New and Used Friday Round-Up

I wasn’t sure, but it turned out I did actually snip the Goodwill tag off my new vest before sitting with my back to a bunch of people at this morning’s conference workshop. I wondered about it, wondered if a kind soul would gently let me know that my tag, $5.99, was dangling from the left armhole, or would folks just let me flit around all morning like Minnie Pearl? I’ve done that – ignored an obvious mishap in someone’s clothing situation – but I’ve reformed. Last week, I told the featured speaker at a press conference that I needed to fix his jacket collar. He laughed and said no one had done that since his mother died and I told him I was filling in for his mom. She would want his collar to sit right and for me not to wander around with a price tag on my vest.

I bought the vest yesterday at Goodwill – kind of a brocade patterned thing – because my dress clothes are from 1956. My entire life now is about jeans, skinny or boot cut, boots, sweaters, and hoodies. In summer, it changes up a wee bit to lighter pants and Birkenstocks. I own a ton of dress pants, but I’ve lost track whether they’re in fashion or not, and my blazers make me look like a used car salesman. Hence, the new vest or new to me, pre-owned vest. Someone paid more than $5.99 for it originally, that’s all I can say, so it’s nice. And it got me through the morning without looking like a throwback to the Land Before Time.

We went to an exhibit at the art museum of floral arrangements constructed to represent famous paintings. There were swarms of people buzzing from one arrangement to the next to take endless pictures with their phones and we joined them because, look at the picture – how could we not? But it took not long for me to want to run outside where the grass is still brown, and it has been raining or snowing all week. I’ve only so much museum in me. Then we happened on a small, out of the way exhibit of pottery and furniture made by African Americans, most enslaved and some freed, each piece with an explanation of its history and an accompanying painting of the artist’s milieu done by a local contemporary painter. Away from the madding crowd, as it were.

This morning I saw someone I used to have a crush on, and he had shrunk to half the size he’d been back then. I stared. There was the same face, the same smile, maybe he had dimples, I don’t remember. He was quite a compelling looking man many years ago. And he was still but only, I think, if you also knew him back then and could see the shadow image of his younger self outlined behind his now very small self. It was a trip, as we used to say. It was him, though. He was wearing a name tag.

Age itself is a trip. I am astonished at how old I am. I say it out loud a lot, often thinking that whoever I’m talking to will argue with me. ‘Oh no, you must be teasing me. You can’t possibly be that old.’ But that never happens. So, I decide to wear it, own it, as they say. Even in the midst of my own astonishment, I say to myself when I walk into a place where it matters – Be your tallest self, Jan. And when I do that, my age starts being a badge of honor rather than a cause for surprise or mourning. I’m a big believer in self-talk. This particular back and forth is the most frequent conversations going on in my head.