I wrote this at the beginning of 2024, right after I got the teaching position at Pacific Design Academy. I performed this story at a live storytelling event called Confabulation. The theme for the evening was “Endings”.
Act 1: Setup
My life has taken me in many different directions, but sewing had always been the background music. I took for granted that sewing would always be there.
When I was a child my grandmother was my person and her sewing room was my playground. We made Halloween costumes every year for myself, my brother and my best friend, as well as whatever nutty projects I came up with between Halloweens. She always indulged my creative curiosities.
When I was in high school I fell in love with opera. I wanted to get involved so I called the local opera company and asked to volunteer. I remember standing in the kitchen, nervously fiddling with the curly telephone cord and asking if they could use a volunteer. They didn’t really know what to do with a 14 year old, and the voice on the other end of the line sounded annoyed. So I blurted out “I can sew”. That worked! I volunteered at the opera as a stitcher and dresser for the next three years. My high school years were spent backstage at the old Lobero theater in Santa Barbara carrying costumes up and down many flights of stairs, scurrying around to perform emergency repairs and waiting in the wings with a stopwatch and a 19th century ballgown draped over one arm poised to help a singer with a 20 second “quick change”.
For my undergraduate studies, I ended up getting a social science degree, but my part-time job was in the theater department’s costume shop, and my undergrad thesis project was a conceptual costume I made for the World of Wearable Art competition in New Zealand. My look made it past the first couple rounds of judging before being cut.
After college, I decided I wanted to pursue a real career in costume design. So I traded my landlady my old bike for her old sewing machine (a 1970s Kenmore). Armed with that old sewing machine, a folding table, and no formal training I costumed my first community theater shows. My very first design credit was a production set in medieval England. The cast included an 8 person dance troupe, and a 30 person choir as well as a few main characters. I sketched designs, did yardage estimates, then spent a day fabric shopping in the LA garment district. I was just 22 years old, but it all felt very grown-up and official. I drove back from LA after my solo shopping adventure, exhausted but on top of the world. It was dark by the time I got home and unloaded the yards and yards of fabric. It wasn’t until I saw the enormity of the mountain of jewel tone brocades and velvets all together that I went “oh no. What have I done?” I was overwhelmed by the amount of work I’d taken on. I was vibrating with excitement but so nervous I felt like I might cry or throw up, like the little boy in South Park who throws up whenever he sees his crush.
In the fall of 2007 I applied to NYU’s MFA costume design program and I got an interview! I flew to New York in February of 2008. But it wasn’t until I was sitting in on a design class alongside the two or three other people who had been invited to interview that I began to sense that I might have been out of my depth. My competition had theater degrees, real design experience and big beautiful portfolio cases.
After sitting in on that class I interviewed with Susan Hilferty. I’m really glad going into that interview that I was a happy little dummy with only the vaguest sense of how big a deal she was. (For context: Susan Hilferty has won 6 Tony awards. Just a couple years before I had that interview with her, she had won a Tony for Wicked.)
Susan looked through my portfolio, gave me thoughtful critiques and said “You have some interesting ideas, but your drawing skills aren’t up to par.” She recommended drawing classes and techniques to familiarize myself with. Then she leaned in, squeezed my hand, looked me in the eyes and said “apply next year”. I left her office a happy little dummy, vibrating with excitement, with no inkling of the disaster headed my way.
Act 2: Rising action
I did not re-apply to NYU the following year. My world was turned upside down the fall of 2008 when I moved to Oregon to work in the costume shop at Portland Opera.
I LOVED my new job at Portland Opera. I had the privilege of working with incredible women, on interesting and challenging productions and learning every day. But within a month of moving to Oregon, strange things started happening. I had moved to Portland in the best physical shape of my life. In the Spring of 2008 I’d been flitting around New York City, in the Summer of 2008 I was a nationally ranked endurance athlete, but by the end of the year I was struggling to climb a flight of stairs. Seemingly overnight I had become weak, uncoordinated, and started to get mysterious pains. I had numbness and tingling in my hands. I was foggy headed. I’d get chest pain and my lips would turn blue. It was terrifying.
I saw specialist after specialist. I had blood tests, MRIs, a spinal tap and a bone marrow biopsy (do not recommend). Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me, and I just kept getting worse, for years. When you’re seriously sick with a mystery illness, there’s the physical pain of invasive tests but, especially as a young woman, there’s also the emotional torment of having to fight to be believed or taken seriously.
