I made an unusual fashion decision for Thanksgiving dinner.

We were invited to a friend’s home, along with a handful of other families. When someone makes an effort to host or cook for me, I believe it’s important to put effort into dressing for the occasion. That’s especially true for a holiday: No jeans, no T-shirts and definitely no sweatpants.

We have a child attending college out of state who comes home for Thanksgiving, so this is also an opportunity for the four of us to take a semi-fancy family photo together. I had an aesthetic in mind. I wanted to wear a new black dress with boots, cinched at the waist with a belt.

Once upon a time, I would have selected this outfit without a second thought.

Now, however, I’m at the tail-end (hopefully) of perimenopause. This can cause wild swings in body temperature. It can also mean that a dress that fits at the start of the evening will become uncomfortably tight after a heavy meal.

Faced with this dilemma, I decided to tuck a pair of flowy, silky, wide-leg pants in my purse. They looked dressy and included a feature that has become increasingly important in clothing: an elastic waistband. After dinner and before the pies, I ducked into the bathroom, ditched my belted dress and changed into my dessert pants. It was easy enough since I wore a long-sleeved shirt under my sleeveless dress.

My dear friends and the hostess were wholly supportive of this move. I spent the rest of the evening more comfortable and less self-conscious than most Thanksgivings past. I found this to be such a great life hack that I shared it on Facebook.

Some friends asked where they could purchase these magical pants, others shared stories of their own version of dessert pants, and one woman questioned why I didn’t just wear the forgiving pants in the first place.

I turned to a few experts for answers. Dacy Gillespie is a personal stylist in St. Louis and owner of Mindful Closet. She specializes in body positivity in clothing choices. She says being comfortable and being stylish are not mutually exclusive.

“Women of our age were conditioned to be uncomfortable so we look attractive to other people,” she says. Cue the messaging around defining one’s waist or wearing a high heel to elongate one’s leg. Elastic-waist pants can conjure flashbacks to the '80s-style, unflattering polyester slacks we saw our grannies wear.

That’s no longer the case.

“Honestly, I think elastic-waist pants are the answer to everything,” Gillespie said. Advances in fabric technology mean that there are many options with elastic waists that look elevated and put together.

She wants people to prioritize feeling good in what they wear.

“Let’s normalize showing up comfortable or being able to say, ‘I’m switching my pants,’” she says. It acknowledges the truth that weight can fluctuate five or more pounds in a single day, especially when we sit down for a salty, carb-heavy meal.

“Let’s not shame people for enjoying their food,” she adds. This is true in any setting, and especially during the holiday season.

While Gen X and Boomer women may have to undo the social conditioning to endure discomfort or pain for fashion, Gillespie says she hopes younger generations have discarded these outdated social conventions.

Alice Sydow, an image consultant, color analysis expert and wardrobe stylist in St. Louis, heartily endorsed my sartorial choice.

“Everybody loves an outfit change at a party,” says Sydow, who owns Style Your Glow.

She pointed out that today’s brides typically have two dresses: one for the ceremony and another for the reception. She has changed her ensemble for a birthday celebration and on Halloween. She says my concept of changing into “dessert pants” can be festive and creative, along with comfortable and fun.

Both Sydow and Gillespie shared suggestions of stylish dessert pant options: Spanx’s AirEssentials Wide Leg Pant ($118), Quince’s Ultra Stretch Ponte Pant ($39.90), Old Navy’s Barrel Ankle Pant ($22) and Universal Standard’s All Day Easy Pants ($112.80)

Perhaps one of the best things about getting older is the shift in mindset. Our tolerance for discomfort drops. Our need to project perfection plummets.

We move toward accepting ourselves and certain truths.

The pie is worth the dessert pants.

Jacqueline Christy, directing her first feature and fresh out of film school, faced a tough call on set: Should she pack up her entire cast and crew from the alley in Tribeca, where they had a permit to shoot? Or try to keep filming, even though nearby tenants wanted them to leave?

On a film set, time is money. Christy couldn’t afford to lose any more time.

“We decided to cut our losses and go elsewhere,” she said. Twenty crew members packed and hauled gear 20 blocks north to an alley in SoHo. She put the actors in a cab.

It was yet another moment when Christy wondered if the dream she had been chasing for years, that she was pouring her life savings into, that she had given up a successful career for, was ever going to materialize.

I met Christy in 2016 at a writers colony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I was intrigued by the colored index cards she tacked on a bulletin board in her suite. She explained that it’s a common technique used by screenwriters to organize plots and scenes. She was working on the screenplay for her MFA thesis.

Christy had run a successful off-off Broadway theater in New York City for two decades before deciding to enroll in 2012 in the Graduate Film Program at the Tisch School at New York University. The program accepts less than 2% of applicants.

After decades of supporting the work of other artists, Christy decided to take the plunge to do what she had long dreamed of: making movies. Her feature-length script, “Magic Hour,” is a fictionalized account of what happens when a middle-aged woman, filled with self-recrimination and doubt, puts her dream of going back to film school to the test.

Was her art imitating life or vice versa?

It’s likely a combination of both. Christy says she felt she needed to fix an endless list of things in her life before she was allowed to pursue what she really wanted. She told herself she ought to get her finances and romantic life in order first. She really should organize her closet and deal with all the stuff she was putting off.

She finally realized it was never going to be the perfect time to make such a leap of faith. So, she took the plunge.

In the decade she’s been working toward this project, she learned a valuable lesson.

“The transformation happens while you live your dream,” she said. “All the personal demons are in your face, and you grapple with them every day. You can’t hide from them anymore.”

