A Special Education (2 of 2 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
A Special Education by Dana Buchman with Charlotte Farber. Copyright 2006 by Dana Buchman and Charlotte Farber.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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CHAPTER 1

THE WONDER YEAR

SOME PEOPLE, WHEN FACED WITH A MAJOR LIFE change, make a conscious effort to slow everything else down. A woman who's having a child for the first time might decide to lighten her load at work. Someone who is taking on new responsibilities in her job might hold off on starting a family that year.

I have never been one of those people.

For most of my life, I have been a serious doer, undaunted by the notion of having too much on my plate. If anything, I would jump at the chance to juggle more for all the world to see. I had been encouraged early on by my mother and my grandmother to be a high achiever, and I got hooked on the accolades they showered on me. I wanted to be a superwoman, the embodiment of the "having-it-all" feminist ideal that became so popular when I was in college in the 1970s.

If there was ever a year when I got to shine, it was 1986, probably the most action-packed and thrilling year of my life. I did it all then: I was newly married to my husband, Tom; we had our first daughter, Charlotte; and the Dana Buchman designer label was born. I had everything I had ever wanted. It was a series of dreams come true. I had this amazing husband--not only handsome but brilliant, loving, and supportive of my career! Then, I received the offer of a lifetime for a young designer, the chance to have my own label. It was practically handed to me on a silver platter by my mentor and boss, Liz Claiborne. (The Dana Buchman label is owned by Liz Claiborne, Inc.) To top it all off, I gave birth to this perfect, beautiful little creature whom I just loved instantly.

Could it get any better? My life was picture-perfect--on the outside, at least. People thought, Look at her, keeping it all together, doing everything at once with so much grace and style.

On the inside, though, I was a bit of a mess, and I didn't even know it. I was so out of touch with my emotions, so into living the dream and seeming "perfect," that I don't think I even knew how overwhelming it all was. Here I was, under tremendous pressure to prove myself in designing my first collection, and at the same time, I was just learning how to care for a baby. These were two insanely demanding endeavors unto themselves, let alone in combination.

It was in the next year, when Tom and I started to notice that there was something amiss with Charlotte and her development, that it started becoming harder for me to hold it all together. The idyllic picture of my "perfect" life began to pixelate like a frozen image when the DVD player gets stuck. In the years that followed, that picture would take on a different hue, colored by the experience of having a child with serious learning differences (LD) and motor deficiencies.

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