The Gilmore Book Club

WHAT YOUR DREAM OBJECT REALLY MEANS

If you had all the money in the world, what would you buy? It’s a classic question, often found in those conversation-starter decks of cards or interviews detailing what celebrities bought with their first big paycheck. Got your answer?

If you need more time, go back to Part 1, and then come back here. And keep thinking as we go back to Amy Denver from Beloved and her obsession with velvet. Remember, Amy and Sethe meet on the road. Sethe is pregnant with blistered feet and bleeding back, doing all she can to flee her slaveholders and escape to the North. Amy tends to Sethe’s wounds and helps give birth to the baby who would eventually be named after her: Denver.

During my first read of this book, I thought Amy’s fascination was a bit odd, especially as it was her go-to talking subject as she helped Sethe through extreme physical pain. Now I’ve watched enough of Grey’s Anatomy to know what doctors and nurses talk about while working on patients and I can tell you, it’s rarely about things. They talk about life. So there has to be more to this velvet story than actual velvet. 

As I described in Part 1, one of the essays from The Toni Morrison Book Club depicts the author asking a group of inmates to ‘draw velvet’ as he reads the passage about Amy Denver aloud. Various scenes begin to unfold on paper, some easily recognizable, some not.

So, of course, I asked myself, “What would I draw? What is my velvet?”

I don’t know how the artists in this scenario decided on what their velvet was and how to draw it, but I can tell you mine, and maybe that will lead you to yours.

Like that quote about writing, I decided to start with what I knew. Literal velvet is associated with luxury, in Amy Denver’s time and in ours. It’s a popular fabric around the holidays and an elegant fabric for statement chairs. It feels soft and smooth, but somehow warm and comforting. In my mind, luxury seemed to be the biggest and most popular aspect of velvet. And here’s where the intro question comes in: if you had all the money in the world, what would you buy?

The first thought that popped into my head was readily available because I had just thought about it a few days before. It’s a pretty unique desire, but for me, it’s an idea that I was fascinated with as a young girl and something I’ve wanted ever since: Victoria and Albert desks. (Not what you thought it was going to be, was it?) Now, I have no idea if that’s what they’re actually called, but it’s based on the story that Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, whom she loved dearly, had their desks pushed front to front so they could both sit and work across from each other. Wedding rings are a beautiful symbol of marriage, but to me, they represent the honeymoon period of marriage. But the desks, those say you’re willing to work for that marriage, to do all the day-to-day maintenance that a relationship requires, that you’re committing yourselves to being partners in all your endeavors, even if partnership is just sitting with someone as an act of support while they work. And to a person who thinks about love and relationships more practically, like me, those desks are as romantic as it gets.

But do you truly have Victoria and Albert desks if you don’t have an Albert to sit across from you? Doesn’t that just make the desks, well, desks? If genie rules don’t just apply in fairy tales, they also apply in real life; money can’t buy you love. If I was trying to be true to Amy, clearly these desks were not my velvet.

My second velvet answer is a dream I could buy in its entirety if I came into money: a dishwasher. It’s a rather mundane dream when you juxtapose it with the things celebrities have said were their first major purchases after becoming rich (Cartier rings, Mercedes Benz cars, Ice Cream trucks, etc. though I did find out Nicole Kidman bought a washing machine- yes, I definitely researched this ) I feel for whatever imagined future reporter asks me this question and I respond with my household appliance answer because I know it doesn’t hold the glamour they are looking for, but for me, and any other energy- challenged person who’s had to stand and hand wash their dishes, it’s an absolute dream.

Growing up in a middle-class suburban home, appliances like dishwashers, refrigerators, and washing machines were just things that were a part of my home, and they had always been there without any effort on my part. These once commonplace items soon turned into luxuries. Moving into a place by myself gave me my very own Lane Kim moment: staring at an empty apartment, overwhelmed by the absence of things like refrigerators that had once been standard for every home you entered. I’ve lived in several different cities by now and finding a place that included a fridge and a laundry room in the basement of the apartment complex is a major blessing, and I’ve been fortunate enough to find that in the last several places I’ve lived, but the dishwasher is the one thing I haven’t been able to get. As much as I want a Beauty and the Beast kind of library, Victoria and Albert desks. or a window seat where I could sit and read, I dream about the dishwasher the most. And that’s how I know I’ve found my velvet.

In Beloved, Amy’s velvet is literal velvet fabric, and though we can read between the lines to attribute more to Amy’s desires, we can also find clues to other characters’ figurative velvet. When Baby Suggs first comes to Ohio, she is offered a house, a place where she can live and do the work that allows her to support her family. A place where her son and his family can live. A house that becomes a home. Denver’s velvet takes the shape of books. We learn that she was regularly attending lessons with Lady Jones, who teaches children in the area to read and write. But when the other children taunt Denver because of Sethe’s actions, Denver abandons her lessons. Denver finally returns to Lady Jones when Beloved’s parasitism is at its worst. Lady Jones helps Denver find food, but also begins to tutor Denver in reading again. Books had been in the back of Denver’s mind for years, a tangle of nightmares and daydreams. Now they are the key to attending college and making a way for herself in the world outside of 124.