After she had completed her script, through endless rounds of revisions and workshopping, she had to raise the money to actually make the thing. She was an older film school graduate with no proven track record, and she wanted a top-notch cast of talented actors and crew for her first feature project. One of the participants in her writing group, Patrick Breen, a well-regarded character actor, agreed to play a small role. Once he signed on, it was easier to convince other established actors to take a chance on her.

Actress Miriam Shor plays the lead character. One of Christy's NYU faculty members, filmmaker Spike Lee, gave her notes on the project.

Christy had to venture far outside her comfort zone and ask for big favors to get the film made: They shot some of the scenes in her sister’s house, the cast and crew worked well below their normal rates, and friends lent props -- including a car. This was in addition to seeking private investors and crowdsourcing funding.

“I’m definitely taking ridiculous financial risks with this film,” she said. “I’m not advising that anyone else do that, but I’m giving it everything I have.”

Christy’s goal is to get the film distributed and shown in theaters across the country. Eventually, she wants it to live on a streaming site. During the yearslong process, she’s worked on a number of other productions, including directing my first narrative short in St. Louis in 2017.

Last week, she returned to the city to screen “Magic Hour” at the St. Louis International Film Festival -- the last leg of a yearlong festival circuit. It was remarkable to see how far her vision had come from scribbles on note cards on a cork board.

I did a question-and-answer with her for the audience after the screening.

An older woman in the audience raised her hand.

She said she doesn't watch -- or like -- many films, but this was the best film she had ever seen.

I looked at Christy’s face at that moment.

For a second, she looked stunned. She smiled and thanked the woman.

I know she has so much more she wants to accomplish with this film, and her career, before she feels like she’s achieved that dream.

But maybe she already has.

Amy Von Senden, 56, posted a sorrowful Reddit request recently about her dying mom.

She shared that her mother, Sharon Von Senden, the mosaic artist at the City Museum in St. Louis, was receiving hospice care. No one had known that Sharon, 83, had been diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure. She didn’t want dialysis. The doctors said she might survive a few months.

For three weeks, Amy had camped out on the floor in Sharon’s two-bedroom frame house to care for her. A nurse showed up for 15 minutes a day to give Sharon pain medication, but Amy took on the rest of her mother's constant daily care -- from bathing to feeding.

She felt exhausted and overwhelmed and alone.

“I was wondering if people who appreciated her work could send her cards that I could read to her,” Amy wrote on Reddit. “To know she’s not alone.”

Few people knew Sharon’s name. But her artwork is instantly recognizable to the millions of visitors who have walked into the City Museum, an immersive art space adorned with Sharon’s fantastical tile and mirror mosaic work: sea creatures at the entrance and first floor, and reptiles climbing up the columns on the mezzanine.

A friend shared Amy’s post on Facebook, and it sparked an avalanche of memories and tributes.

“That mosaic work has always been what made the place magical, to me. From the first step it’s like a portal into a land of whimsy,” Chase Sartell wrote.

Sharon’s journey to creating those murals was just as unpredictable as her art. She was born in Oklahoma City. From first to 12th grade, she attended 22 schools in various states.

“There are some things I don’t know about her,” Amy said. But she knew her mom’s upbringing was rough. Sharon converted to Catholicism and tried to join a Benedictine monastery. It didn’t work out. She served in the U.S. Army for a couple of years, where she met her husband, Michael. They married on Thanksgiving in 1967.

Her husband served two tours in Vietnam. He died in 1973 after being struck by a train while on duty in Texas. Sharon moved to St. Louis more than 40 years ago because she wanted to join a church there.

She and Amy scraped by on survivor benefits from the Veterans Administration. When Amy turned 19, she got a job at Venice Cafe. Sharon took on a cleaning job at the cafe to make extra money. Every night as Sharon mopped the floors, she noticed the unfinished stained glass mosaic panels on the side of the staircase.

“I can’t stand to look at this anymore,” she finally said to the owner. “Do you have any glass?”

She decided to figure out how to finish it. She bought a tool to score the back of the glass so she could snap it. (“We don’t call it 'broken,' because that’s seven years of bad luck,” Amy says.) Sharon put some mastic on the back of the pieces and placed them on the wall.

Something broken making something new.

“It’s almost like doing a puzzle,” Amy said. Her mom’s creativity was striking. It caught the eye of Bob and Gail Cassilly, who were preparing to open the City Museum in 1997. They were dining at the cafe and asked Sharon if she would like to decorate five concrete columns in their new space.

She came on board and asked Amy to join her.

Together, they created designs that covered tens of thousands of square feet. Amy tried to get her mom to wear safety goggles and gloves, but she refused.

“I have to be able to touch it,” she said. She needed to feel the glass, the tile, the mirrors, even if a wrong move could slice her hands.

Amy saw how the lye from the grout damaged her mother’s hands. Spending endless hours on the concrete floors meant her body hurt all the time. But she would put her headphones on, listen to Joan Baez sing folk songs, and tune out the thousands of children running around the museum while she worked.

Once, as she was trying to apply mirror work inside the aquarium, she lost her balance and fell in. That’s when the museum created a place for her in Art City, where she could create crafts with the young visitors, one of whom might start their own wayward journey to art.

Sharon retired in 2019 after 22 years.

She never made much money, Amy said, always undercharging for her work. The 1909 house Sharon lived in for more than four decades has siding falling off one side and the bedroom floor is patched Masonite.

It didn’t bother her.

“She was a martyr of mosaics and giving,” Amy said.

In those last weeks, when her mom had moments of clarity, Amy read some of the messages from her fans. Four days after Amy had posted, Sharon said goodbye.

Her daughter, who had crouched next to her mom on the museum floor at the very beginning, was sitting right by her side at the very end.