The Red Bag of Courage

It’s my favourite colour. The colour of passion, of life, of rage and the root chakra. Its palette ranges from shell pink to cabernet, but my favourite hue lies somewhere between crimson and garnet; a rich, sanguine, luscious red, deeper than ruby but brighter then blood.

While my hair was dyed fire engine red for years, I was not self-conscious about it, probably because I was standing underneath it and couldn’t see myself coming from half a block away. It never occurred that I might be brave to be so bold. I literally didn’t see it except in the mirror, and even then, my stylist is so adept at her art that the colour was stunning, never shocking.

I admire women who wear red, especially in coats, hats and/or shoes. My older sister has a red wool coat that looks absolutely awesome, but when I remarked on how cool she looked walking up the street, she replied that she felt like she was screaming for attention – something no one in my family (my hair antics notwithstanding) ever does deliberately. I assured her that she wasn’t as loud as she feared, it was the proximity to herself that lent the illusion. The same thing happens when I wear my Flyers jersey: no logo is larger than the one on my chest.

This past weekend, my sisters and I convened to sort through our dear mother’s clothes. Mum was always well-dressed, accenting a neutral outfit with a flashy scarf, a bit of bling, or a pretty cardigan. She wore lots of blue and green, cream and taupe. No black. No grey. Her cardies were mostly floral prints. There was not a lot of red in her wardrobe—yet she accessorized with it brilliantly.

A scarlet car coat hung in her closet. I pinched her crimson pashmina. My wee sis opened one of a dozen (I kid you not) shoeboxes and exclaimed, “Her Christmas shoes!”, a pair of low heeled pumps as red as the slippers of Oz. Mum wore them during the holidays. And then, the purse. The cavernous, multi-pocketed satchel that she carried with her on many a lunch date with Ter and me over the years. It’s red. Cardinal red. I’d have claimed it on the spot but didn’t, not because it’s neon bright, but because it’s far bigger than any bag I ever intend to carry. It’ll be a splendid addition to someone’s collection, though. Someone with the spot-on fashion sense my mother had.

At the end of the day, surrounded by boxes stuffed with sweaters, scarves and shoes, we reminisced with wonder about Mum’s style and my older sister observed, “She wasn’t afraid of colour.”

Mum was right. Be bold. Be brave. Wear red—and if you can’t wear it, accessorize!

The Hoodie Incident

People are funny, eh? You can never tell what drives someone to offer an opinion or observation, or a plainly idiotic statement. One thing is sure: our perceptions are coloured by our individual experience. Fear and prejudice can wring the most curious responses ... though, admittedly, some folks are simply out to create a reaction.

Take the hoodie incident.

When shopping for Ter’s birthday, I bought her a pair of silly socks from Sugar & Cotton. Since then, I’ve been getting promos from their site. Cool cutlery, pretty jewellery, glittery scarves ... and an asymmetrical hoodie that I think is awesome in a Star Wars, Sithy kind of way. (The Sith, for the sadly uninitiated, are the villains in a galaxy far, far away; villains to whom I am partial for reasons that yet elude rational explanation.) Each time I log into FB—which is not all that often—an ad for this hoodie pops up and finally, unable to resist the notion of sporting a functional garment given a wicked cool twist, I ordered one. In black, of course.

Then I noticed the FB comments. I pay little attention to reviews, choosing instead to trust my own sense of whether or not something is worth my time and/or money, but sprinkled among those comments of “love it!” or “can get it cheaper here” were a couple of scathing observations that likened this trendy runway item to, of all things, a birka. A birka? Seriously? I took a second to shake off that one, then caught further comments along similar lines. A sort of religious tussle almost ensued as people took sides ... arguing about radical Islam tainting fashion design.

Okay, maybe I’m missing something. I hope I would have a bit of an issue myself with a frivolous industry building on a practice that oppresses women. If I thought for an instant that the designer of this item was less a Star Wars fan and more a radical Islamic nutball, I probably wouldn’t have bought one. But I don’t think that. The possibility never even occurred to me. That it occurred to someone—anyone—else is a show of hypersensitivity that may either be connected to past experience, or it may just be a guy with a biased intent to cause an uproar.

I don’t live under a rock. I am aware of global events and social upheaval and cultural oppression and political hot potatoes ... yet when I saw this hoodie, all I thought was “Cool!” I didn’t dig deeper because I didn’t feel the need. You can call me shallow for missing what’s apparently obvious to others. You may call the dissenters socially conscious and applaud them, but if we all relax, we might also see this for what it really is:

A hoodie.

Wobbly Knees and Wonky Fingers

Now that summer has finally come out of the closet, so have the summer clothes. With those clothes come the perennial questions like: “How does a busty woman hide her bra straps under a sleeveless dress?” or “When do shorts become too-shorts?”

I practice being non-judgmental at the bus stop, but one must wonder what the plaid shorts/tropical print shirt combo was thinking, and I genuinely lament the days of the plain ponytail during the ongoing parade of modern-day “manbuns”. Mostly, though, I admire the sleek young women in flippy dresses and wispy sandals, their bare legs impossibly tanned. When in my 20s, despite the arthritis, my legs were long and straight, and looked pretty darned good in a short skirt. Nowadays, I have knobbly Grinch knees that make it comically ill-advised even to wear leggings, let alone dare a raised hem.

Fortunately, mid-calf still works on me, even if my ankles are a bit thicker and less flexible than they were 30 years ago.

Make no mistake—I don’t envy the gazelles in Gap garb; I had my time in miniskirts and heels. And I’ve grown fond of my crooked knees. After all, they’ve got a ton of mileage on them. My whole body is like that, actually: mid-century modern that’s held up pretty well, all things considered.

