Nude Women - Typical Saturday - This is Who I Am

Sitting on a folding chair in an Ellen Tracy store is not my typical Saturday activity. The day began in its usual way… stretching, espresso, an 8:30am call from Lanni. I didn’t take the call, however, because my head was covered in 6G-warm brown hair colorant. Rinsed and dressed I returned the call awhile later, because it wouldn’t be Saturday without talking to her, and then headed out for errands like the post office and cleaners in time for brunch with a dear friend. So far, that’s a typical Saturday.

A week earlier, Julia suggested going to a program after brunch entitled, This is Who I Am, a presentation by a fine art and commercial photographer from Seattle, Roseanne Olson. So, we met at a restaurant down the street from the program and her daughter and her friend, both a year ahead of Alex in high school, joined us for the meal and the program. What a treat to have the opportunity to be brought current, first hand on the life of children who have been at the heart of many, many Saturday brunch conversations over the last twenty years.

One of the young women got married a year ago, graduated from nursing school in December and just got back from a surgical mission in Kenya. The other recently moved to Michigan for a job to be near her fiance, whom, on the day she met him, declared she’d marry him. There was complete agreement the table that the betrothal was quite unexpected as she wasn’t the marrying kind. Can you hear all the great stories in these conversations? I loved hearing them, like reading a book with a satisfying ending.

Before we went on, I split off from Julia and the girls to put money in the parking meter. The five minute hike gave me time to ponder the discussions. Like a good book, it drove me inside to think about my own interests at twenty-seven, my career, my friends, my travels, my relationships. Walking, aware enough to consciously miss the sheets of ice, my thoughts were mainly directed at the decisions - the dots from which I leapt like a frog on lily pads to land where I am now. 

Staring out the window from the Ellen Tracy Store, I couldn’t help allowing a pang of regret wash over me. Maybe I should have jumped a bit sooner or stayed put for longer. Each stop gave me new insights and made me who I am at this point.

Roseanne projected a PowerPoint  onto a screen  cleverly made of foam board clamped to a tripod. It consisted of sepia-tone photos of women from age 20 to late 90s dressed, at most, in a piece of tulle. The photos depicted small and large women, a women with one breast, another with a scar from a double lung transplant, another who would give birth eleven days later. Subjects had long hair, short hair, dark, light and white hair. I found myself intrigued, relating, wincing and wanting to be a person who could say, this is who I am, and, wanting others to recognize me as that is who you are.

The store, as you might imagine, isn’t set up for performances. Chairs were in rows inches apart with no room to bend forward to put a purse down without knocking your forehead on the seat in front. The Ellen Tracy staff created an elegant atmosphere by serving wine and cupcakes, but there was no easy way to hold a glass, a plate, eat and use a napkin. Having arrived minutes from a meal and wanting neither,  I offered to hold the cupcake plate for the woman behind me. She no-thanked me, but I offered again when I heard the commotion from her cupcake tipping and her reaction nearly spilling the wine.

Looking over my right shoulder, she was so near, I could smell the wine and chocolate on her breath.  She looked fiercely into my eyes. I know I can be pushy and thought for sure I crossed some line. She leaned forward and I pulled back. She put her hand on my chair and said, “Are you Mary?”

   “Yes.” Having no idea, not even a sense of familiarity for her.

   “You used to have a dog.”

   “Yes. Oscar.” This was not a useful clue.

   “We were in a group together.”

   ???, I thought.

   “Yeah, you were with Dan. You’re a writer. You wore long skirts, boots, great earrings. You sometimes walked to group. I was so sorry, when you announced you were leaving.”

Finally, chunk, kerchunck, kerchunk, it clicked into place.

She remembered me, me… from 1995. She remembered what I wore, my boyfriend, my dog, my clothes and my mode of transportation.  I could barely picture where the meetings were held. The leader of that group turned out to be the first cousin of the Roseanne Olson and stood six feet away from us. She was the dot connector between the woman balancing her cupcake and me.

As I returned to my car, I replayed my earlier thoughts about the dots that began when I was twenty-seven. It occurred to me that there was no straight line of dots to now. Yesterday,  I received a robust reminder of dots that took place eighteen years ago… sixteen years after I was the age of the girls with the newlywed faces. And today, grateful for that reminder, I will admit. This is who I am, on a typical Saturday.