The Fruitcake of Fashion

Getting dressed is often the biggest challenge of my day. I drastically change sizes every few years, so only about one-third of what’s in my closet fits at any given moment. I can’t bear to discard anything, so I frequently put on clothes only to find an unacceptable stain or hole. Inexplicably, I take the offending item off and put it back in the closet. I have few pairs of pants, because I only like to buy them if they fit my five-foot-nothing frame without needing to be altered. To compensate, I have plenty of skirts, but if I’ve forgotten to shave my legs the short ones are ruled out.

The past week has added another hitch to my daily dilemma: office holiday parties. Not the kind where you bring your spouse to the country club, the kind where the whole department goes out for a long lunch in the middle of the day. My work intersects with multiple departments, so this year I was invited to five of them. And despite my inner cynic, I look forward to these things and the excuse to don some gay apparel.

And so as I was standing in my closet, trying to come up with yet another festive outfit, I had a horrific realization about that fashion equivalent of the fruitcake: the Christmas sweater. I’d always thought that people who wear them—usually women of a certain age—are just born with bad taste. Or succumb too easily to advertising messages. But I’m starting to think it could happen to any of us.

As a twenty-something, festive clothing meant black velvet and red satin. Usually a little cleavage. Maybe even some sparkle. Fun stuff. All of that is still in my closet, some of it fits, but none of it is remotely appropriate for lunch at the office. So this morning I found myself thinking, “If only I had something festive but not at all sexy. Like one of those Christmas sweaters.” Suddenly the room spun around I wondered what kind of sick person put that thought there. Is it inevitable? Does the ticking of the biological clock also reduce my December clothing choices to bah humbug or crazy cat lady?

At last, I found a groovy gauzy blouse in the back of my closet that happens to have a lot of red in it. Paired it with green cargo pants. Dressed and ready for party number five, with no embroidered elves in sight. At least not for a few more years.

In MINI-morium

The guy from the body shop let me know in a voice mail. "Looks like your car will be a total loss." The accident that led up to this was relatively minor, so I was blindsided by the news. Even more unexpected, though was the awful feeling that flooded me. This whirlpool of disbelief, anger, sadness--wait a minute! This is grief! I'm feeling grief-stricken over a car?

As soon as I identified it, my first thought was to dismiss it. What kind of shallow idiot grieves for a machine? Cars don't last forever. They break. They're replaced. (We had, as a matter of fact, just replaced our other car with a late model hybrid.) Though all of that is true, it's also similar to the self-talk I've used to deny myself the right to mourn human beings.

I have been cultivating a belief in Buddhist understanding of impermanence. But as one not very far along on the path to enlightenment, I tend to draw the wrong conclusions. Like thinking I should be somehow less fazed by death and dying. Which then leads me to run away from the dying or the bereaved. Which isn't something I feel particularly good about.

Understanding that a person's life is no more or less permanent than an insect's, or a car's, or a planet's brings a certain amount of comfort--but it's not an either-or trade for the grief process. Feeling grief when someone dies is as natural and unavoidable as feeling pain when touching a hot stove. In the case of the stove, the pain tells us to back away and put ice on the burn. Grief reminds us of the precious connection between sentient beings and of the need for compassion.

I'm going to let myself grieve for my car. Our culture anthropomorphizes cars--we name them, we bathe them, spend several hours a day with them, we rely on them for our livelihood and our safety--why not mourn them? Maybe this will give me a little more courage the next time I'm faced with human death.

RIP Sunny the Mini