My Pretty New Clothes — Shall I Just Wear Them Around the House? Sheltering at Home Week 10

Sheltering at Home. Week 10. May 20, 2020

So many pretty clothes. Brand new. Just hanging in the closet. Waiting to go somewhere. Anywhere.

I bought them last fall. The nubby multicolored sweater, hip but not too hip. The grey sweater with the winsome polka dots. The denim shirt long and scooped in back and precisely covering my backside. The trendy exercise jacket too nice to sweat in. Three black tee shirts with price tags still attached.

Out and About in My Pretty New Clothes

I was planning to have fun with those clothes. Show them a good time. Take them out for dinner and a movie with Jon and our neighbors up the street. Wander into Nordstrom in one of them, feeling confident that my duds looked as good as anything hanging on those pricey racks.

I shopped for those clothes last November. Last November, when I had so many hopes. No, not hopes — expectations.  Not expectations, assumptions. Assumptions about the coming months and what my life would look like.

It would be nothing fancy. Just lots of dinner-and-a-movie nights. Some trips into San Francisco to take in the next big thing at the DeYoung Museum. Lunch with my friend Jean.

Nothing fancy. Democracy intact. Rule of law still operational. Optimism on Wall Street. Job openings for most anyone needing one. Talented people of every age, gender, race and point of view getting into politics and getting elected. Enough food and toothpaste to go around.

Nothing fancy. Living a few more years — long enough to celebrate my 80th birthday. Long enough to celebrate the 80th birthdays of my husband, my friend Jean, and our movie-going friends up the street. Nothing fancy.

Wear Them to Deadhead the Azalea?

I pulled my pretty new clothes out of the closet. Took their picture. Considered wearing them around the house where only Jon would see them. Let them get greasy and messy scrubbing pots in the kitchen and deadheading the azalea out in the garden.

No. I’d let those clothes stay pretty a while longer. I put them back in the closet. They’d be just right for next fall. Or the fall after that. Or the fall after that. Whenever when life goes back to being nothing fancy.

More fashion stories at “For China’s Young Fashionistas, the Cultural Revolution Is So Over.”  And “When the Bride Doesn’t Wear White — And Neither Does Anyone Else.”