Shop Girl.

The first shop I ever worked at was called “Fashion Fever.”

It was circa 2004 and I was in grade school.

My playroom, appropriately dubbed Barbietown, had an impressive population of over 130, and Barbie and her friends had to shop somewhere.

I mean, Barbietown simply can’t exist without a boutique.

Have you seen Barbie and her magnificent closet?

As I played in the statuesque Swan Lake castle, pretended Barbie was a double agent (whenever I was watching the hit series Alias), and putting Barbie to bed on top of a tissue box with a vintage hanky as her bedspread, I felt like my imagination had no limits.

Barbie and her friends danced at the club as I beat boxed the music, tore through town in their blue 2000’s Volkswagen Beetle, and kept me playing for hours.

I’m talking hours.

But my favorite spot in Barbietown was “Fashion Fever”, for it was here that I really got to be creative.

See, ever since I was a little girl, playing with Barbies and playing dress up in my mom’s splendid closet (talk about an inspiration, my mom once had over 80 coats in her desirable closet), I’ve always dreamed about being a shop girl.

Dressing mannequins up in the latest fashions, counting change back to waiting customers, and helping put together outfits for Ken when he needed to buy something for Barbie’s birthday was a dream, and I played endlessly with the idea that someday, maybe I’d have a shop of my own.

Then middle school came around. Though my Barbies went into boxes when we moved from the old house to the new one, I held on to them tightly, and that dream of working at “Fashion Fever” never left me.

And then I started working at “Curtain Call Consignment”, which my mom and a friend started to raise money for our local theatre group.

Of course it was volunteer, so I didn’t get paid, but that didn’t stop me from coming home with clothes.

There’s a reason I like playing shop girl: I adore shopping.

But I also learned to love processing, researching, tagging, displaying, chatting with customers, and bagging up treasures.

It was like, all those years in “Fashion Fever” were happening in real time, and I was Barbie behind the shop counter.

My experience in retail didn’t end there. I worked in college at “Ted Baker”, so while I was learning about textiles in the classroom, I was simultaneously getting to educate curious customers about breathable fabrics.

And then there was my time in Francisco, and my memorable stint at “Relic Vintage”, my beloved vintage shop located in Haight Ashbury.

I was a customer there first, but when I had the opportunity to work with these priceless garments and learn their histories and share them with equally as adoring vintage lovers, I really fell in love with retail.

And I got to dress up.

Expressing oneself through style is my love language, and this was a match made in heaven.

So when I sit here, in “Ms Elsie’s Vintage Boutique”, a shop I opened in my hometown just about three months ago (my very own business!), I think back to “Fashion Fever” and all those experiences in between then and now and think “it all led to this.”

Every article of clothing I priced, tagged, steamed, and presented to the community, every time I fan-girled with a customer over that gorgeous silk dress, or helped zip someone up in an epic 70’s Gunnysax dress, I was unknowingly gaining experience that would someday lead me here: to this shop counter I now sit at and operate as owner and curator of.

I didn’t plan this. I didn’t go to fashion school with the intention of running my own store someday. But all those choices I made, all those jobs I worked, all those clothes I brought home and put into my very own Barbie dream closet led me here.

It was my calling. And when they call, you answer.

Sure, I get to deal with real life anxieties like bad sale days, making my rent, sorting through HVAC systems, and paying taxes, but I also feel like I’m playing again:

10 years old, running down to the playroom, flicking that open sign on, and sharing “Fashion Fever” treasures with Barbie and all her friends.

I often tell people that the work I do in here doesn’t feel like work. That being inside of “Ms Elsie’s” feels like being in an extension of my home. What they don’t know is that “my home” is that playroom at my old house, where I get to share my real life treasures with real life Barbies and all their friends.

Isn’t that the dream?

goodbyes.

a song to set the scene // send me on my way by rusted root

It didn’t hit me until the schedule was published.

The same schedule I’ve been posting for the last eight years as Manager of Brew@602.

Except this time, somebody else was posting.

And for the first time: I had no more shifts.

It was an inevitability I’ve been avoiding since first venturing into my new business (more to come on that later).

For months, I’ve been putting off what I knew was coming, and when I saw that schedule posted, with my name not on there, the reality hit me.

It was happening.

One door was closing as another was opening.

Sniffling and sobbing, I realized that this change was no longer an apparition in my head: it was happening, and my life would never be the same.

For the last eight years, I have poured (literally) my heart and soul into this business.

When I think about no longer getting to wear my “train crew” denim shirt and run hot chocolates to eager kiddos, my heart aches.

When I think about our closing playlists and jamming to Hamilton after a slow winter’s day, my heart aches.

And when I think about no longer being able to hop in and help during a busy rush, my heart aches.

But when I think about how significant this chapter on the train has had on me, my heart soars.

My regulars became friends I now say hello to at the grocery store.

My employees became a part of my family.

I became known as the brew mom, and I laughed, cried, and caffeinated my way through a good chunk of my 20’s.

Despite shifts that left me crying in the walk in, and despite days staring depressingly out the window when it was slow, my time there was more impactful than I could’ve ever imagined.

Working there grew me, shaped me, inspired me, and I think it placed me exactly where I am now: in front of a new train door.

As Pooh once wisely pondered: how lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?

Well, saying this particular goodbye was very difficult.

Ask the multiple people who witnessed me putting it off for months and then saw me unravel when my name wasn’t on the schedule.

But I have to remember why the goodbye feels painful, and cherish my mornings and afternoons spent there.

On the bright side, my “long-distance” move is across the parking lot.

So for the foreseeable future, I’m not actually saying goodbye.

I’m saying “see you later” for that afternoon coffee.

Cause it’s still home. And it always will be.