Bright Yellow Flashdance Sweatshirt

Some days you just have to wear a bright yellow Flashdance sweatshirt.

Some days you wake up with the full weight of adulthood on your chest. It sits there and idly spins your brain like a coin on a table while it waits for its coffee. It etches the graffiti on your face a little bit deeper and highlights your hair with its silver spray paint. It makes gruesome faces at you and taunts you about all you have yet to accomplish while it plays keepaway with your confidence. Some days before you even throw back the covers, you find yourself out of breath, near tears and ready to sit down to in the dirt and wait for someone bigger, more capable to save you from this bully.

So what do you do? You close your eyes and say your prayers. You take your mental list of worries and ask for help, for patience, for remembrance. You picture the people you know who are sick and hurting and who have somehow lost their way and you ask for blessings for them. You picture the people you know who have chosen to hurt, to blame, to destroy and you ask for blessings for them, too. You draw up your bucket of shame, regret, disappointment from the deepest well where it hides and you ask for forgiveness and for new opportunities. Most importantly, you scan the horizon of your life, you empty your pockets of treasure, you lift the stones and turn over the dirt, you check the dark corners and behind the sofa and you say thank you for all that you have. And you say thank you again for things you might have forgotten, for things you mis-categorized, for things you have yet to receive. You draw a deep breath and you say thank you for that, too. And then you throw open the covers, like opening a new book that you will write today.

Some days you wake up and the complexity of life hits you. You count up all of your years and you wonder how it is you can feel so old and weary and so young and ill-prepared all at the same time. You count up all of your weeks and wonder where the last two seasons of your life went. You count up all of your days and you wonder what you have been doing that took so long. You count up your hours ahead and wonder how you can get it all done. You count up your minutes and wonder if you can still hit snooze.

So what do you do? You stop counting. You stop keeping score. You tell that siren, the snooze button, "Not today." You start moving. You realize that all of those years, those lost weeks, those forgotten days, those misplaced hours, those scattering minutes have brought you to now. And now is all you have. This now and the next now and the one after that. You take this now and fill it with something good, something right, something productive, something useful. You'll worry about the next now when it comes. Which is now and you get to choose all over again. You realize that the only place you live is right here. The only place you will ever be is with yourself in this moment. You'll do this now, now. Next you'll do the next now. And the rest can repose in its past and its future and wait its turn.

Some days you need some help with this. Some days it's coffee in your cup. Some days it's a smile from a friend. Some days it's a note in the mail. Some days it's inexplicably a box of fingernails on the sidewalk or the sight of an ancient couple laughing together in their car. Some days it's an alarm, a fire to put out. Some days it's a significant loss that reminds you of all you have.

Some days you just have to wear a bright yellow Flashdance sweatshirt. The one that makes you giggle when it slips off your shoulder because it reminds you of how you thought that was the sexiest thing in the world before you even knew what sexy meant. Because it is so bright and not your color and that's funny. Because in the wearing, it reminds you that your mother hates it but you can wear it anyway because you're plenty old enough to choose your own clothes. Because in the wearing, it reminds you of a time when you were young and longed for this day when you would be grown up, no one to answer to but yourself, no one to tell you what to do, no one to impress. Because it makes you smile and brings back youth, because it bucks convention of any responsible sort, because it asserts your ridiculous adulthood and because it's oddly comforting.

Some days you just have to wear it on the outside to remember the things on the inside. Some days you fight  the overwhelming tides of life with disreputable pants, mismatched socks and a sweatshirt that by all rights, should never have existed.

Some days you just have to wear a bright yellow Flashdance sweatshirt.

Fashion Tips From the Periphery

It may come as a surprise to you, gentle readers, that I am a bit of a fashion maven. I have deemed it both necessary and charitable of me to share some of my fashion tips. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

For formal dress occasions:

- If you should, in a fit of purse straightening, inadvertently snag your nipple atop the neckline of your ill-fitting, second-hand formal gown and then proceed to grin around making small talk with assorted acquaintances who mysteriously will not make eye-contact with you, simply remove yourself quietly to behind a large potted plant and make the necessary adjustments. It is also helpful to compile a mental list of those with whom you've spoken since you last adjusted your purse and resolve never to speak to them again.

- If, while attending a semi-formal cocktail party full of people who intimidate you, the heel should fall off of one of your 12 year old, 100% plastic platform boots, simply shove the errant heel into your handbag and proceed to tiptoe on that one foot in a height approximating that of the intact boot. If someone should happen to notice the horrid scraping, clunking, hollow plastic sound your foot is making or your uneven gait, startle them speechless by whipping the heel out of your handbag and introducing them to the intricacies of the innards of bargain footwear.

- If you are attending a wedding and wearing gorgeous Italian leather stilettos for the first time since giving birth, and you should happen to inadvertently wedge your heel into the floorboards of the elegant front porch of the bed and breakfast, make sure you mother-in-law is standing near you to catch the baby who flies projectile-style out of your arms as you lurch forward, tearing your gorgeous shoe and your new Chinese silk brocade pants.

Business attire:

- Be sure to remove your adult-sized mittens-on-a-string from the sleeves of your coat before gesticulating wildly about where "we" will put the hors d'ouevre bar. The representatives of major business interests and city council members to whom you are trying to pitch the event may find the swaying mittens dangling from the sleeves of your cashmere coat distracting and/or mesmerizing.

