Letting myself go

I have this fear I am going to wake up one morning to discover I have Let Myself Go.

I'll open my closet that day and find only sweat pants, t-shirts, and sneakers. And when I look in the mirror the face reflected there won't have tasted a lick of make-up since the Christmas party (where apparently I wore a dancing snowman-festooned sweater and patent-plether shoes with be-belled toes) and appears to have grown a twin at my neckline. My hair will have morphed into a cross between the giant-banged style of my high school years and the shellacked helmet of my grandmother's. (As unlikely as this hair-do sounds, I actually saw one of my high school classmates with such a style recently.)

My jewelry box will be rusted shut from years of neglect, and my large collection of scarves, handbags, shoes will be languishing at the back of the closet praying for just a glimpse of the outside world from which they have been long-since banished.

I'm a work-from-home Mom, in Blue-Collar Town, Vermont. This is the perfect recipe for Letting Yourself Go. Here, if you wear heels of even medium height people wonder "where yer going, all gussied up?" People wear jeans to weddings here! And don't bother to buy a cocktail dress for that party, you'll stick out like a, well, cock-tail.

When I look in my closet now - while I am still cool... I hope - I stand there surveying my mostly practical (but stylish) clothes and ponder the outfit of the day. One morning this week I picked out a pretty hip ensemble of long colored tank, shorter contrasting sweater, and jeans. But after I had yanked down the sweater and up my jeans one too many times, while shivering, to boot, I returned to my closet to dig out the good old fleece sweatshirt. Ahhh, comfy. And warm.

What I wear to walk to the bus stop and then to drop Tator off at pre-school hardly seems to matter. And in the winter when all you can see are my eyes peeking out from between hat brim and scarf, I could be wearing a hula skirt for all that it would matter. For the 5-minutes I am seen by other mothers (all themselves in varying stages of Letting Themselves Go [or just Vermonticized?]) or at the grocery store, my choice of clothing is really meaningless.

But, then it's not about those other mothers, is it? It's about me and how I feel. If I'm having a nifty outfit kinda day then I'm going to wear what makes me feel good. But when it's a sweatshirt day - well, it's just got to be a sweatshirt (but it will NEVER be a Mickey and Minnie or Puppy-dogs or, god-forbid, a 'I Survived Dollywood' sweatshirt).

But if you ever see me at the mall in pajamas bottoms, please feel free to slap me and send me home (to bed), and if the ensemble is accompanied by worn down slippers, please just have me arrested - for the common good. Thank you.