And of course, I have to mention the velvets in Gilmore Girls, especially as one of them represents a major plot arc that spans all seven seasons. This behemoth velvet is Harvard University, which later becomes Yale University. From the first episode, we learn that Rory has been accepted into a private high school that will lay the foundation on the road to getting a Harvard acceptance letter. The heart of the show is derived from this one goal, as does much of the drama, hard work, and plot twists. Though Rory later decides to attend Yale instead, getting into and graduating from an Ivy League school permeates every episode. We aren’t as privy to Paris’s life as we are to Rory’s, but the same goal drives almost everything Paris does- even to the extreme. There are more I could list: Lorelai and the Dragonfly, Sookie and that stove, Kirk and a father figure, Emily and Richard and a family they could be proud of- the list goes on, but the point is clear: we all have our velvet. 

Recognizing our velvet is one thing, understanding it is another. What did velvet mean to those inmates? What does it mean to Amy, Baby Suggs, and Denver? What does it mean to the Gilmores? What does velvet mean to me? What is really behind these objects that we intern with our dreams and desires and forge into iron-clad obsessions over the years?

For the inmates, velvet meant being free from a life behind bars, that was pretty clear from several of the drawings described in The Toni Morrison Book Club, even if they hadn’t intended to draw that initially. That idea easily applied to Sethe, her goal was freedom from slavery. But could there be more than the obvious freedoms? Could velvet apply to those who seemed to already have agency over themselves?

For Baby Suggs, her home was a freedom of family, a place to put down roots and to call their own. Denver’s books and eventual independence meant being free of her past, and her mother’s past. So what did that mean for my velvets? What were the freedoms I was dreaming of?

If I had a dishwasher, I’d no longer need to wash everything by hand. I’d be given a little freedom of time and the freedom to spend energy that once was reserved for washing dishes to spend on doing other things. I’d have the freedom of enjoying my baking hobby again, something I don’t do as much now because of the number of pans, bowls, and utensils it would require me to use and then wash. I’m usually a very energy-deprived person, so anything that can give me a little energy back is an enormous help. And hobbies can be energy-boosting too, so getting back to baking is a win-win.

There’s also a financial aspect to the dishwasher. Most of my paycheck goes to the essentials: rent, utilities, food, medical bills, etc. Acquiring a large appliance like a dishwasher would mean that I’d have achieved the financial freedom to purchase costly luxuries that would make my daily life a little easier.

The connotations of the Victoria and Albert desks have a more aspirational nature. The first freedom concerns most residents of New York City: space. I’d clearly need the freedom of space to fit two desks front to front, something my current studio apartment would not allow. Financial freedom has a hand in this too; desks are not inexpensive and I’d have to buy two as well as move apartments so they’d fit, making this velvet a costly enterprise. But the real freedom in this velvet lies in something intangible, something that could only manifest in my heart and my mind. Victoria and Albert desks would mean that this Victoria, me in this situation, would have found her Albert, my future husband. I’d have my person, someone to lean on, someone to comfort me, someone to work by my side and be a true partner, someone to be my life-long companion. The existence of my Albert would mean freedom from doubt that I’d ever find my partner and love, freedom from loneliness, and from doing everything on my own.

We’re all searching for some type of velvet, perhaps many velvets at once, varying in their nature from the smallest to the largest of freedoms. I hope that one day we’re all fortunate enough to focus on our unique velvets like dishwashers and Victoria and Albert desks and achieve them.

But before we all go after these velvets, allow me one word of caution, to you and to myself, from Gilmore Girls’ resident high-achiever to the extreme: Paris Gellar. It’s ok to want things, to work toward one main goal, but such tunnel vision can often blur the view and take you down a path far different from the one you originally intended. It takes careful and mindful analysis to determine if your velvet is truly worth the cost, and not just the cost to you, but the cost to others. 

 Paris has more than once played the villain on Gilmore Girls, but she can also be a good and loyal person. Maybe we need to check in with our inner Paris, and maybe Terrance too, to gauge where we are in pursuing our velvets and how we’re pursuing them. Because no one represents the downfall of a beloved dream because of going about things the right way quite like Paris.

I can’t know for sure what would happen if Paris suddenly appeared within the pages of Beloved, but I do know that meditating on her path to velvet, and the paths Sethe and Denver, have helped me gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of freedom, to appreciate those freedoms I have, and how best to approach those freedoms I still want to attain.

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