Sun and shadow on my kitchen wall, Sunday morning, March 7. The Cross in the shadow of the Cross – for a fleeting instant. Five minutes later, the light had changed, so I'm glad I snapped this when I did. Seems a fitting image for the third week of Lent, as the new wears off our penances, and we settle in for the seasonal long haul.
Giving up not wearing purple is a tiny little penance of mine – tiny enough that I don't mind sharing it. Other austerities I might be practicing this Lent don't really need mentioning, since making a show of our penances is precisely not what they're about. The purple thing pinches in a small way, since there are things in my closet I'd like to wear that I won't be able to until after Easter, but it's an extremely minor sacrifice, and nobody, least of all me, runs any risk of believing on this basis that I'm really all that holy.
Whatever our chosen penances for Lent, this is about the time our zeal for them starts to flag. We're halfway in – ish. More long purple weeks yawn before us. The reading we took on has lost its luster. Quite likely, this is about the time we come to with a start and realize that it's been days since we even picked up that book. Whatever we gave up in the way of food or drink, mealtimes start to feel dreary, almost beyond endurance. All of it just feels like plod plod plod. Here, the days are lengthening out, the daffodils are blooming – but it's still winter in my soul, and already I'm tired of it. And there's so. much. more. ahead.
There's always a trick to persevering with something. Whatever you're budgeting at a given time – food or money, say – the key to persevering with that budget, to attain some long-term goal, is not to feel deprived. If you feel deprived, if your mind kicks itself into scarcity mode, you will panic and overindulge in eating or spending, just to prove to yourself that the food, or the money, is there for you. In the spiritual life, too, in whatever trivial little ways you're living out your daily spiritual life, I think the trick is not to make yourself feel deprived. Have chocolate on Sunday, when you can relax your penances, if chocolate is what you gave up. Lent isn't about continual, hopeless self-flagellation. But also, and alternatively: think creatively about ways to make your chosen poverty, every day, feel like abundance.
Enter the Style Spark Challenge. Like the 1x5Revive challenge last week, this is something else to help the time go by, in the context of one of my chosen forms of Lenten poverty. Again, wearing purple daily, especially when I don't actually have that many purple clothing items, is an extremely tiny way to practice that poverty of spirit that the Lord, in the Beatitudes, assures us is a way of blessing. But it occurs to me that to practice poverty of spirit is to practice recognizing abundance that doesn't come from endless choices. To live abundantly, we don't need more. We need to recognize that what has been given to us is more. In the coming week, I'm recommitting myself to the pursuit of that recognition.
But today is Sunday. We went to Mass. Here's what I wound up wearing:
I repeated yesterday's purple top, with the thrifted Loft cardigan I wore last Sunday, only this time I didn't knot it at the waist. Thrifted floral skirt, old silk velour teal scarf, camel boots.
Feeling "the morning sun, when it's in your face, really shows your age," though in fact in this shot the window was behind me. Practicing being okay with any light really showing my age. I don't know why it wouldn't: I am the age I am, and I don't want to live in the dark. I also don't want to bother with makeup. Here I'm wearing some Burt's Bees pomegranate lip balm, and that's it. No filter, just a little light adjustment. This is what I look like, the face I don't want to come as a shock to anybody over the breakfast table. In truth, I think it's not a bad face. It's good for me to practice being grateful for it.
Also, "Maggie May" is a weird song. I was six or seven when it came out, so I can barely remember a time when I wasn't aware of it, didn't know every word, didn't belt it out whenever it came on the car radio. I still do that, mind you, because it's a great song, just not un-disturbing, especially as I've come to know men who were victims of sexually predatory older women when they were teenagers. But then, virtually every popular song of the last fifty years (if not far longer) on the subject of relations between men and women features some message you don't necessarily want to import into your own personal life. The moral here is that art is not a prescription for living.
Also, for all we know, Maggie is like 30. "Your age," as in what "the morning sun, when it's in your face, really shows," is a pretty relative thing. Depending on how old the speaker in the song is, that boy who needs to collect his books and get on back to school, she could be 25. Who knows? But that line has certainly stood out to me more and more, the older I get.
MONDAY
Day 1 of the Style Spark Challege: Accessorize!
Well. If there's anything I don't do much of, it's accessorizing. I'm not even entirely sure what is meant by "accessorize," or what counts as an "accessory." Usually when women talk about "accessories," it seems as though they're talking about handbags – and I just don't care about handbags. I own one that I use regularly, plus two more that are either too small or worn out, but I haven't gotten rid of them yet. To me a handbag exists to hold my wallet, my phone, my Kindle, my extra pair of glasses, and my rosary, and not to be so big that I have to root around for half an hour in the bottom of it to find any one of those items.
So – belts? I have a few belts. For most of my life I haven't bothered with much with a belt, because my pants stay up just fine, thank you.
I wear earrings and a necklace more or less every day. I tend to wear the SAME earrings and necklace more or less every day. Is this what is meant by "accessorizing?"
Anyway, here's what I came up with: plain jeans, which I haven't worn at all yet this Lent. I love this pair of thrifted Izod jeans, my only ordinary denim jeans – of all the available cuts of jean, boot cut remains my favorite. Thrifted Loft top, thrifted cardigan, faux Birks from last year. It's warmed up a lot since yesterday, and the forecast for the week looks divine.
What I would have worn anyway, but I did put on a pale-pink belt that you can barely see here.
