my people (sort of)

I have found my people. All these years of not fitting in, and here are my people, in the Rocky Mountains.

I’m only talking about clothes, here. Obviously I don’t have much in common with all the people who have never left the mountains save for a trip to Denver to go to REI. But I do have clothes in common with them.

Let’s review:

c. 1989, Liberia: I am wearing a swimsuit and frolicking about in the rain with my brother and the neighbor kids. The girl next door (I think Naomi, but it might have been Matu) asks me if what I’m wearing is a bodysuit. I immediately develop a complex about bodysuits and am very disappointed, when I get back to the US a year later, to discover that they have gone out of style and are unpurchaseable. I have only managed to own one in my life, and that was in high school and I wore it under my overalls. (Speaking of which, why aren’t overalls back in style? They were so comfortable.)

c. 1993-1999, Michigan: I am incapable of shopping on my own, because who knows what it is that is actually acceptable to wear in public?

c. 2002-2004, Rwanda: I bring lots of long skirts to Rwanda, hoping to be culturally appropriate, only to have the staff of our partner organizations look at me climbing a mountain in a long skirt and hiking boots and ask, “Don’t you have any TROUSERS?” I immediately send for jeans to be brought with the next available traveler. The jeans turn out to be too big, but what choice do I have? I wear them every day.

c. 2004-2007, New York: I am chronically underdressed in a city were women seem to think it’s a good idea to go jogging in heels. I wear jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts and brightly colored sneakers, obstinately.

But now I’m here in Colorado, and these are my people! I can wear jeans and a zip-up sweatshirt and a down vest and hiking boots every day and I look just like everyone else! No dressing up necessary!

Then I wore a suit for a day in court, and I did the unthinkable: I tucked in my shirt. I haven’t tucked in a shirt since the high school days when that “blousing” thing was all in and I wore really big shirts and pulled them out so they would stick out. Those days were bad. I’m trying to forget them. But then I was going to court and my shirt was long enough to stick out under my jacket and so I tucked it in.

I looked mad professional.

In the one place where I don’t have to be. In the one place where the attorneys wear their own down vests in court, I was wearing a tucked-in button down shirt, a suit, and heels.

Still, I looked hot.