It's been good...

Periodically, my mother and I would go through her closets, sorting through seasonal clothing, choosing what to keep, what to put away for the next year, and what to give away to the Senior Center.  It wasn't always easy to tell the difference.  As she held up a shirt, suit, handbag of whatever age, she might say, "Well, it's been good..." and we'd ponder the usefulness of it still.  Often, the value of the item had more to do with its comfort and ease, and a lot about how it fit so many occasions.  It's easy to reach into the closet for the same familiar outfits, especially on days when one feels like being arrayed in simply oneself.

Who one is (I am, you are, he/she is) has been showing up from all sorts of directions these days.  Some of us look intently at who we are, like a puzzle that needs everyday solving.  Some of us prefer not to look, accepting self (for better or worse) as is.  Sometimes crises spur this one; sometimes a sudden left turn in life.

My sister texts me this morning, "still tt find myself."  (Actually, she has thrown that in between a sigh over the "crappy job"she's getting dressed for and the news that her son and his girlfriend have gotten engaged.)  As she is considerably younger than I, I thought I would cheer her up by reminding her that I am reminded every morning at 8:45 to remember who I am, a ding of the calendar that I find very useful...not because I am showing signs of dementia (at least, not too many), but because each day I am prompted to think about my life right that moment...what am I this morning? How do I fit into the self I call me?  Some days I don't really have an answer.  

Not that I'm worried about that.  My life, it seems to me, has morphed endless times, and yet I feel rather the same.  I go about doing the same things...new things being just variations on the old, probably...and live in pretty much the same way, whether I have been in or out of vocations, funds, focus or sorts. In fact, much of what I am has little to do with any of those.  It occurs to me, looking back, that it hasn't mattered what I do for work or what place I am living in; I exercise the same traits, habits, values in different circumstances, finding the fit.  I'm not necessarily celebrating that fact...some days I like what I am, some days I shudder.  But I am thinking that maybe my sister is looking too far afield for herself.  Maybe my mother was right to choose usefulness, comfort, ease, as her yardstick of what to keep.  My sister, a useful person, comfortable to be with, easy to love, is already herself.

Of course, my mother walked out of her closet each day looking perfectly dressed for whatever occasion, including staying at home.  Even with summer shorts and a cotton shirt, she likely as not had a small matching scarf around her neck and the right color sandals.  She used to remind me of that character Erma Bombeck created in one of her humorous pieces entitled Supermom in the Suburbs:  on her way to the hospital to rescue a child with a broken bone, Bombeck wrote, "she threw on a coordinated sweater over her coordinated slacks" and set out with a map in her hand.  My mother may have been useless with a map, but she knew her way around her closet. 

I on the other hand can't claim that talent, I'm afraid (I am good with maps), but I do go about sorting my clothes and my life in terms of usefulness, of whether its chapters have been good or not.  I'd like to think that however stylish I thought that blouse or dress was when I bought it, I would eventually recognize its wrongness and throw it in the discard pile.  Just this last week, I took quite a haul to the thrift store, where someone else will either think they've died and gone to wardrobe heaven or wondered who on earth would have put such a thing on her back.  

But by then I have left the parking lot, all of that behind me.

Today, not to turn to a subject not too far afield, we are all here waiting for a hurricane--Florence, of all the ill-suited names--that probably won't come.  We've spent the week following orders to be prepared. Fill the tank with gas in case we have to evacuate, get cash in case the power goes out and the stores don't take cards, get water in case ours is polluted, fill buckets to flush the toilets with, fill the pantry with canned fruits and vegetables, lots of peanut butter and tuna fish.  Fill prescriptions. Get ice for the coolers, candles and batteries for lamps.  Plug in your cell phone and laptop.  Batten down the hatches, whatever they are.  Take a shower, wash all the clothes...who knows when you will be able to do that again.

I have been through all this before, of course...hurricane after hurricane, each one going in a different direction and each one with a mind of its own.  This one, following true to type, that is, going against predictions, is turning south, its eye missing us by a few hundred miles.  It's still big enough that rain and wind is the weather of  the weekend.  Thank goodness.  My uncle doesn't really like peanut butter, and he hates his tea cold.  On the other hand, it could change course again.

Anyway, as I write, I am thinking about how we carry into any storm what we already know, what we already have, wearing what is most comfortable, most useful.  We wait and see what hits us; then we deal with it, with whatever we are.