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I go to bed with frost in the morning forecast. After the brutally hot and humid summer we've had, I am delighted to awaken to a chilly morning. Shivering in my PJs, I look for something to wear. Scanning the options in my bedroom closet, I accept it is time to pull out the fall and winter clothes. I go to my spare bedroom and slide open the closet door. Hanging there is the sum total of my cold weather wardrobe: four sweaters and two sweatshirts. As with my shoes, I will have to employ carbon dating to determine the age of these items. They probably aren’t in style any longer, but then I remind myself neither are old people, social courtesies and democracy. I used to be a working, socializing gal. Surely this can’t be all the clothing I own. I dig into old dresser drawers and scour every closet and shelf only to find it is true. COVID ushered in a style change that defied the seasons and became permanent. COVID came just in time to save me from the Spanx/shapewear movement—another life threatening cause of shortness of breath. Sweat pants, blue jeans, and t-shirts are my all-seasons, all-occasion wardrobe. And speaking of sweat, I am pretty sure sweat is glitter for people. That’s about all the accessorizing and sparkle I have left in me these days. While I sometimes long for adventure or at least a special occasion, looking at my wardrobe, I am relieved by the lack of invitations. My wardrobe is strictly casual, and when I say casual, I mean I could sleep comfortably in anything hanging in my closet. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about the prom this year. A couple of years ago, post-COVID, I did get the idea that I might want to shop, see what’s in style. I hit the strip mall with all the popular women’s clothiers. I walked into the first store and discovered that a t-shirt cost $60.00. I walked out. I found the same thing next door. With no real reason to shop and no small fortune to spend, I abandoned my updating efforts. If people can refuse to return to the office post-COVID, I can refuse to shop. I will work the stuff I have at home thank you very much. And as to “style,” I am not sure what might be in style or if “in style” is even a thing any longer. When I step out in public I can’t really distinguish social class or occasion from the way people dress save for the wealthiest who I spot out for a morning stroll at 10 AM decked out in high-end gym clothes that actually look like the aforementioned shapewear complemented by some expensive jewelry and an equally expensive breed of dog on a leash. Turns out the new work from home movement is a coming out party for underwear and pure bred canines. So disconnected am I from the social scene, I have to ponder what a special occasion might be for me, one that would require special clothing, and then I say a prayer of gratitude that I will never again have to wear pantyhose. While they were a great improvement over nylon stockings and garter belts, they came with their own unpleasant side effects. And really, does anyone even make pantyhose anymore? I don’t see those cute little plastic eggs on display in any store in which I shop. Maybe a leg wax and pedicure are now mandatory. Seems like a lot more time and expense for such a temporary purchase. Yet another reason to stay home and watch other people exercise on YouTube. At my age I suspect I have only two special occasions left in me. I could get arrested, but I’ve seen plenty of mug shots. I am confident I can pull together that look from what I already own. The second special occasion that still awaits me is a trip to the morgue. I am pretty sure my wrinkled old birthday suit will get me past the bouncer.