I did clip back my hair in a half-updo with a claw clip: also an accessory? All this to go out and water the new grapevine and stake up a big blackberry bush on the bird-feeder pole.
Not exactly wine o'clock here yet. Or, more accurately, table-grape o'clock.
Here's the blackberry, which last year got lost among the four-o'clocks that really own this bed:
Meanwhile, the daffodils are blooming.
The high was 63F, but it felt a little cold for sandals and a sleeveless top, even with the cardigan.
Tomorrow's Style Spark Challenge: wear a third piece. Oh. Kay. Will. Do. I think I did that today, but I'll try to do it in some more purposeful way tomorrow.
TUESDAY
Today's high is supposed to be a balmy and gorgeous 72F – but right now, at 7:45 a.m., it's 30F. Starting tomorrow, the lows are all going to be above freezing, though we've got at least another month before we can expect not to have frosts. April 15 is generally the date for putting in your summer garden here. I haven't done a summer garden as such for some years now, but having cleared and dug out the raised bed to put in the grapevine, I do plan to make use of the rest of that space this year. While the grapevine is small, I'm going to plant a cherry tomato on either side of it and use the trellis to hold those up; the rest of the space will be peppers (mostly jalapeño, cayenne, and banana peppers) and basil.
But I have some time to dream about that. Meanwhile, it's going to be a glorious day, and I need to plan a walk for the afternoon, after I've finished work. At the moment I'm writing poems in various Welsh forms – yesterday I tried a Cyrch A Chwta, a form with 7-syllable lines, 8-line stanzas, and an obsessively repetitive rhyme scheme. Going to try that again today. Also, having finished a draft of a short essay on Paul Mariani, I'm now working on Jeanne Murray Walker, whose poems I'm rediscovering with great pleasure. I've developed a rhythm of writing on one poet, roughly 150-200 words a day (each essay needs to be 600-800 words total), while reading and researching the next on my list. Upcoming are David Middleton, who wrote the preface to Motherland, and Mark Jarman, a former teacher of mine when I was an undergraduate at Vanderbilt in the mid-1980s.
Why am I writing these essays? Well, having now signed a contract, I suppose I am free to say that a friend and I are co-editing an anthology, tentatively titled Christian Poetry in America, dealing with what my friend has called "the Christian revival in contemporary American poetry." In short: we're not writing about Anne Bradstreet. Instead, we've taken 1940, the year of Paul Mariani's birth, as our starting point, and are working forward from there, examining poets whose work has in one way or other involved some serious engagement with Christian faith.
But more immediately, I need to get dressed.
Here is my base outfit:
Thrifted pinky-purple silky knotted tee, with a pair of really old wide-leg drawstring pants, which I bought at Target in something like 2006. I have three pairs of these: this pair in light stone/oatmeal/whatever you want to call this light neutral; a pair in sage green (my favorite of the three, which now has a tiny hole in one leg, but I still love them); a pair in brown, which I've provisionally put in the outbox, since I wear them the least and feel the least good in them. I keep meaning to thrift all of these. They've gone into some version of the outbox many times over the years I've had them – but somehow I always end up getting them out again. Except at my very heaviest, they have fit me well. They're lightweight enough to be comfortable in the hottest weather, while providing more coverage and being potentially more dressy than shorts. And now apparently wide-leg trousers are back in style, so aren't I glad I didn't get rid of them?
See my happy face?
Today's style challenge is to "wear a third piece." Now, I've been "wearing a third piece" for months, since it's been cold, and virtually every outfit I've worn since November has included either a jacket or a cardigan. Today is going to warm up enough that the "third piece" won't stay on long (unless you count shoes as a third piece), but I did try a couple of options.
Option 1: yesterday's cardigan, repeated.
Okay, fine.
It's one kind of look, for sure. I have to confess that so far, I haven't just adored this cardigan with anything I've worn it with. It's an odd piece that manages to be somehow simultaneously light and lacy but also bulky in silhouette. Still, the color is quite useful to have, and I'll keep playing with it, to get my fifty cents' worth of wear out of it.
But then I remembered my thrifted denim jacket, which never seems to get enough wear:
It's maybe a bit matchy with the Birks, but I'm not going to sweat that right now. I could change into my brown Crocs sandals, but am not going to be bothered. I do like this vibe. I could wear this ensemble lots of places and feel comfortable but put together, as if I hadn't needed to make an effort.
Right, back to work.
WEDNESDAY
Happy anniversary to us: 31 years.
Style Spark Challenge: Monochrome Outfit. Here we revisit several old friends:
Waiting for my hair to finish drying so that I can walk up to Main Street to buy some kind of anniversary gift for my husband.
Anniversary Date-Night Outfit:
My mother-of-the-bride dress from November 2017, with my thrifted denim jacket and camel boots – maybe the last major outing for these boots this season? It's often freezing in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, on our anniversary, but the night was almost too warm for boots.
And because we Keep It Real here, behold the less-flattering angle:
Just when I think I'm losing the belly fat, turns out I'm not. But really, given the human imperfections of my body, I think this outfit worked well. It wasn't at all a muumuu, as I might have been tempted to wear on a fat-feeling occasion, but the jacket cast enough of a shadow over my stomach that I wasn't painfully aware of how un-flat it is. I can look at this picture, and other than thinking I need to fluff my hair a little more, I don't see unattractive. I don't think, Who is that gross woman? Tell her to stay home! I can look at that picture and entertain the notion that other people aren't automatically going to think that about me. