It was surprising news that fashion designer Eileen Fisher is leaving her old love for a younger woman but those things happen. I sighed when I read that the New York designer known for her sophisticated styles and lush colors had decided to leave behind her Boomer sisters to go after a younger, cooler customer.

When I was young and cool I wasn’t an Eileen Fisher fan. When I got older and decided to occasionally treat myself I was drawn to Eileen Fisher. First by her models and then her clothes.

The models in Eileen Fisher ads were real women – high school principals and airline pilots. Some of them had silver hair and wore glasses. They looked brainy and fit and confident. They walked on the beach. They held books in their arms. They even smiled. They didn’t look angry and starved like other models. Nor did they stand pigeon toed in stilettos, like some porn star. They were grown-ups.

Eileen Fisher was one of us. She too favored classy but uncomplicated clothes, the kind you don’t have to yank on and adjust but that made you feel pretty and even hip. I liked what I read about her – that she gave her employees yoga classes and health and education benefits and helped women in poor countries start businesses.

Her clothes and marketing style portrayed women of her generation in a new way.

If you were going to describe a stylish classic American woman you might handily refer to her as an Eileen Fisher type.

Her models had both age and flair. Here was one shrewd business person who did not avoid the aging market but invested in it and celebrated it.

Imagine, then, our surprise to find that others thought her clothes had “as much style and shape as a burqa.” That’s what it said in a New York Times story that reported the Eileen Fisher line was trading in its traditional base to appeal to the youth market. This new line would be different from the old Eileen Fisher line that was “designed for graying bobos who dabbled in ceramics and had lifetime subscriptions to the New Yorker.”

Ouch, said this graying bobo - after I looked up the word “bobo,” which is a word coined by conservative columnist David Brooks, short for bourgeois bohemian. Bobo or not, I do not feel scorned by Eileen Fisher. I have enough of her clothes in my closet and really, in this economy I don’t see a big shopping spree in my future.

If she wants to go back to her drawing board — the new line is to include biker jackets and leggings – then she should. She’s 58, a good age to try something new.

But I’m just sorry that she feels like she has to go after the kids like everyone else. Maybe she’ll do great with the younger, cooler crowd who will one day say, “hey, where are those stylish black dresses and asymmetrical sweaters you used to make?” I’ll mostly miss the women in her ads who look like people my age and wear clothes that don’t require a full-length industrial strength undergarment.

She won’t miss me. I was not a heavy investor. I bought some sweaters on sale and once paid full price for a smart ivory colored jacket for my daughter’s wedding. I still wear it, mostly with jeans. My last Eileen Fisher score was a black linen shirt from a consignment shop in San Francisco. It cost 12 bucks and looks nothing like a burqa.

The headline writers say that Eileen Fisher is giving herself a facelift. Well, you know how those can go. Sometimes they work and sometimes they just make you look funny. Then there is no going back.

Nurse practitioner Paula Kelleher gets to deliver a lot of good news about breast cancer at the Breast Care Center at Kaiser in Santa Rosa, Ca. In fact she gives out more good news than bad, which is surprising since the patients she sees dread the worst. Their worry level, she says, ranges from “some anxiety all the way to literally terrified and making out their will.”

In spite of advances in diagnosis and treatment of the disease, more political advocacy for research and a huge boost in public awareness about breast cancer Kelleher sees “a greater level of anxiety in women.” Ironically she thinks much of that fear stems from all that awareness.

Public attention on breast cancer has moved politicians to make the disease a funding priority. It has motivated women to do self exams and get mammograms. Breast cancer continually gets media play. The flip side, said Kelleher, is that women think, “Oh my God, I’m going to get it too.”

Happily she gets to report to the vast majority of patients that they do not have breast cancer. And that’s a lot of relieved women, considering that Kelleher sees an average 12 women a day at Kaiser who come in worried about a lump, a breast pain, a family history of cancer, a questionable mammogram, a request by their physician for further evaluation and just plain fear that they’ve got it.

“Love your breasts. Don’t fear them.”