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I am beginning to suspect that good hygiene has been my downfall, my kryptonite, the real reason I did not live an accomplished life outside my own four walls. It took retirement to shine the spotlight on what should have been obvious much earlier: I am a powerhouse in my pajamas but once I stop to take a shower and get dressed, I’m like Samson with a fresh haircut--my superpowers fall into the waste bin, gone in a snip. I can leap tall buildings (or at least a high mattress) with a single bound when I awaken in the morning. I fire up the computer and turn on the day. I make my bed. I straighten up my entire apartment and put away the dishes. I water the plants. I check the refrigerator for aged leftovers and wrap up the remains for the trash. I wipe down the bathroom sink and empty the trash can. I replace the toilet paper roll and put out a clean hand towel. I clean out my purse and check my change for valuable coins. I do my squats, lunges, pushups, wall squats, planks, and sit-to-stand exercises. I say my prayers. I pay my online bills and write cards to far away friends. I sort the laundry with actual care, checking the pockets for rogue Kleenex and gum wrappers carried home from use during my morning walks. I contemplate what else I can do with the day. And then it’s 8:30 AM, and I eat breakfast. I am completely comfortable and relaxed in my PJs. No tight waistband. No irritating fabric. No shoes Nothing to tug at me or to irritate my flesh or my nerves. No looking in the mirror to put the focus on how I look instead of what I can do. I am so happy in my pajamas that I am sure that if I actually encountered someone that I would be the kindest version of myself which gets me to thinking of soldiers sleeping all night in trenches waking in their combat fatigues ready for battle. Could my PJs be my compassion fatigues? Am I too old to save the world? I think back to my childhood when my younger sister was a preschooler. My mother would say “brush your hair” to which my sister would reply “Why? I’m not going anywhere.” Preschoolers have this down. No wonder they kick and scream when forced to dress. We lose something with age, but I am getting it back! The beauty of retirement is that I can spend all day in my PJs. I can answer the door at three o’clock in the afternoon dressed in my pajamas, sporting bedhead and morning breath and people will just shrug and say, “Old people.” With the general state of our couture, maybe we can get away with wearing our compassion fatigues in public. Comfortable old people changing the world! There is one minor but important exception: if you sleep in the nude, you might what to call that outfit your passion fatigues and do your work from home. After Dr. Seuss, Dr. Rick is my favorite doctor. Dr. Rick looks like a high school math teacher and employs the same firm approach to his difficult subject. He holds seminars and takes his students on field trips to practice applying their knowledge. Sure, Dr. Rick is a Progressive, but I think anyone over the age of 40 can agree with his mission: keeping young homeowners from turning into their parents. I have seen myself and my friends in his students: trying to find the silent button on a smart phone, or coming to the seminar with printed driving directions, or wondering, “Was I hash-tagging?” I and my friends are guilty of the Live, Love, Laugh signs, yard gnomes, and too many pillows. And how many of the same t-shirts do I own? I know about coat wrangling, wishing for paper tickets at the airport, worrying about how I will get out of the parking lot before I get inside the arena, and how to pronounce q-u-i-n-o-a? I love this visual proof that I am not alone, that our shared humanity includes naiveté at every stage of life. Even as older adults, we have our moments in which we are like innocent preschoolers playing dress-up, trying on dad’s shoes or mom’s apron. The commercials remind us that sometimes adults must feign being “big” too as in Dr. Rick’s case examples, trying to be knowledgeable and experienced homeowners. When we were young, it seemed that our parents were all-knowing and without doubts. I grew up assuming there was some type of “grown-up” switch that when activated, a child became an all-knowing, capable adult. I never thought for a moment that my parents might not know what they were doing! I didn’t realize that they had to negotiate their learning curves too. And that they may have lived with regrets for purchases and decisions made. When we think of growing older, we picture the graying hair, sagging skin, a little arthritis maybe. We never imagine the subtle ways in which we age, the ways in which life can leave us behind: adapting to new technology, our outdated home décor and wardrobes, the things we talk about and who we talk to, and our general loss of confidence in how things work. These Progressive Insurance commercials were introduced in April 2020 during the pandemic, a time of global strain when we had our doubts that anyone anywhere knew what they were doing. Perhaps we are there again. Never has there been a time in my lifespan when we’ve needed to laugh at ourselves more and to recognize our shared humanity and our foibles. That would be progress! I guess there are