Playing dress up
Happy bank holiday, did you go to a garden centre or are you under 40? I did because, as of eight days ago, I am a gardener. I assumed it would come for me at some point in middle age and never sought it out as a result. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen, I thought, like some kind of Instagram sage. Last week I looked out at our small patch of garden and felt a crushing sadness at the neglect. Weed city, bees skipping over our plot to head next door. I went straight to the garden centre and loaded up, then came home and planted an entire bed in a frenzy. Proud of myself, I went back the next day and filled in another bed. The next day I finished the rest off. I even sowed seeds and raked over them tenderly, intermediate level unlocked. My husband was thrilled at this productivity, though he did point out that I might want to get around to booking the ADHD assessment the psychiatrist strongly recommended I take. Fair. Anyway now I’m a gardener and cannot stop seeing gaps where plants could be. I don’t know the names of anything and I’m sure to kill half of the plants but the path is set. I’ll be in dungarees and a straw hat in no time.
Or maybe that’s a step too far. I was at a charity event organised by my mum the other day and as the evening wrapped up and my mother stood up to give the final thank yous, a young woman leaned over to me and said “your mother is a queen, she’s so glamorous.” I’m biased and she’s also right. My mum is glamorous. That night she was wearing a cream cable knit jumper, her mother’s pearls* knotted and somehow made cool, a midi skirt with trainers. It was an outfit that any one of you would pick out yourself. Every time friends see her they tell me how good she looks. “It’s a hamster wheel,” she says of fashion, meaning that you cannot get off even for a moment. She makes me feel like the hamster wheel ran me over and left me for dead when she shows up on my doorstep wearing an always impeccable outfit and I’m in my millennial uniform of leggings and a jumper.
By the time you’re my age, you can identify which parts of yourself come from where with forensic accuracy. It’s fun and also sort of humbling to realise how much of you has already been shaped by genetics by the time you make your grand entrance earthside. OCD from my paternal grandfather. Making things with my hands from my paternal grandmother. Then there is the through line from my maternal grandmother down which brought me a love of clothes. Love might not be strong enough a word actually. Love doesn’t always bring joy. But in my immediate family, clothes do.
