On Curating a Vibe

I was in Napa, California, with my sister’s closest friends (whom I’d never met), sorting through her possessions right after she’d suddenly died of an overdose. I remember feeling extremely cautious about what they might think of me, one friend in particular who had called me once from Hawaii to say that Kim was going to kill herself, and what was I going to do about it? When I said, “Let her,” the response was less than warm, I can tell you that.

But, as soon as her friend showed up at the house and we did an introductory hug, she said something that let me know that, under the extreme circumstances, we would start from a clean slate. And we did. She was sincerely sad, I was sincerely sad, and I had a lot to get done.

I had a weekend (in hindsight, a week would have been much smarter, but I’d left behind my son and my deadline-driven job and my always teetering-on-disaster mom in assisted living) to meet with the sheriff to learn what had happened, to look through her stuff in a house I’d never been in, and to grab what I could fly home to the east coast before figuring out next steps.

Plus, you know, mourn. Every one of Kim’s table tops and dressers and desks was covered in memorabilia of her past lives, mostly photos of Katherine and items of Katherine’s, plus a few of my son and a few of me and our mom. It was a job just taking in everything that my sister had valued enough to put on display. And, in Kim style, everything was not just luxuriously purchased, but masterfully displayed.

I knew Kim used to buy beautiful things to smooth over the horrid jagged edges of her world. If you have to spend night after night sleeping in a chair in the hospital with your child dying mysteriously beside you, might as well do it wrapped in a silk scarf, with your retched paperwork on the floor beside you in a Gucci bag, your Mikimoto pearls stuffed inside a coin purse with a tiny silver bridle bit as the clasp.

I, myself, had a gigantic scarf sent to me by a writer I worked with who’d been living in Turkey, I think it was. I used to do my humble domestic travel with that scarf because it folds up real small but wraps all over you on a flight. It turned out to be a great sleeping bag of sorts in hospitals, too. I never could make myself wash it, even though it had that hospital smell. I just used it in many more places to add a new smell to the mix. Eau de la Shelly.

My point is that Kim’s friend, after spending a few hours with me sorting through Kim’s stuff, figuring out what was what—which was a tall order because Kim was big on collecting but small on organizing—said something like, “Kim was right. You don’t even try.”

I knew what she meant, even though I’d only had that one terrible phone conversation with her years ago. I hadn’t eaten yet that day and needed to solve the hunger issue. My sister, on the other hand, once ate an entire dozen box of Krispy Kreme’s while it rested on her tummy in one of those torture chairs you sleep in in the hospital. I say “once,” but in actuality I witnessed this only once; perhaps it happened many times. She ate for comfort, just like she purchased for comfort. And, she said to me when I asked her why a Mercedes, “I can’t afford to date in a Chevelle.” I thought that was ludicrous, but I’m starting to understand her. On this topic of luxury items and many more.

I’ve mentioned before that Tracy and I used to go to Happy Hour at our neighborhood brewery every Friday night where we’d meet our neighbors, who would bet on which items I was wearing that were Kim’s. It was an easy bet: Most thing I owned were from a second-hand store or “Shakedown Street” at a music festival, whereas many things Kim owned were from a place like Neiman Marcus. It didn’t take a fashion expert to see what was what.

It’s not like I prefer shabby over chic, because I inherited my sister’s eye, I truly did. I just never put fashion on my radar; I didn’t have the money or the time or really even care. But, I managed to look good in my Goodwill crap anyway, and that, I think, is what Kim’s friend was getting at. I weigh like half of what Kim weighed at her worst (man would she have been all over these weight loss drugs; I’m sorry she didn’t live to enjoy that). And, I never much tried with that. My son has always been healthy compared to her daughter. She didn’t live to see me divorced, so to her I was married for life. I was the favorite child in her mind, having been given a size-able check every year right before New Years by our yucky grandmother who was told to get rid of cash by her tax accountant, I’m sure. Kim never got a check because she was married and didn’t “need” it, but that shouldn’t have mattered, and now I see that, too.

But, back to my vibe. Or, my lack thereof right now. I never used to try, and yet I look back on that smiling, elfin ball of energy, and I looked fabulous.

Now, what do I look like? How do I try for a look? What look should I try for?