things left to learn at any age. Thanks, Dr. Rick, for not giving up on us! And please, someone let me know when Netflix turns these commercials into a series. I’ve lost my TV Guide. Nothing like a family funeral to sow salt powder into the clouds. Everyone does their duty--puts on their funeral clothes and somber faces, fills their pockets with clichés: "I am sorry for your loss,” or “They’re in a better place.” Duties are done, flowers are ordered, donations are made but old hurts are awakened and they simmer as they keep the phone lines open: “Do you remember when…” As I near the peak of life expectancy, I can’t believe this is still going on--even in me and my own extended family. It seems to me that, by now, we are all older and should have some life experience and perspective. We’ve all been through stuff. Hard stuff. When we hope for understanding and acceptance, why is it so hard to give? Looking back, maybe that aunt wasn’t rude; maybe she was just painfully shy to the point of avoidance. Maybe an aunt literally shopped ‘til she dropped to keep memories of a savage beating in a public square at bay. Maybe the cousin who couldn’t hold a job wasn’t just a loser. Maybe he was a kid overwhelmed on the inside by a frantic level of anxiety and ADHD as he tried to negotiate life in a family so busy that they invented the word frenzied. Maybe the jovial aunt WAS funny, but she was also cruel and hot-tempered at times--and maybe a bit too often. Maybe the uncle with the bad temper wasn’t mad at the world. Maybe he was stuck in a grief that had overwhelmed him since childhood. Maybe a cousin wasn’t just an addict, maybe he drank to medicate horrific memories of losses that time would not heal. On earth, we are all flawed humans. Maybe we invented the idea of heaven because we all desire to be better, perfect even, and we know we just can’t do it on our own. The promise of the after-life is that we will be made perfect, but what is this perfection that gives us hope? Do we expect all of the manufacturing flaws that burdened us on earth to be erased? I wonder about that version of heaven and of God. Maybe heaven is heavenly because we surrender our defenses at the gate. Once inside, we won’t need them anymore because, just maybe, in heaven, the streets are not lined with gold, but our hearts are lined with mercy, mercy for ourselves and for each other. When I was a freshman in high school, I had to memorize “The Quality of Mercy” from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The words come back to me now: The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Tis the mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown… It is an attribute to God himself. At this personal moment and in these stormy times, we could us a gentle rain…Lord, have mercy. She’s my little deuce coupe. You don’t know what I’ve got. – The Beach Boys
My old car shakes and rattles as it rolls. Despite good maintenance, I cannot undo the damage done by that exhausting passenger Time. For the many practical and financial reasons we all know, I dread the day a mechanic says, “She’s gone. There was nothing more we could do to save her.” As my old coupe edges closer to the graveyard, I feel a swell of fondness for her. This anticipatory grief leads me to wonder: when do things, people, places, and experiences cease to be new? What is the turning point at which they lose their sparkle? When we begin to take them for granted and pursue something else? When we lose enthusiasm for their care and curse the burden maintenance has become? When we buy into all of the advertising that new is always better? At other moments in my life when faced with loss or change, I have thought that if a genie popped out of my teapot and granted me one wish, my wish would be to see things again as for the first time and re-experience the wonder and the delight when those things were new and were mine at last. Today and during this difficult period in which we are living, I am going to do my best to not wait for the genie. I am going to challenge myself to try seeing people, places, things, and experiences again for the first time--before they are gone, before I write the eulogy. If I can’t make them new maybe I can reinvigorate my memories. Today when I get into my old car I will remember the day I drove it off the new car lot. I will picture all of the adventures in between that day and this: college visits with my children, filling the car with Christmas trees and Christmas presents, a million trips to the grocery store, friends who filled the passenger seats, trips across the country where I made new friends, listening to NPR and singing along to classic Motown CDs. I will bless the old coupe for the thousands of safe rides here and there and back home again. At 69, my own weary frame now rattles, weary from the miles I’ve traveled, from the bumps in the road and the shocks absorbed. To remember and to treat ourselves, our things, our places, our work, our people as though they were new is to experience and to express the deepest form of gratitude and to spare ourselves regret. I guess the miles and the people and the experiences are woven into the fabric of me. Maybe I don’t want to untie all of those threads and start over with everything new. Can we really make things “good as new” when time has already made them better? Back to the shoes…
