FAREWELL TO A FORTY-YEAR CAREER

A Journey Built on the Gifts of a Father to a Son

For most of you who know me—through my books, through this Substack, through the worlds I write and dream into being—there’s an entire part of my life you’ve only glimpsed in passing, if at all. It’s the part that began long before I ever wrote my first novel. Long before I understood the creation of story.

An early lesson came from a broom, a floor, and a father determined to teach me how to live.

Back when I was a child sweeping the floor of my parents’ housewares store, my father would say, “Sweep as if you own the place.” I didn’t understand the full weight of those words then, but they eventually settled into me, like instructions for a larger life. As I grew older and eventually started my own business, that lesson stayed with me. I swept with intention, breathing in the life of our family legacy, learning how beauty takes shape between human hands.

And like the drawing above—the father handing the son the pieces he needs to feel complete, even as it costs him part of himself—that was my father. With every lesson, every moment of guidance, every sacrifice he never named, he handed me the pieces that built not only my business, but my character. Whatever I accomplished in my career, I owe to him. My success is dedicated to his quiet generosity, his unwavering optimism, and his belief that a positive attitude has the power to shape destiny.

He trusted me early—long before I was ready—to think, work, and carry myself like an owner. That trust gave me the confidence to step out on my own in my twenties and to build what would become Decorating With Fabric.

For forty years, the window-covering business wasn’t just my career.It was my apprenticeship to life—and to the constant need to create.

Andy Warhol once said,

“Making money is art, and working is art, and good business is the best art.” 

When I first heard that line, I cherished the inspiration it sparked. Only then did I realize I had been living that truth from the beginning. Every sale, every installation, every sketch, every problem solved became, for me, another expression of creative force. And I chased that expression relentlessly.

When I entered this industry, it was during a moment of profound transformation. We began with the basics: roller shades cut to size right in front of customers, the blade sliding through the fabric as they watched. Then came the rise of the 1” Levolor mini blinds—sleek, modern, colorful, a symbol of a changing design sensibility. Next arrived vertical blinds, sweeping across the country like a new architectural language.

And the innovations kept coming.

Hunter Douglas introduced Duettes, and suddenly, window coverings weren’t just functional—they were engineered forms of insulation and design. Then motors arrived, and the industry shifted again. Shades rose and fell with a button, then an app, and eventually with no touch at all. Solar shades emerged, exterior systems followed, and before long, we were no longer simply “decorating”—we were shaping light itself.

What began with spring roller shades for sale in my parents’ store evolved into Engineered Shading Solutions integrated into the architecture of residences, offices, and hospitals. We even designed and installed intelligent glare-control systems in one of JFK’s control towers—far from selling vinyl shades as a teenager.

I rode every wave of innovation, not because anyone handed me a roadmap, but because desire and ambition pulled me forward, and my father’s insistence on maintaining a positive attitude became the compass I relied on above all else.

Decorating With Fabric became my daily companion. The craft grew around me until it felt inseparable from who I was. I did everything—marketing, sales, sewing, upholstering, quilting, and installation. I hovered over worktables, balanced on scaffolds, dangled from ladders, measured, drafted, cut, stitched, lifted, solved, and, on more than a few difficult days, prayed for solutions.

Nothing existed until we made it exist. That is the wonder of a custom business: the final product begins as an idea and becomes real only when hands, tools, and skill coax it into form—a literal creation story, repeated over and over again.

I lived and breathed this work through multiple recessions, a pandemic, and countless quiet crises no one ever writes about. Along the way, my own body gave out—I suffered a heart attack that forced a reckoning with my mortality. It slowed me just long enough to understand what was at stake, but not long enough to stop me. I returned to the workroom because failure was never an option.

In 2018, I lost my father—the man whose belief, guidance, and optimism had shaped every step I took. Even in his absence, his voice remained with me, steady and familiar, urging me forward. I kept working, carrying his lessons with me, honoring him the only way I knew how: by continuing to build, create, and move forward with purpose.

Three years later came the deepest heartbreak of all: the loss of my son, Sam, who was meant to inherit this business, this world I built for him. That loss reshaped me more than any business lesson ever could. And still, through grief, I showed up. Survival and creation became my anchors; the steady act of making something held me to the earth when everything else threatened to pull me loose.

Over the years, I wrote for industry magazines and even appeared on the cover of one. I taught lunch-and-learn sessions for architects, led seminars, and pursued every avenue I could to grow the company and support my family. I pushed, experimented, adapted, reinvented. Creativity wasn’t an accessory to the business—it was the business.

Through it all, my dedicated team stood with me. Craft like this is built by people who care not just about the work, but about one another. In a business like ours, you don’t simply produce goods; you build relationships, yard by yard, stitch by stitch, year after year.

And now, after four decades, I am closing the doors of my enterprise.

There is no fanfare. No formal announcement. Just the quiet turning of a page.

I will still continue in a sales-only capacity—my hands are not entirely leaving the craft—but the era of running my own decorating studio has come to its natural conclusion.

I look back with stillness and pride. I know what I built. I know how hard I fought for it. I know the challenges that should have broken me—and didn’t.

Every time adversity reared its head, I cut it down. Every time the road bent, I bent with it. Every time the world said give up, I made something instead.

If a business is a mirror, then this one shaped me more than I ever shaped it. It taught me precision, persistence, and patience. It taught me how to fix what no one sees and perfect what everyone does. It taught me resilience, humility, and the strange alchemy of turning raw materials into something that transforms a space—and sometimes a life.

So this is not a farewell in sorrow. It is a farewell in gratitude.

To everyone who trusted me with their homes, their projects, their visions—thank you. To everyone who worked beside me—thank you. To this craft that carried me across four decades—thank you.

And to the boy in his parents’ store who learned to sweep the floor and dared to imagine what he might become—I can finally say he lived that question all the way through.

Onward to my next story. Not empty-handed, but shaped by the long apprenticeship of a life spent making—and by a father who gave me the pieces I needed, even when it cost him pieces of himself.

Me and my Dad