Dressing The Part

KB Inglee (guest blogger)

KB is an historical interepreter at Greenbank Mill and Philips Farm in Delaware which is the setting for her children's book Farmer's Daughter, Miller's Son. You can reach KB at kbinglee@hotmail.com.

Clothes make the man. OK in this case woman.

I have returned from three days in 1804 where I served as cook for the Corp of Discovery for 21 middle school kids. I spent the whole time in smoked and sweat soaked period clothing. The smell no longer washes out. Lewis and Clark probably never ate as well as we did, though I am sure they smelled worse.

I am still in the early stages of being a published writer with a kids' book and few short stories out there, I agonize over what to wear to book signings and literary parties. One of my friends mentioned her writer's outfit, so I bought a jacket with early American farm scenes on it and a long black dress to wear under it. If I need "regular clothes" I just go to my closet and there it is waiting for me. I never wear it to my own signings.

When I started writing historical fiction a friend and Civil War re-enactor said I had to wear the clothes in order to understand the world in which my work is set.

I was writing about the 1890s, but I made myself a Civil War Quaker Woman outfit out of a tan bed sheet. No hoops, no bows, no fashionable drop shoulders. With long stockings, tight ankle boots and a hat with a feather, I had a complete outfit. Oh, yeah, no corset.

I did feel different when I put it on. The three petticoats tangled around my legs as I walked and I was forever tripping over the floor length skirt. Ah, hoops keep that from happening. I wrote two short stories about Civil War re-enacting and one about a woman who took up spying to get her sons through the war safely.

While wearing my 1860s duds I wandered into a living history museum that presented 1790 to 1830 and stayed to volunteer. I needed a new suit of clothes, this time more comfortable and serviceable. Everything pinned or tied shut. My petticoat (we call it a skirt these days) came to my ankles, not the floor. Even the shoes were more comfortable. I wrote two short stories set in the early republic and three set in a living history museum. One of them was turned into a murder mystery evening as a fund raiser for the museum.

My main interest is still the 1890s, so I made what I call Emily suits, one of aqua satin and one a dark red gabardine skirt with white shirtwaist. I will wear one of these when my novel is published.

I have just made myself a Lewis and Clark period dress with the high waist and a straight skirt. It's a gray striped cotton satin. My book is set in 1816, so it is perfect to wear to my own book signings. People notice. I have yet to write the stories that go with it but I can feel the ideas bubbling up when I put it on.

“Why Did I Come in Here Again?” and Other Lost Thoughts

JULIA BUCKLEY
I have memories of my mother, fortyish, wandering into a room where we children lolled about watching television, and hesitating on the threshold, saying, “Now—why did I come in here?”

We’d laugh at her, we heartless children, because we thought it was sweetly eccentric that our mother would often forget the task that had caused her to stride purposefully into a room, sometimes even to open a cabinet and gaze inside, as if hoping the answer lay in there.

But of course her behavior wasn’t eccentric at all. Now that I’m a writer, I realize there are a finite number of thoughts I can fit into my head, and sometimes a few really important ones can get squeezed out. Like—oh! I was supposed to make dinner. Or fill out that endless paperwork that comes home from a grade school—field trip forms, tuition invoices, raffle tickets, notes to teachers, et educational cetera. Or the even more relentless paperwork that goes with my job—the teaching of English to teenaged girls.

And then, beyond all that, there is the Work in Progress. It has to find its way through all of the other thoughts, like water in a jar full of rocks. It has to squeeze through the gaps and bring me the occasional inspiration, even while I’m toiling away with my less inspired but still important mental chores: feed the dog, the cat, the fish. Write those thank you notes, wrap that present, iron his shirt, sew his button.

My mother, though she’s the most mature woman I’ve ever known, must take the occasional secret pleasure in watching me fall into all of the traps I was sure, as a bold and sarcastic youth, that I would avoid. In her day, she had to maintain her mental equilibrium while caring for FIVE children, a husband, a cat and a dog. I only have two children, and yet I understand, now, how really extraordinary my mother was. She got a college degree later than most, at age fifty, and she wrote for pleasure, for sheer pleasure, which was the same reason that she would read.

My mom is the one who got me hooked on mysteries. She’s still an addict herself. Back when we were kids, she would reward herself for daily chores with quick little doses of whatever book she had at the time: Georgette Heyer, Phyllis Whitney, Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt. She’d read a chapter or two, then jump up and say, “Now, why did I get up?”

So today I found myself wandering into a room, initially with a firm purpose. I still felt the urgency by the time I reached my destination, but I had forgotton the task. “Why did I come in here?” I asked my sons, who, as tradition would have it, were watching tv.

“We don’t KNOW, Mom,” my eldest said dryly.

Ah, just you wait.


(image: www.pevexenterprises.co.uk)