Now that my fingers do most of the walking, my feet are having a word. That word is “No!” My feet have gotten louder and more opinionated as I age--nothing like six-plus decades of weight-bearing to embolden sagging arches. Now, my feet stage a daily coup against cramped, harsh quarters. They don’t want to be cute or trendy they say. They demand their right to be comfortable. So, I traded in my heels, pointed-toe flats, and trendy boots for new athletic shoes. The moment I tried them on, the ecstasy was X-rated. The salesperson had to lower the blinds and close the store to other customers. I was born again! Comfort, bounce, and lift are the holy trinity of my new religion. And just when I thought it couldn’t get better, along came slip-on athletic shoes! I didn’t even know that was possible. Lives have been changed. Someone deserves the Nobel Prize in Physics for this quantum leap in footwear. Let’s face it; we’ve got enough other reasons to be tied in knots. We don’t need our shoes resisting us too. I would call my new shoes a big bang for the buck--expensive but worth the dough. When I put on my new athletic shoes, the universe expands. No longer am I a body at rest. I eagerly defy gravity by getting up from the couch. My spreading mass is exchanged for energy proving the theory of relativity and that I am much smarter when my feet don’t hurt. Who knows, there just might be a little Einstein in each of us. Get the shoes and see for yourselves. A prisoner of winter and freezing temperatures, I take to cleaning out the closets for physical activity. Every time I engage in this effort, I ask myself, “Why am I still holding onto this stuff?” Then I toss out .01% and congratulate myself. Despite the thousands of times I have been through this effort, I manage to convince myself that what I am discarding is “enough for now.” I tell myself that I might “need” the remaining stuff “someday.” The fact that I am 68 years old is leaving me with less and less “somedays,” but I ignore the math, and then I congratulate myself on being an optimist, a personality trait for which no one who knows me ever gives me enough credit. In my wardrobe closet there is a row of shoes that I haven’t worn in years. I need a carbon dating system to recall the years of purchase. There are some jeans in there that I purchased in 2010 and haven’t worn much since. For some reason, I keep these items “just in case.” In case of what I wonder as I stare them down for the millionth time. Maybe in case the daily news isn’t torture enough. Working people seem to love their blue jeans. They can’t wait for a jeans day at work. Jeans symbolize down time, me time, free time. Somehow wearing jeans to work can make work seem like, well, not work, like folks chose to come in and hang out on their own time. A Friday jeans day and you’ve got a long weekend. Not me. I’ve never had that kind of relationship with jeans. Somehow they never seem to feel quite right despite so many style options. And when I say “quite right,” I mean wearable. And does anyone just slip into a pair of jeans anymore? Seems more like a wrestling match thanks to both style and spandex. I guess my mother’s critique of clothes worn too tight stuck with me: “Those clothes look painted on” or “they look like a stuffed sausage in that outfit.” Thankfully, my mother did not live to see jeggings. It would have killed her or caused her to go blind. Allegedly, jeans “go with everything.” You can pair them with high heels or strappy sandals, blazers and silk blouses, expensive jewelry. Maybe. If you are the size of a Barbie doll. But my Barbie never wore jeans, and I always loved her. And my other idol, Nancy Drew was never described as wearing jeans. Instead, she slipped into a speedy roadster for a life of adventure. Take that Levi! Perhaps I just didn’t get the gene for jeans. I didn’t get the gene for high fashion either. Karl Lagerfeld, the famous fashion icon, said “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.” It hurts to admit it, but yes, that’s me. I guess I just gave up too soon—sometime in childhood I must have thought haute couture was the French pastry responsible for making jeans too tight. If I am ever convicted of a crime, I won’t need prison. Put me in a pair of jeans and call it solitary confinement. I won’t be able to move, eat, or breathe. In addition, I will have the mental torture of thinking of nothing more than how miserable I am. The authorities won’t have to worry about me causing a prison brawl. All I will be able to do is roll with the punches. Maybe the Geneva Convention prohibits prisoners from wearing jeans and that’s why they get the comfy orange jumpsuits. The only thing I can say in favor of jeans is that the holes, shredded fabric, and faded spots do hide a lot of laundry failures and mistakes, but that’s not me either. I am a pro at laundry. It has been my life’s work. Thank you very much. And yet, here I am, standing in the closet holding onto the jeans just in case “someday” I am an undefeated, tall, thin, high-fashion model. It could happen… I save the shoes for another day. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
November 2025
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