For someone who has spent decades at war with her compostable container, this is an impressively mature attitude. I used to fear the ravages of age, blithely unaware that those ravages were happening well in advance of my dotage via the aforementioned arthritis. Perhaps I sensed my golden years might be worse as a result; though I naively imagined that when the RA burned out, my bones would be magically restored to mint condition, I was purely bitter that no one thought to warn me I’d later have to deal with the damage done in my teens. Then there was my well-meaning but misguided notion that all the pre-emptive therapies I could foist upon myself would pre-empt more pain. So much for that.

I’ve always said that I don’t care what it looks like so long as it works, and while I may have been deceiving myself in my youth, this has become my truth in middle age. My recent quest to heal—or at least subdue—the angst of last winter has led me to a more compassionate view of my physical self. Now I can regard my wonky knees and gnarled knuckles with affection. My body has been to war and come out alive. Her swollen joints are a testament to survival, to a challenge met and ultimately defeated. Every day, she gets me from point A to B and beyond, sometimes with a side order of arg and sometimes nary a whimper, but the point is, she gets me where I want to go and will, I hope, continue doing so for as long as she has breath.

Gone are the days of mid-thigh skirts and silly shoes, but that’s okay. I own my scars. I’ve earned them.

Freedom 55

Today is Ter’s birthday. She doesn’t want a splashy celebration—just a quiet day with a road trip to Sidney-by-the-Sea and lunch out—but I may have given her the greatest gift ever.

Freedom.

See, she’s been my house elf since we discovered, courtesy of the Harry Potter stories, that such things exist. For countless years, Ter has ensured that I am fed, chauffeured, and generally cared for/catered to while I go about pursuing my own self interests. We joke about me being her master (yeah, right), and she plays at cowering whenever something goes hilariously awry and I give her The Look.

According to the Potter tales, house elves often punish themselves. It’s a perfect setup, really, as I don’t even have to slam her ears in the oven door. She’ll do it herself and spare me the effort.

Or, she did. Once. Before I accidentally freed her.

While dressing for work on Wednesday, I poked a toe through my sock. Switching feet sort of took care of the problem, but Ter refused to let me go the distance in faulty footwear. “Don’t you have another pair of black socks?”

I did, and I had to agree with her given that the heel of said sock was worn too thin to be comfortable in my shoe. She put out her hand as I balled up the pair in preparation to toss. “Give them to me,” she said.

Without thinking, I did.

As soon as she touched them and before I let them go, I felt it: A weird, ripple-in-the-Matrix kind of hiccup that alerted me—too late—to what I had done. Horrified, I gasped, “I think I just freed you!”

She stared back at me, equally appalled, and yet more quickly accepting. “Oh,” she said.

I struggled to find a loophole, but the rule is pretty clear. A house elf is freed when her master gives her an article of clothing. That’s why I don’t give Ter anything remotely resembling clothes, not even on laundry day. I’ll put her clean undies on the coffee table and tell her to pick them up, just in case.

I guess it’s no longer an issue.

The good news—I think—is that I’m a pretty good master and she’s been quite happy slaving away in my background. Still, as she carried my traitorous socks to the dustbin, she cheerfully declared, “Maybe we can negotiate a contract.”

I can already feel control changing hands …

Happy birthday, elf.

Clotheshorse

trying it on for size

Four days to go and the thing I dread most about going back to work is deciding what to wear. I’ve been in hoodies, jeans and sneakers for the past three weeks, with the infrequent foray into a brassiere for public appearances, but starting Monday, I’ll have dress up and do my hair and wear earrings and proper shoes and bother with makeup again. Ugh. So much work for so little return.

I do myself a disservice. I can look pretty snappy when I want to, and looking good does help to boost my self-confidence, but I cared so much more for fashion when I had better legs and no back problems. These days, my work wardrobe passes as “business casual” and I’m able to get away with wearing running shoes because I have chronic back problems; however, I am aware that the battered Nikes are closer to retirement than I am.

Shopping for clothes is a dismal endeavour. I see countless possibilities when I’m not in the market and can never find anything when I am. I went shopping earlier this week, walked into a store and promptly forgot what already hangs in my closet. It’s hard to match items when you can’t remember what you have to match them with! And thank the gods I had my cool inspector with me; I asked Ter if the tawny sweater I’d chosen would work on me and she swiftly recommended the oatmeal instead. Then we went to Mark’s because I’ve been hankering for a pair of their bottle green cords since last fall. I should have bought them then, but Christmas shopping took precedence and I hoped they’d go on sale after Boxing Day.

My size is average, which means there’s rarely anything available in my size. I hoot at tags reading “4/32” – that’s a size 4 with a 32 inch leg. I’m sorry, but anyone I know who’s size 4 with a 32 inch leg also has an eating disorder. Anyway, Ter found the bottle green cords, they were on sale, we located a pair in my size (that should have been my first hint), and off I went to try them on.

I was immediately cast back to my youth, when my wee sister and I would crowd into a change room together and get each other’s opinion. I remember once nearly being escorted from the store because we laughed so hard we almost peed ourselves. In the change room at Mark’s, I kicked off my sneaks, slipped out of my jeans, and immediately suspected something odd when my foot was almost too wide for the pant leg. A little persistence won out, mostly because I have fairly skinny legs, but once I was in and zipped up, I looked at my reflection and damn near cracked myself up.

I looked like nerdy Howard Wolowitz in Big Bang Theory, the engineer who is 30 years old and wears a boys’ “large”! I hadn’t noticed the label - the pants model was “curvy/skinny”, which means made for someone not built like the Grinch. So I peeled them off and gave up.

We were both in a wardrobe-enchancing mind, though. Ter picked up a gorgeous top that Moon Pie decided would work extremely well with his natty blue scarf … too bad it’s not in his size.