My look used to be tiny concert t-shirts (child’s if possible) with jersey cotton knee-length skirts. True to form, I didn’t realize that was my look until an old friend asked if I owned anything that wasn’t a t-shirt on top of a mismatched skirt, and I realized, No. I don’t own anything else. That got me through spring, summer, and fall, and in the winter I would throw on a pair of leggings and socks with ankle boots and be done with it. When I lived in Montana and rode my bike to teach classes, I wore jeans under the skirt, then ducked into the building’s bathroom to strip them off and shove them in my backpack. I can see why my students, barely a year younger and always twice my size, needed a lot to come on board with my authority on whatever the day’s topic was.

The first time I thought about a new look was when I moved into an apartment by myself, also for the first time. I’d just divorced, had just met Tracy, and felt like a freaking operatic jailbird on the loose.

What I wanted above all was a 1950s style bar (Tracy made me one out of a cabinet stereo system we bought at Goodwill), and to be greeted at the apartment door when I got home by Tracy holding a martini. Never mind that I wanted to be the wife in this ancient duality, wearing the best of what Samantha wore on Bewitched (and she wore some great clothes, or rather her evil sister Sabrina did. They, apparently were drunk on set throughout that show.).

The look I wanted above all was a sheer kimono-style robe on top of black leggings and a camisole. Something bright and flowy that said luxury and relaxation. Take off my work wear, slip on my robe, and voila. Elegant lounge wear.

I remember buying several kimonos like this, although they are called “dusters” when you buy them cheap from Khol’s, and they are cheap. I take terrible selfies when I want to see what I look like, but I happen to have a long string of these selfies so I could pick which dusters to keep.

Of course, none of them made the cut when I moved to the Airstream. I did keep three robes, although I never wore them in the trailer because robes mean, to me, relaxation no matter where you are, and I never felt fully relaxed in that trailer when we were in a campground. When we were boondocking, yes, but you don’t wear robes when you’re in the desert, believe me. Or, in the mountains. Or, anywhere boondocking. The vibe is Rio Lobo, not Bewitched. Well, okay, maybe in this context it’s more Big Lebowski.

Now, I get to try for that vibe again. Ironically, I found myself on the Neiman Marcus website this morning searching for my dream robe. The only time I’ve ever seen it wass while I was walking through a mall in Anytown America on my way to an Apple Store for help at the Genius Bar, and I walked by the very robe.

“Why is it shackled to the display bar,” I wondered? Because it costs more then $2,000, is why, duh. I kept walking, me in my crocs and bird’s nest hair and hiking body that hadn’t been washed in a week. I’m sure I looked like a shoplifter, not a robe connoisseur.

I am on some kick where I feel like, if I had the right look, I could sail into old-lady-hood happily. I’m skinny once again but no longer muscular, and the Phish t-shirts and random cotton skirts will no longer cut it. My plan is to cover this saggy skin in flowing, elegant floral luxury, just like my sister did.

I know what I want this robe to look like, because I see it on TV all the time. Last night, even, on some stupid Sci-Fi show Tracy and I were watching, when the lovely leading lady opened her door in the middle of the night and was draped in a kimono. I want it to look like a silk kimono, but lined with one thin layer just so it’s not too drape-y and will be warm enough all year, and I want it be long, to the tops of my feet, which is hard because most robes are one size fits all, and at 4’11” I am far from the average size. Really, I want a smoking jacket, but feminine.

How to do that on my thrift store budget, though, is a mystery. Perhaps I could hire my friend Jacqui to sew this robe for me. The only problem there, apart from the fact that she hasn’t agreed to this plan, is that she lives in New Zealand, so shipping material to her and the robe back to me would cost loads more than the labor.

This post isn’t about my robe problem, though. It’s about my self-image problem. I am 57 years old. My son turned 28 two days ago, which is old enough that he couldn’t recall right away how old he was. “The year I need to finish my PhD” is all he reported thinking. Poor guy, what a thing to think right when you wake up on your birthday. Point is, my kid is old, so that means I am old. I don’t have any friends, and I live where I hate life for nine months of the year because, when I picked this place, I insanely forgot that I live outside. I need something here.

So, I’ll do what my sister did when she was deeply unhappy, and I will at least make myself look good, even when I’m sitting in my backyard, even when sitting inside (because what am I thinking? I have to always be inside here!). That will be my old-lady vibe. Dirty bare feet, grey, unstyled hair, purple glasses, old man husband, lumpy big dog, 100-acre-wood backyard in an urban neighborhood. (That last part is for my next post.)

Think I can pull this off?