Yesterday, my husband, kids, and I enjoyed a just-starting-to-get-cool hike with my daughter-in-law and grandson. I wore a blue hoodie over my cotton sweater and felt just right. Heading out to the gym early this evening was a different story. Rather than sliding my bare feet into my Birkenstock sandals, I took the 40-degree temperature and biting wind into account and slipped my feet into Ugg-style boots (L.L. Bean brand, picked up by my son years ago, when he worked in the retailer’s return center; we like to call them “LL Buggs”). They are not the ideal choice for the gym, but I have yet to buy a pair of closed-toe Birkenstocks I can wear with socks.
In like manner, I could do with a better option for outerwear at this in-between time, when the large winter coat is too much and the barn coat is not enough. So I looked briefly online for an appropriate jacket, but was mostly discouraged and turned, instead, to the online shop at which I buy underwear, thinking all the while about Francie Nolan in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, who admitted that her mother was right: she would have been better off saving her new, black lace skivvies for a summer evening out, not a walk down December streets to get to Christmas Mass.
It will all come out in the wash: with six people still living here and tendencies among all of them to hold onto things “just in case,” I’ll manage to cobble together what I need to get to and from the gym (more like to and from the car in the parking lot) without freezing solid.