I loved the work I did at the opera, and I was fortunate that the Cutter/Draper took me under her wing in a rigorous (if unofficial) apprenticeship. I worked at the opera for 4 years, and was fortunate to learn pattern drafting and draping in addition to honing my garment construction skills. But as my skillset grew, my body declined. After several years of worsening symptoms and no diagnosis, I thought maybe this is my new normal. Maybe this is forever. In the Spring of 2012, my fourth season at Portland Opera, we worked on Phillip Glass’ Galileo Galilei (a personal and professional highpoint), but it was during that production that I had to finally admit to myself that I couldn’t do the work I loved anymore. My body couldn’t do it. I attended opening night of Galileo Galilei and silently cried through the performance – an opera about Galileo, a man trying desperately to be heard and taken seriously, hit a bit too close to home. The Monday after opening night I put in my notice. I had to accept that the career that I so dearly loved was over.
My body had become too unpredictable. There was a baseline of constant pain and fogginess punctuated by seriously immobilizing episodes that could last 12 or 14 hours at a time. I had to accept that I couldn’t hold down a 9-5 job, and I definitely couldn’t do tech week or carry armfuls of heavy quilted petticoats. At 27 I was facing, potentially, a lifetime of disability and medical debt.
So I went to grad school. I couldn’t do the physical work of costuming so an MFA was out of the question, but I could read and write, so I went back to school for a social science degree. Going to grad school was still work but it was more flexible than a 9-5 job, while still providing health insurance. As I got sicker, I also got more involved in the online forums for people with rare illnesses and undiagnosed illnesses. Overwhelmingly, the rare disease community said Cleveland Clinic was the place to got to get a diagnosis.
Act 3: Climax
For my doctorate I applied to The Ohio State University, so that I could be near the Cleveland Clinic. I started at OSU in 2016. In fall of 2017, after a year on the waitlist, I finally had my first appointment at the Cleveland Clinic. The way Cleveland Clinic treats patients with undiagnosed illnesses is like an episode of House. Your first appointment is scheduled for a whole day, and over the course of the day you see every specialist who could possibly be relevant for your case. In the fall of 2017, 9 years after the onset of my first symptoms, I finally got a diagnosis: mold illness. When I had moved from California to Portland, unbeknownst to me, I had moved into a moldy house.
I don’t remember what all the blood tests were but there was one value in particular that was supposed to be under 3. Mine was 40. My doctor explained that I had been so full of mold for so long that I was close to permanent organ damage.
The team of doctors at Cleveland Clinic put me on a very restricted diet as well as dark red pills. I don’t recall what the pills were, but I know they were a weird form or high dosage or something because every time I got it filled the pharmacist would give me a skeptical look then call my doctor to verify that it was correct. I started the red pills immediately and on day 4 the brain fog started to lift and the pain started to subside. After that it would be about 6 months until I felt like I was fully back to my pre-mold normal.
When I got healthy in my second year of the PhD program, I considered dropping out of school and pursuing my costuming dreams. I even flew to Chicago to network with theater people, but a sudden career change seemed irresponsible, and I was pretty good at academia. I talked myself out of returning to my costuming roots.
Act 4: Resolution
I finished the PhD in 2021 and after the unique experience of writing my dissertation in complete isolation during the worst months of the pandemic, I was done with Geography for real. I opted not to pursue a postdoc or go on the academic job market.
I still grieve the loss of my costuming career. And it’s infuriating to know that I lost nearly a decade of my life, when all I needed that whole time was some little red pills.
But recently my partner spotted a job posting. A local college was looking for a fashion design instructor. I decided to shoot my shot. After assembling a portfolio as best I could from online photos of the productions I’d worked on many, many years ago, and going through a couple rounds of interviews, I was offered the job! Next week I’ll be back in a work room with cutting tables and dress forms and sleeve boards and design sketches on the walls. And this time I get to impart the skills I’ve learned over the years, from the generous women who took me under their wings.
After I signed the contract, I stopped at a coffee shop on my walk home and got myself a little treat to celebrate. When I went up to the counter I set down the textbooks the school had loaned me. After placing my order, I turned around to see the stack of books on the table I was taken right back to being 22 again and seeing the giant pile of Medieval velvets and brocades on my living room floor. For the second time in my life I felt that particular combination of overwhelm and excitement – so excited I felt like I might cry or throw up.
I’ve somehow, serendipitously, found myself right back where I belong, doing the work I was meant to do. The illness I had thought was an ending was actually just a very long pause. If there’s anything to take away from this story it’s this: 1. get your home tested for mold, and 2. it’s never too late to start over.