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I wrote my packing list for my two-week writers' residency a month before I was set to leave. The residency at Hedgebrook is only for women and since I am a mother of two boys, I was somewhat unnaturally excited about being around all that female energy for a change. I was going to Hedgebrook with the express purpose of finishing the chapter outline for my new memoir, but it was time alone and with the other women that occupied all of my thoughts.
I carefully mulled over what I wanted to look like as I retreated to my own cottage on Whidbey Island off the Puget Sound. I saw myself walking the beach in the morning, wind blowing through my hair, gathering poetic imagery for my work later in the cabin, while a handsome, young gardener watched me from behind a boat shed. What I really needed was a long cape like the one Meryl Streep wore in “French Lieutenant’s Woman." Then I could walk along the rocky shore, my cape flapping, the gardener furtively watching, as I contemplated my chapter outline for the book proposal I hoped to finish while I was there. Obviously, when I sat down with my chamomile tea to wrestle with the multilayered themes in my chapter outline, I wanted something casual but pulled together. Maybe a fuzzy maroon sweater over charcoal leggings. The Hedgebrook website said that in the evenings, the writing residents gathered to eat an organic dinner and discuss their work. Here, I thought I would wear something a bit flowy – a silk skirt with a raw silk blouse, open at the neck. Since Hedgebrook hosts women from around the world, I thought ethnic earrings and a wrist cuff would be a nice touch.
As the day of my departure drew nearer, I wondered if I needed a pedicure. Would I be kicking off my shoes after dinner and an in-depth discussion of my chapter outline? Would anyone be taking pictures of the writing residents as we pored over each other’s manuscripts while drinking organic wine, which I was told was made on the island and available for purchase? If pictures were being taken, I should get an eyebrow wax. If there was an actual gardener watching, I should probably touch up my roots.
Within two days of my departure, I hadn’t managed to find a “French Lieutenant’s Woman’s” cape, a fuzzy maroon sweater, or anything flowy that didn’t make me look like an opera diva three-times my actual size. I couldn’t afford the pedicure or an eyebrow wax. All I had was a bunch of my usual long-sleeved V-necked T-shirts, sweatpants, and my pajamas with the hole near the waistline that exposed my ass every time I lean over.
Maybe the V-necked T-shirt route was better anyway, I thought. I’d look more serious. I’d look like a writer who was so consumed by her chapter outline that she couldn’t bother with worrying about clothes. Surely this would win me the respect and admiration of the other writers, who I assumed were far more talented than I was. The video on the Hedgebrook website showed Gloria Steinem hanging out with accomplished poets who whipped out handwritten elegiac poems that they had just written that day and read from them flawlessly over a lightly tossed organic tomato salad. I had no reason to believe that Steinem would be in residence at the same time as I was. But if she was, I thought that she would probably respond more to a V-necked T-shirt than something flowy. In the Hedgebrook video she had been wearing a no-nonsense T-shirt just like mine.
I think that vetting my own wardrobe had been distracting me from deeper concerns about my two-week retreat. It was easier for me to consider what I would be wearing when I was alone in my cabin than was for me to consider what I would write or how I would feel with that much time to myself. I had spent considerably more time imagining myself on the beach, tossing rocks into the ocean, than I had thought about how I was going to feel without my young sons bumping into me, sitting on top of me, or racing by me every day. Their physical
