It is Thanksgiving Eve. I’m walking the short distance home from The Beanhouse in the dark. I wear an old army jacket because I don’t have a real jacket, a ladylike jacket, a grown-up jacket. This is Southern California, after all. I mean, what’s a jacket? And I like this jacket. It suits me, somehow. It’s khaki and too big and I like the way it holds me. My kind of face looks out of place in this kind of jacket and maybe I like that, too. I feel safe in this jacket. Comforted. I am someone else. Instinctively, I reach for this ragged thing when my life feels upside down. It never fails me, this jacket. It is faithful and warm and ugly.
Underneath the right-hand sleeve, there is a growing rip at the seam. I could mend it, I suppose, if I had khaki thread, but who has khaki thread? And I don’t really sew, anyway. I’ve looked in my sewing kit, halfheartedly: red, blue, pink, green, yellow, brown, black, white. No khaki. Guess you’re not supposed to have clothes this color; the sewing syndicate does not approve. Fine. I take some safety pins — I have a lot of those because I don’t sew — and thread them through, gently, barely grabbing fabric, building a line of little silver soldiers, quietly doing their job. On the outside of the sleeve you can see only the tiniest dots of pin. It’s not enough to bother me. I just let it be. Sometimes I turn the sleeve inside out and I look at that neat line of pins I made. Straighter, more solid than any stitches I could have sewn. I like how staunch they are. How they don’t question what they’re doing. How sometimes, when the jacket is on, I can feel one of them brushing up against my arm, a quick salute, then flattening against the fabric, at ease again.
So I wear this walking home, Thanksgiving Eve. The khaki droops nearly to my knees. But the little silver soldiers are there, holding me in, and the droop is generous. It covers things. The smear of whipped cream on the side of my pants. The cloud of cocoa powder on the sleeve of my shirt. The smell of old espresso and steamed milk mingling with sweaty tired skin.
The crisp air flickers at my cheeks, my hair, the leaves on the trees. I hear the pad-pad-pad of my ugly black shoes on the road. Horrible non-skid monsters that mock my dainty feet and I am vain about my dainty feet. The shoes are dutifully non-skid, it’s true, but they’re also painful, cruelly carving into the smooth curve of my arches. On top of it all there’s nothing interesting about their ugliness. No odd feature. No queer detail. Just run-of-the-mill lurching ugliness. They pad-pad-pad at me in the darkness and it sounds like disdain. My jacket, though, keeps its opinions to itself.
As I walk, I think about tomorrow, Thanksgiving. My parents’ house. My siblings with their kids and their successes and their new cars. I watch my feet, notice the stray splotch of dried whipped cream on one ugly non-skid shoe … there it is … there it is … there it is. I think of all the stories they’ll tell at the dinner table — who’s doing what, how well they’re doing it, how well everyone else thinks they’re doing it. I remember the hot shame on my cheeks when that lady said, “My! What a rich life you lead,†as I shuffled off to clean The Beanhouse bathroom …there it is … there it is …. there it is. I feel my heart burning — aching — with too much love for those kids. With that simmering sometime jealousy of my siblings …there it is … there it is … there it is. I cross the street and feel the familiar stabbing cramps that mean I’ll need a Midol when I get home.
Pad-pad-pad. Pad-pad-pad. I shove my hands deep into the pockets of my quiet jacket, relieved, I guess, that tomorrow, no one will ask me about this person I’ve become.
tracy, i was there with you. i walked with you through this post, and i appreciate how you have shared.
it doesn’t matter where we are in life, there is always someone who is in a richer place. but don’t lose sight of your own immense worth! He loves us all the same, right?
Melancholy. I so get it.
You described it so well. I loved the bit about the safety pins.
what a lucid picture you have drawn here. i can see it all with my mind’s eye and am especially happy to know you better.
beautiful, tracey.
Great post. Really well done.
You are a successful writer.
Yeah, but can those “richer life” people write like you? Or have the insights you do?
And Tracey – I know maybe you like the safety pins there on your coat…but if I lived near you? I’d offer to take it and mend it or patch it or whatever was necessary so the coat could keep going and keep you warm for many more years. I think I even have khaki thread. And if I didn’t I’d buy some, just to fix your jacket the right way.
“This person I’ve become” is, in your case, physically lovely, as well as sensitive, intelligent,and often funny. Your major flaw is, on bad or even Midol days, buying into the world’s idea of “success.” You are not in competition with your siblings or anyone else. You simply need to try to be the best Tracey you can be, thankful for the personal talents and gifts God has given you (which appear to me to exceed those which most people have been given), and accepting of those which He chose to withhold.
Tracey, another touching post.
And I agree with Dave…you have many gifts. It is hard to see them sometines, in the light of what we think is another person’s “success.”
True I don’t know your siblings. But as rich as you are in personality, humor, intelligence, warmth and thoughtfulness, I find it hard to believe they are “richer” than you in the things that really matter.
And one last thought…as much as you love those kids, you leave your mark upon their lives. They will be better for knowing you, and for having you love them. I realize that it does not take the pain away, but you don’t need to be a mother to make an enormous difference in a child’s life. And in that way, too, you are rich.
I wish I could wax half as eloquently as you about my 20 year old Big Steve’s Gym jacket and 19 year old boat shoes–my two favorite articles of clothing.
Wow, but can they WRITE like you can. Can they touch the hearts of people across this country of ours that come just to read what you have to say at all hours of the day. We’ve never met you, and don’t even have to, to know that you’re REAL, you’re FUNNY, you’re a fantastic ARTIST and a imaginative Doodler.
We can’t all be the same. That’s the creativity behind our God. But you are special Tracey, don’t ever forget that.
But on the flipside of all of these nice comments (and they are all very nice):
If Tracey didn’t have that melancholy moment of comparing herself to others – if she didn’t question her purpose, if she didn’t have those moments of envy, and have the consciousness to look down at her shoes and contemplate her place in her family, etc. … then she wouldn’t have written this piece.
We may think that some things are easily fixable, etc. – but also: good art, like this blog post, sometimes comes out of sadness.
And THERE is the gift. Tracey IS creating something out of her sadness. She shares herself with us. If she DIDN’T put the safety pins on her jacket, and sewed it up neatly with khaki thread, then we would not have the benefit of her touching observation about the safety pins.
I appreciate sadness in life, and ambiguity, and conflicted feelings. ESPECIALLY if someone (like tracey) can make something out of it. something that is art.
Vivid, haunting, heartfelt, and most of all RELATABLE.