Kelleher has worked in women’s health her whole career. She remembers when breast cancer was a secret diagnosis, before pink ribbons everywhere and survivors running marathons. Breast cancer is still the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, says Kelleher, and she believes “every woman with a concern needs to be evaluated. But she says, “I just wish they didn’t have to be so afraid.”

Kelleher quotes Dr. Susan Love, the famous author, surgeon and breast cancer activist, who says that women think of their breasts as the loaded guns on their chest. To counter that, Kelleher tells patients, “Love your breasts. Don’t fear them. They’re probably okay. And even if they get diseased we’ll deal with it.”

Kelleher is not being Pollyanna about what she knows is “a very real and devastating disease.” But she adds, “Sometimes it’s spun like it’s inevitable.” Middle aged women, especially, assume that breast cancer is coming to get them and Kelleher thinks that’s because Baby Boomers are now in the age group, from 50 and on up, that is a risk factor for breast cancer.

“There’s more of us,” said Kelleher, age 55. “We see the neighbor, a relative, a friend getting breast cancer and that probably’s because so many of us are in that age group.”
Yet, even women of that age group can relax a little, she says. If there are no other risk factors women in their 50s have a 98 percent chance of getting to their 60s without breast cancer.
Kelleher tells patients they can go to Vegas with those odds.

Her optimism doesn’t just come from being a professional. Kelleher herself had breast cancer. So did her mother, great aunt and a sister. “And we’re all alive,” says Kelleher. Kelleher was as shocked as any other woman who gets the diagnosis. Then she sat down with her surgeon and decided that her best plan was a lumpectomy and radiation.
That was 17 years ago and there’s been no recurrence of cancer.

She tells her story to those women she has to give the bad news – that their biopsy is positive. And then she says, “Let’s get this treated so you can go back to enjoying life.”

A whopper storm was forecast. A real soaker would be an exciting kick-off for the rainy season. At the same time we were looking forward to a new baby in the family. While there had been a flurry of tiny cousins produced by the other side, our immediate tribe had not had an infant join us since the last great arrival of our granddaughter three years ago.

With an eye on the heavens and an ear to the phone, we began a baby and storm watch, hurrying to finish a yard project. Once the rain or the baby came, there would be no time to spend dragging around flagstones.

On that weekend clouds skittered around and the sky looked like it wanted to do something meaningful. And the expectant parents reported things could happen any time. There was rumbling on both fronts but no action. Mother Nature would decide when to deliver.

The farmer’s market was piled high with red, yellow and purple beauties, the late harvest jewels more glittering than usual under a gray, brooding sky. People naturally talked about the weather. Even if you live in a place where the seasons are subtle each one brings some adjustment. Some looked forward to the rain. A decent storm might ease drought worries, wash off the dust, rinse the air and lure back the green. A significant start to the wet season would mean we could move inside, make tea, read books. Others grumbled that they weren’t ready to give up the warm golden days.

I talked about weather and babies to the woman who sold me a squash and a fistful of beets. Her family has a baby coming in January. We agreed it’s a good time to be looking forward to new life. I imagine we’re about the same age, grandmothers now who had our children back when people spoke of Zero Population Growth and the irresponsibility of bringing babies into a crowded, hungry world. Things haven’t improved much since. But people still grin when you tell them there’s a baby coming. Maybe because it’s another chance to do things right.

As my friend Marylu says, babies and the hokey pokey really are what it’s all about.

The get-ready phone call came at 6 in the morning and we lurched into baby mode, scrambling to fulfill our assigned roles. Ours was to go to our daughter’s house and be with the three-year-old while her parents went to the hospital. It was a false alarm. We returned to the garden project, planting tiny pieces of elfin thyme for the rain to encourage. The three-year-old came over in her yellow rain boots, ready for there to be puddles.

But first there would be a baby. The next morning we got the real-thing phone call. We headed for the hospital, with cards for the baby and banana muffins for the exhausted parents. The new big sister brought a bouquet of orange dahlias.

That night Mother Nature began to bluster and whistle and stomp. Trees bent over and some broke. Power lines went down. Roads flooded. The wet season officially arrived and it rained frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails, because that’s what little boys are made of.