge, the place where she is Charlie again. Not a wife. Not a mother. Not someone who spends all her time looking after other people, but an independent woman who loves her job.
And because she is so fulfilled by her work, she finds she is a better mother. She is more able to be present, to relax and be there for her children because she has had that time for herself.
The preschool part of Highfield Academy is from nine until twelve. No extended-day options available, which, had Charlie known that at the time, would have precluded her from even putting Emma in, but it seemed so much easier to have her in the preschool attached to the elementary school she would be attending.
However, the thought of spending every afternoon hustling Emma from playdate to playdate, or to music classes, or gym classes, or the museum, or the aquarium, filled her with horror.
She had already done it with Paige. She devoted herself to Paige for years, and vividly remembers the mind-numbing hours of sitting there watching Paige amuse herself, sinking into a coma of boredom, wondering whether she, Charlie, would ever have a life again.
And the playdates: sitting in mock-cheerful playrooms above garages that had been turned into fully equipped wonderlands, complete with enough plastic toys, indoor swing sets, Little Tikes climbing equipment that would put, and did put, their preschool to shame.
Forcing conversations with women she barely knew, trying to find some common ground other than they both had daughters the same age, knowing, by the end of that first playdate, whether you would become friends, or whether this was not an experience you would ever be repeating.
At least she and the other mothers were the same age then. Now, with Emma being almost ten years younger, Charlie has discovered that the mothers of the children Emma is in preschool with are also ten years younger.
They remind her of herself when she moved here with Paige, standing outside the classroom waiting for the doors to open every day, more small talk. But this time she isn’t invited to playdates, isn’t included in the mommy and me groups, not least, she suspects, because she is older.
She isn’t in workout gear when she goes to collect Emma, hasn’t turned up to the school fund-raiser (because she felt so out of place), has
Similar Books
