Me and my friends are turning 50.
Well, I have a few more years, but I have this weird thing where I tend to embrace my future age and think I am that age already. I know I should live in the present, but 50 sounds REALLY COOL. It sounds like silver, chandeliers, and the best champagne. It sounds like Italian masquerade balls, leather jackets paired with feathered skirts. Am I the only one thinking this? I’ve been going to girlfriends’ fiftieth birthday parties lately, and I feel like we are all the same age. So, the conversation about women and age continues. It evolves.
50. I can feel it calling me. All that stuff people say about, “Well, then you don’t care about what people think. You finally do what you were afraid to do before. You just don’t give a f%@#*&!” must be true because I can feel that attitude seeping into my brain already. Yay.
So, my friend Anne-Marie was getting ready to celebrate this magic year and she decided to clean out her closet in honor of this birthday. Excellent. I may have mentioned before that luckily people think of me when they decide to clean out their closets. The fact that I benefit so much from people’s closet clean outs is just encouragement to everyone to broadcast your passion. Your enthusiasm for what you love just makes people want to throw whatever that is at you. Be ready to catch!
The loot.
The sad emptiness. You know, when you’re moving, and eventually it has to look like this.
Just to add drama to the birthday closet clean out, Anne-Marie and her family were also moving out of their beautiful old Spanish style house by the sea. It was a happy move, really, but you know how moves always bring up the past. You have to actually look at each object you own, consider it, see if it’s going to make the cut to the future, as the house gets emptier and emptier, all the life going out of it with each box that’s packed.
The house had an in between feel the day I arrived. It wasn’t packed with life, art, textures and color like it had been in the past. Now it had some of the family’s stuff left mixed in with some items that weren’t theirs, but belonged to the stagers.
The morning light was still beautiful though, coming through the old rounded iron paned windows. The elegant bones of the house could not be denied. Anne-Marie greeted me with her welcoming smile at the door. Her warm brown eyes, graceful ease always reminded me of a deer – quietly contemplating as she glides through a forest. We climbed up to her and her husband’s bedroom on the second floor. There was already a pile of inviting clothes on the bed for me to look at. Every time I went through one pile, she brought out more from the closet. I actually dream this exact situation regularly. Literally. While I’m sleeping. That kind of dream. All the while, as I sifted through clothes, making a stack for yes, a stack for no, and a stack for my friend Lissa because it turned out they had VERY similar taste in clothes, we talked.
The sunny poet in a blouse she kept.
We talked about why she bought that dress that she never wore. “Because I was in the shop and I just felt like I needed something new. I don’t shop a lot. So I picked that. And it was never right on me.” We talked about why she didn’t relate to certain items. “Too girlish, you know?” And we talked about turning 50. “I realized I’m not the young girl anymore,” referring to a pale pink skirt. Of course, we were looking at all the items she was done with. We were not looking at what she was now embracing. So, the conversation, the process was about letting go. Letting go so one can embrace what’s next.
I love what came next.
“And so, my birthday was approaching and I was really thinking about it, and dealing with this moment. Around that time, I decided to go through and read all the poems I had written since my first daughter was born. I read all of them. And you know, reading them really made me feel good. I love my life. I have a great husband. Great girls. Good friends. My life is good.” She said all of this with a measured, reflective tone. I could tell she had really thought about it. I felt like we were in a very important scene in a movie, where all is being resolved.
It was then that I knew that I had to do a Clothes Story about Anne-Marie. I loved that she had already been writing poetry about being a woman, a mother, about aging. I loved that her closet clean out was one way to eventually accept and celebrate who she was now.
In the weeks that followed I sent Lissa her loot (What great fun for her to come home from her HONEYMOON to) and had fun integrating my new items into my outfits. The sweater below is on constant rotation. As is this skirt.
Me, having fun at my kid’s school sport extravagalooza. No, I was really having fun. There was an In n’ Out Truck and my outfit was so Russian Fairytale thanks to Anne-Marie.
Oh, yeah and I really lucked out with this dress from Anne-Marie’s closet. Here, I am a Spanish actress who has dreams of having a spiritual transformation in northern New Mexico. Very High Heels without the high heels because I can’t really wear high heels.
And so I ask you this: Have you ever had to let go of some past version of yourself in a closet clean out? Tell us now. Who was she, and why were you finished with her?
Sweater by Love 21. Cardigan by matty m. Dress by Bailey 44. Thunderbird necklace is from the dreamland. Earrings are vintage (Taxco, Mexico).
All photos of me by Evan Hartzell.
Clothes Stories 