Buh Bye, Fancy Pants!

October 1. 2010

Eight days in and I realize I’m a complete flop at the role of Modern Woman. No surprise there, I suppose. After all, one day last week, I wore mint colored socks with my brown shoes. I looked like an out-of-season Girl Scout cookie.

For the past eight days, my calendar, which I usually look at for the pretty pictures, became my cruise director, nudging me to volleyball matches, reunion parties, parent-teacher conferences, piles of student papers. Not really the kind of cruise director that deserves a tip, if you ask me. Probably works for one of those cruise lines that serves distended bowels at each port.

I may have survived the last eight days, but I did not really shine. Throughout it all, I tried to find inspiration in the millions of women who live this way every day. I tried to remember that some women not only wear different outfits each day but also wear hose with their dresses. Certainly these women don’t come home after work and wonder what happened to their slips.

I tried to remember that there are women out there whose daily calendars are divided into 15-minute increments, most of which have something more important than “period started, I think” etched between the lines.

I tried to stand up straight, put on a little blush, brush my hair, match my pants and shirts, floss my teeth, pluck my eyebrows, and not laugh when I had to help Allison find a strapless bra. I even tried to explain to the mom at parent-teacher conferences that I didn’t teach her daughter, but when she said how much her daughter loves me, well, I just couldn’t correct her, even though I knew it was wrong to let her keep on praising “me.”

Like I said, I tried. God knows I tried.

Turns out, I’m pretty much hard wired to fail at femininity.

But it also turns out that I rock when it comes to free time. And I had heaps of it today, after calling “uncle” and taking the day off. Still woke up at 5, but, from then on, the pace and the choices were mine. I rode my bike, I worked the puzzles, I walked the dog, I watched a Chinese cowboy flick, I played Scrabble,—quite well, thank you—I cleaned the hot tub, I wandered the garden, abuzz with insect life, and I was refilled.

It’s good to know that I can fake it, if I need to. That I can limp along Fancy Female Lane, fooling those who don’t get so close as to see the lines in my face or take note of the wrinkles in my clothes. More than that, though, it’s good to know that, in the flash of an eye, I quickly find my old rhythm, my old t-shirts, my old self. I am like an old, dependable blanket, comforted by my cotton underwear and well-worn habits.