A Good Pair

Men like boobs because they are obvious. Women know them to be nuanced nuisances. Both can be quite useful and fun.

Being a female business owner feels good. Being a solo female business felt good, too. I am not a solo business owner anymore. I have a partner, now. Sometimes he can be a real boob.

Occasionally, in our partnership, I am referred to as Miss La Rue. Her first name is one I should not write as it is one he could not say-- if it did not have a ‘y’ at the end. It was nice of him to come up with the monicker-- make her fabulous and French. It gives us space, lets me not worry about the personal or the petty.

Before I asked my business partner to join, there were others who had approached me to do just that. Some from flower world wanted to combine forces, others from finance wanted to fund me. Some, I am pretty sure, just wanted to feel me up. None of these grabbed me.

To give over any part of Fox Fodder felt like a betrayal to what I had accomplished, a betrayal to the 27-year-old-me who started the company, a betrayal to a young woman who might look to me today.

Things change. I got married. I moved to Delaware. I gave birth. Twice. And while it is fair to say that some days, two children under four and 3 hour commute (one way) could feel like a lot, it was the sense of not being enough that wore on me. 

In truth, I already felt like a mother before I had children. Fox Fodder has always been a family. My pride in the business is rooted not only in the work we make, but also in the people who make it.

Over the years it has been my privilege to nurture young designers and it is with admiration I have watched them go on to create works and careers that are wholly their own. However, mentoring is not the same as mothering. Real children are a different kind of work altogether and the energy I once had on reserve is now reserved for the restless rhythms of tireless toddlers. 

In the past, the goal was to be everything and everywhere. It felt pleasurable. No matter how absurd the effort or hours needed, I could get it done. No whinging, no panic-- just roll up my sleeves (literally) and get to work.

I liked this version of myself. She was impressive. She was tough. She drank her coffee black. 

We all, in spite of our efforts to the contrary, change. It is a funny thing to confront the fact that the young woman I enjoyed being no longer feels good to the woman I am, the person I am continuing to become.

I add cream to my coffee now. Sometimes even a bit of sugar. It feels good to be human, not Super Human.

There's a play book for flower businesses. It’s a path that's been blazed by others. I stand on their shoulders and it is because of them that I do want more, to make it work for more of us who are doing what we do with flowers.

I suppose that was part of my problem with the partnerships presented. Framed in the ethos of efficiency and execution, the ideas and advice all sounded like constriction— more profit, less people. It spoke only to my fears that doing it with someone else would make it feel less me, and in turn make me feel less. Some of these ideas are not wrong, but right or not, none of them sounded fun.

But it turns out the attempt to be everything left no space to be myself. A right partner allowed me to have that space back. Partnerships are not everything and mine does not want to be and that is precisely the point. There is we and there is me. There is my life and and there is the life of this business and there are all of our lives within this business.

I suppose this is where one feels compelled to say something about work-life balance. But such statements I have learned are best written lightly and in pencil. Things change and then they change again and the changes I have made feel really good.

You could even say, it's the tits.

-Taylor