About Me

My photo
Learning and trying to be kind and living my life as fully as I can stand it.

Friday, February 10, 2017

5 of 40

My new favorite sweater is not new--I've had it for a few years. It's baby blue, baby soft cashmere. Crew neck, preppy, pretty-Mommy, East Coast. Burberrry so fancy and high-quality. And full of holes.

The holes are not intentional. Well, the moths who made them intended to do so but I mean they're not part of the original design. That probably goes without saying as I don't think I've ever seen a spider-web, loose-knit cashmere sweater before. Actually as soon as I wrote "loose-knit" I could picture it and I bet they're out there. I digress.

I bought this sweater at Divine Design with my friend Maria, several years ago. My memory counting backwards in an attempt to place any event in actual time gets extremely foggy--I can barely remember my own wedding anniversary because the past several years have been so bizarre that the two thousand tens all blur together. But my last Divine Design trip was pre-kids for sure, and pre-marriage. Not pre-man-who-is-now-my-husband though that's where I get confused. I remember the two of us travelling down to LA together but I don't remember going down without him. So the sweater is around five to seven years old.

Divine Design was a fundraiser that Project Angel Food held every December in an old department store near a hotel where they hold award shows in LA. Held over a three-day weekend the discounts got deeper each day, down to 75% by the third day. They had everything--lingerie, evening gowns, fur coats, denim, floaty Bohemian sundresses and tunics, club outfits, baby clothes. One year we left with a Vera Wang wedding gown, tagged with the wrong size and unbelievably inexpensive. The prospect of being a weird single girl with a wedding dress hanging in her closet was discussed as a major deterrent to the purchase but the deal was so good we couldn't pass it up.

Maria and I usually went on the second day when everything was 50% off. Designers donated their wares and the rest of us got to pour in through the front doors, eager to find amazing deals. Mostly women, though they carried men's clothes and furniture too, some of us tried on clothes in the make-shift aisles if we didn't feel like waiting in line to stand in the circus-tent dressing room in the center of it all. The mood under the tent was congenial, all of us looking frankly or sidelong at the others, peeping possible steals as others tried them on, admiring or judging naked or almost-naked bodies as we stood together as women of all ages and skin tones. We went a few years in a row--it was a not-to-be-missed event--and I always walked away with a wide array of colors and styles, reflecting my eclectic and undecided style.

All the proceeds went to Project Angel Food--an organization committed to bringing meals to people left house-bound by HIV/AIDS or cancer. For some reason they always had a huge Barbie display, which was always hard for me to resist but which I always managed to resist because I wanted to save my money for clothes.

It was the perfect shopping event--super sale, fancy designer clothes and all the money went to charity anyway so on those items where you might be sitting on the fence due to price or implausibility, you got kicked over to the Buy side of things easily and almost every time.

The year I bought the Burberry I think I also walked away with a floor-length evening gown among other things. I wore the sweater a couple times to work but that was it. I always liked it when I wore it but I inevitably spilled coffee or food on myself or did something else to it that necessitated taking it to the cleaners. So it usually sat in the dirty clothes bag or folded up under some other sweaters, waiting to be remembered.

And then one year it got discovered by moths who recognized its superior quality and munched happily away on it I was so bummed when I found it because it is such a beautiful sweater. Was. I couldn't bear to throw it away and I didn't know if I could donate it, since it had so many holes. So again it sat, unworn, waiting for someone or something to change its fate.

One day recently I found it again and held it up, trying to figure out what to do with it. And then I put it on, because it was warm and so, so cozy. Soft as a dream. Gorgeous. And I kept wearing it, mostly at home but more and more I'm wearing it out of the house. To yoga or to the doctor's office. Now that it is ruined I can enjoy it worry-free. I don't think I've spilled on it once. And it feels like I'm treating myself because it feels so damn good.

Now one of my new goals is to start allowing myself to enjoy things like that, full-out, even when they're not full of holes. Wow. Revolutionary.

No comments:

Post a Comment