Friday Flashback

When I was in high school Downeast Outfitters was a consignment store, not a brand. We had one in the town where I grew up, squished between a dollar store and a drabby Chinese restaurant located in a little strip mall on the north side of town. I liked to shop there because damaged clothing could be purchased quite inexpensively and I was treading that fine line, like so many adolescents, between wanting to look stylish and having next to no money. I searched out stains in inconspicuous places, seams easily repaired, and once bought a shirt with the tag proclaiming it to be a product of "Abercrombie and Fitch," an entity as of yet unheard of.

One day in the late spring of my Junior year I came across a solid, oatmeal-brown colored sweater. Thickly knit, over-sized and quite shapeless, I fell in love instantly, and became even more enamored with the $6.99 price tag. My heart sank when I discovered a large hole in the left shoulder.

I took the sweater to the register and asked the clerk if they, by chance, would repair the hole. The clerk replied in the affirmative and instructed me to return in an hour, and I happily complied.

Upon my return I was amazed to discover that they had not only patched the hole, I couldn't even determine where it had been. I smugly purchased it with a ten dollar bill, leaving with both the sweater, and change in my pocket.

That would have been 1996.

The sweater has stayed with me through numerous moves, various stages of life, trips and vacations, weight fluctuation and radical surgery.

I wore it in 1996 to the Martin Harris Pageant on my first date with the boy who stripped me of all my innocent preconceptions about boys and their intentions.

I wore it in 1997 on an outcropping of rock as I gazed across the snow-capped Alps of Switzerland and wrote wistful poetry in my journal.

I wore it in 2000 as I returned to visit friends in Connecticut and attend the MTV New Years celebration in New York City.

I wore it in 2001 on my honeymoon in Pismo Beach. March in northern California is not all that warm.

I wore it in 2003 when, thankfully, the weave of the knit was stretchy enough to accommodate my astoundingly huge belly.

I wore it in 2007, when all I wanted was to escape from the oppressively cold January winds of Nebraska. It was like bundling up in a warm blanket, and made me feel like I had a place to hide.

I wore it in 2009, grateful for its baggy forgiveness after yet another tough pregnancy.

I wore it in 2010, longing to drown in its itchy, enveloping folds during those horrible months when I could envision nothing but dark, hazy clouds of depression suffocating me in my bed.

And I'm wearing it today. Fifteen years of warm, comforting, neutral friendship. I've had this sweater so long that I can't even determine if it is fashionable or not, the way the face of a loved one becomes beautiful simply because you cannot disassociate it from your feelings for them. They become what love looks like.

In the end, we all have the capacity to be that beautiful, that trusted, that loved.

My relationship with my sweater shows no signs of letting up. It is the perfect companion for trips because it slides easily over any other shirt, its two buttons never offering up so much as a loose thread.

My $6.99 sweater could have easily been over-looked. Damaged, the ragged edges of a cut-out tag still evident in the neck, and unassumingly plain, I do not wonder that it had not been snatched before my searching eyes imprinted upon it.

Like most good relationships, I wasn't sure just how good I had it at first.

But this sweater has proved itself loyal, enduring, accepting of me regardless of my size, my mood, my location.

And I love my sweater too, in all its boring, brown glory.