Today the door opens to a New Year, at least in the Jewish calendar. I decided to devote this week’s blog to passages, transitions, an odd assortment of things being in flux, rather than stuck! Speaking of being stuck (no longer): it looks like the notification for the daily post is working again, miracle of miracles…… welcome back!

Today’s passage story comes from no other than Michael Chabon, he of Cavalier&Clay and the Yiddish Policemen’s Union, among other prize winning books. His story is about his youngest son, whom he took to the Paris fashion week as a Bar Mitzvah present  (it helps if your Dad writes articles for sponsor GQ…). The young man is in the process of defining himself and trying to find his own tribe – and a knowledge about and love for design play an essential role. (Photo from the article.)

http://www.gq.com/story/my-son-the-prince-of-fashion

I react to accounts of parents writing about their children in great detail  with ambivalence, as I do looking at revealing portraits of children taken by their parents. There is a fascination and intimacy rarely matched, but would I like to be the later adult with so much of me made public?  I was thinking of that again when I read about the suicide of Sally Mann’s oldest son, Emmett, this June, after struggling with schizophrenia in his adulthood.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/arts/design/sally-mann-cy-twombly-remembered-light.html?_r=0

But back to passages into a realm of your own: just as a youth discovers fashion, so can we old ones discover style. My model here, in both meanings of the word, is Bridget Sojourner, 78 year old great grand mother who I am all ready to emulate (alas, I don’t have that hair….)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/people/bridget-sojourner–78-year-old-great-grandmother-turned-style-ic/

  Time to reinvent my closet in 5777….