The Last Word On Nothing

Helen: Well, Cameron! Hello! Here we are again! I’m so glad we’re back two years after the original 100-days-in-a-dress post, because (a) I didn’t know what to write about for Monday and it was probably going to be something depressing about my dad dying (b) I am so obsessed with everyday, year-round wool clothing now. Ask me questions!

Cameron: I am so glad to be here again talking about dresses! But I also do not think it is depressing (at least not for me) to read the lovely things you have been writing about both of your parents.

Why are you obsessed with wool? Does this mean I can tell an inappropriate sheep joke? I also have some funny sheep-related placemats.

Helen: I certainly hope we get a sheep joke! And placemats. To catch our readers up, two years ago I did the thing where you wear this company’s wool dress for 100 days in a row (yes, you can wash it) and at the end they give you a $100 gift certificate to buy more stuff from them.

At the time of our conversation, I owned one dress and one pair of sweatpants that I had bought with the $100 reward.

Ask me how many pieces of clothing I have from that company now.

Cameron: Helen, how many pieces of clothing do you have from that company now? (And can you do all of my interviews with me and tell me what to ask people?)

Helen: It’s an embarrassing number and I don’t want to say. Let’s just say I thought it was maybe 6-8 and I counted and it was a lot more. 

But here’s the thing: wool is amazing. This particular wool is so soft and it does not get stinky. IT DOES NOT GET STINKY. 

Cameron: I was going to ask–WHY does it not get stinky? Is there a science thing here? Are sheep not stinky?

Helen: I have been right next to a sheep in a pasture and she was very very stinky. But then she had also just given birth.

I’m sure there is a science thing here but I don’t know what it is. 

Cameron: Here is a paper about wool’s alleged antibacterial properties. Everything else I found was from the Wool Flaks. Is Big Wool pulling the wool over our eyes?

Helen: Probably!

Speaking of my parents: as you know, the last year and a half have been really rough. The basic outline is that my mom was in and out of the hospital in May and June 2023, then went on hospice, then my dad died unexpectedly at Thanksgiving, and then my mom died this June. This was not a lot of fun and I do not recommend it.

In those weeks when I was bouncing back and forth between my apartment and my parents’ house and my partner’s house and the hospital, while toting my work computer and trying to remember to eat, it was a lifesaver to be able to rewear clothes and ignore laundry. 

Things are quieter now, but my wardrobe these days is based on about three wool dresses. I wash one small load of clothes once every couple of weeks. 

I think we should talk about the little texting interlude we just had.

Cameron: I agree. So, while we were having this conversation in a Google doc, I went to look for the sheep placemats that my mother-in-law had sent to us. And I took some photos with them and sent them to Helen and THEN HELEN SENT A PHOTO OF HERSELF WITH COASTERS BY THE SAME ARTIST!!!!!

Helen: IT WAS AMAZING AND CAMERON AND I HAVE VERY SIMILAR TASTES or, strictly speaking, Cameron’s mother-in-law and my boyfriend have very similar tastes. But, like, what are the chances? The same sheep-themed products! In our houses! On opposite coasts!!

Cameron: This does make me feel like I should get a Wool& dress. Could you pick one out for me? I have so much trouble figuring out what to wear, so I usually just dress like a high school gym teacher so that I’m ready for anything. 

I did recently buy a dress and I think I like it but then I wore it and I. . .  well, this is the embarrassing thing. I bought a dress to match the book cover because I didn’t know what to wear to these writing things, and I thought it was really funny but then I said that to one or two people and they were like, hmmm. So maybe I need a wool dress and then I will not think about it any more.

Helen: Well I think it’s fantastic that you bought a dress to match your book cover. Make that book your whole identity, Cameron. You wrote a book! No wait. You wrote TWO books!!! You are a rockstar. Wear a book dress and tell everyone about it. 

Cameron: There’s a person on the cover wearing a black dress, and so I got a black dress, and one of my kids said, “You look like an Edwardian teacher but also cool.” Which was a really high compliment from him but I don’t know if I really feel like an Edwardian teacher?

Helen: I haven’t spent that much time with you in person but I didn’t get an Edwardian teacher vibe. 

I went back and forth a lot because black seemed practical, but I wanted pink. I ultimately got pink. Incidentally, I now sleep in that dress and I don’t wake up sweaty anymore. Magic!

Cameron: I was thinking of the pink and of the black and of your parents . . . do you feel like a pink dress makes you happier when you’re feeling sad? I went to a memorial service for a friend a few months ago and everyone was encouraged to wear bright colors and it was great. It just felt fun, which she was, and like life.

Helen: Probably, because pink is great. 

My go-to memorial service outfit, which I wore to my dad’s, is a black wool fitted dress with a colorful cardigan over it. I felt happy to be there. And so happy to see all the people who came, who were wearing all different colors. 

I swear, Cameron, right now, all conversational roads lead to my parents. Last Saturday night my partner and I went to this truly lovely event in his neighborhood where you make a contribution to a local foundation and get assigned to one of a dozen or so dinner parties hosted in neighbors’ houses. We talked to nice strangers and ate tasty foods. If a conversation went on for five minutes, a nice stranger was going to hear about how I’d lost both my parents in the last year. 

Turns out nice strangers often have kind and insightful things to say. 

Cameron: Sometimes it seems easier to talk to strangers about that stuff (at least for me). Do you remember an especially insightful thing someone said to you?

Helen: Yes! At the dinner table, the woman across from me was there for more than five minutes, so of course I told her my dead parents. She’d lost hers a while back, too, and we were talking about how weird the feelings are. And she said, oh, you can just assume that everything weird you feel right now is about the grief. And I was like, really? Because I am crazy right now. And she was like, yep! Grief. Totally normal. 

It’s been kind of freeing. I don’t have to puzzle out why I’m feeling shitty. It’s because I lost the foundational humans in my life! 

Cameron: Well, yeah! It’s shitty! So why shouldn’t you feel shitty!?! But it is easy to say that to someone else and hard to convince yourself when it’s you.

Helen: Yes, definitely, this is true. You know, I expected more sadness, and what I’m getting instead is my usual ways of feeling shitty, but worse. Which is to say: anxiety. Thanks, brain! 

Cameron: Well, I am thinking of you and your brain. You’re putting a dress on every day. Maybe sometimes it’s the same dress (but it’s not stinky) and maybe it’s a different dress. But there is something very courageous about just getting up and putting clothes on each day (and even more so to then get your clothes, and the rest of you, to a dinner party.) And what I would like to say that is hopefully not an inappropriate sheep joke is this: GOOD FOR EWE.

Photo credit: Cameron Walker (left) and Helen Fields (right), obviously