Who’s Barbara?
“Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.”
-Barbara
I’ll never forget the day I mentioned to the Vietnamese nail technician that Barbara had passed away. With the language barrier it took awhile for me to explain exactly who I was referring to. When she finally understood, she immediately stopped filing, dropped my hand, and cradled her head as she began to sob.
I wasn’t surprised. Barbara was beloved by everyone who knew her. They loved her and she loved them. And she cared about them, really cared. She didn’t ask how you were doing in the social pleasantry I’m-asking-because-it’s-polite-but-I-don’t-really-give-a-shit sort of way. It mattered to her. At the grocery store, she’d know the checkout clerk had a daughter currently in her first year at college. Barbara would hold up the line to find out how the daughter was liking her psychology major so far. She remembered details like that. You couldn’t go to the bank with her to deposit a check without it taking an hour. She had to catch up with the teller and hear all the latest updates about their recent home remodeling.
Barbara in front of her vintage Mercedes convertible
Barbara was also the style icon of her world. Her clothes were like her, at once vibrant, sophisticated, and fun. Her dress sense never aged. Until the day she died she was always put together perfectly, sometimes to a fault. As she got older, her arthritis got so bad on one foot that she developed a hammer toe, a condition where the toe bends at the middle joint to look like a hammer. Because this made her toe stick out, she could no longer wear her beloved pointed flats without experiencing excruciating pain. She had flats in every color and the shoes always matched the outfits. The doctor told her she’d have to switch to a generic orthopedic shoe to relieve her. Instead, she had the toe amputated. “Old lady shoes,” as she put it, were out of the question.
Her home was also flawless. Growing up it was my favorite place to be. It was always immaculately clean and styled. We joked that it was magazine ready, as if AD were going to knock any minute for a photoshoot. The house was a reflection of her life’s adventures. As a traveler, she had all sorts of fascinating decor from all over the world. She used a Chinese noodle cart she bought in Hong Kong for a side table. Her Christmas tree didn’t display traditional ornaments, but rather various knickknacks from places like East Germany and Bermuda. I loved that no matter how many times I visited, I always discovered something new on her walls that I’d never seen before. And every item had a story.
My loves of fashion and interior decorating are because of this woman. The world called her Barbara, but I called her Grammy. Of course, she was not a typical grandmother. She was a blast. We’d get drunk together and talk about everything. During our adventures, and various misadventures, we’d gossip and philosophize for hours. She taught me so much about style, decorating, and being the hostess-with-the-most-est, but I think the lessons I cherish above all others concern her insistence on self love. “Charity starts at home,” she’d say. “You can’t love others until you love yourself.”
It’s taken me many years to really understand this idea, and many more to put it into practice. I still struggle with self-acceptance and that nebulous, ever-present anxiety of not being enough. It’s always, “What will they think if I wear this, do this, say that?” But Barbara was unapologetically Barbara. Late into her eighties you could find her traipsing about town, fabulous in a purple jumpsuit, flirting with the bartender. She didn’t care what people thought. She loved herself first.
Every opportunity in my life to take something old and style it into something beautiful is a tribute to her. She was a woman brave enough to be herself. She insisted upon beauty, and she insisted upon love. As I trod along on this wild journey, I carry all her love with me, and I pray, a fraction of her style.
Barbara and I getting ready to make some bad decisions