- In some circles, plastic spray-painted mini skirts with red snakeskin platform loafers are not considered proper business attire. Those circles tend to be a little uptight, in my humble opinion, but they also may call your boss to make passive-aggressive observations about the "creativity" of your clothes. Simply make note of this and absolutely do not, under any circumstances comment on the client's regrettable plastic surgery the next time you meet with her.

Casual, about the town:

- Should you decide to wear your favorite regular-person tights while nine months pregnant with a 10 lb. baby, dispose of said tights before the baby in question is a year old. If you should forget to do this and happen to be crossing a busy intersection with hands full of stroller, groceries and toddler when the tights fall to your knees, simply hold your head high and saunter on your way (as best you can with tights around your knees) until you find a bus stop shelter in which to hike them up. If this should occur more than once, remove the tights immediately and dispose of them where ever you are. If this should occur more than twice, seek professional help.

- Should your voracious newborn decide to take an extra-long nap when they normally eat and you spray what may be a pint of milk out of your boob, through your shirt and onto an innocent bystander, hope and pray the innocent bystander is a kind and gentle soul who thinks breast milk is wonderful. Also, a jaunty scarf made of some sort of dark, waterproof material can distract from unsightly wet spots down the front of your shirt.

- If you purchase and wear the ever-stylish pre-distressed jeans that are sold at Goodwill and other fine thrift establishments, it is highly recommended that you accompany them with interesting (or at least clean) underwear in the event of unexpected rippage (this usually occurs when engaged in activities such as wrestling a stray monkey into a car seat, squatting to pick up groceries from an overturned cart, or sitting on one of those tiny little elementary school sized chairs in front of 28 first graders. It also happens with little or no warning to the wearer.)

- Bowler hats totally go with overalls for almost any occasion and don't let anyone tell you differently.

Earning My Stripes

The other day at the park, there were a group of mothers with toddlers who looked to be about 15-18 months. That wonderfully dangerous age where they are suddenly mobile, but lack the sense to know exactly how to use this new-found freedom. While I was sitting on a bench, knitting a Sounders scarf for my husband and keeping my third eye on my monkeys, the toddler-moms were trying to have a conversation with each other about baby food making and the best walking shoes in between smelling bottoms, hovering near the end of the slide, and snatching wobbly little legs from the edges of things.

I caught a few sidelong glances from the moms and double checked that my own little playground monkeys were being careful around the wee ones. No problems there today. I figured I'd imagined the glances and went back to knitting. A few minutes later, as one of the moms scooped about a half a pound of sand out of her son's mouth for about the 67th time, she turned to me and said "When do we get to knit?!"

I remember all too well the hovercraft days. My wee hooligan ate so much dirt as a toddler, the doctor wanted him tested for Pica (turns out he was just suffering from an acute case of being two.) My J-Bird was born independent and out-going and would toddle off to chat with whomever was around, no matter where we went; often inviting them to our house or giving them our phone number that she had so proudly memorized. I remember not being able to finish a sentence before having to sprint over and catch one or the other of them standing at the top of the big slide, leaning their out-sized heads out over the void. One trip to the pumpkin patch a few years ago, while I was helping Jane struggle with the pumpkin cutting shears taller than she was, I heard the sweetest little voice behind me say softly: "Deee-wicious!" I turned just in time to see Joe taking a huge bite of the dirt clod he was holding. IT WAS AN ORGANIC PUMPKIN FARM! Do you know what they use to fertilize their fields?!

I remember viciously envying the moms with clean hair and jeans that fit. I remember fashioning a diaper out of public restroom paper towels.  I remember how giant and wild and solid and careening the 4-year-olds at the park looked compared to my little bowlegged adventurers. I remember unceremoniously scooping up squirming masses of legs and elbows and hoofing it out of Dodge before all three of us burst into tears of exhaustion and frustration.

And suddenly, I realized I was remembering this stuff. These things were no longer a part of my day to day existence. I have no idea now what baby food mills are the best on the market or what shoes are good for early walkers, but there was a time in the not-so-distant past when those very things occupied a great deal of my mental energy and precious free time. My monkeys and I have moved on to new preoccupations now that will eventually become irrelevant as well.

There are days that seem like they are 107 years long. Some nights, even longer. There are moments when you think you might just lie down in the sand box and kick and scream along with them. And there are definitely times when you think you will subsist the rest of your life on discarded Goldfish crackers, crusts of rejected sandwiches and 16 gallons of coffee a day; that the rest of your life you are destined to make small talk about bodily functions; that you will never again be witty or intelligent because perhaps half your brain cells exited through your birth canal. But suddenly one day, you're sitting at the park with freshly washed hair, knitting a scarf while your monkeys play nicely on their own two legs and sipping a cup of coffee for its flavor instead of gulping it for its restorative properties and taking a moment to enjoy the sunshine and the scenery.

 I'm nowhere near done parenting yet. Not even halfway. I could strangle every person who says "Oh, they grow up so fast!". But this sudden bit of perspective, provided in the plaintive question from a frazzled mom - "When do we get to knit?!"- reminded me that nothing is forever, even when it feels like it might be. We just keep trudging, skipping, catching, playing, changing, wiping, yawning, crying, laughing through these days, one after another until suddenly we find ourselves on the other side of something.

That day at the park, I changed colors on the stripes I was knitting, tried my very hardest not to look smug, and smiled as I told her "Sooner than you think."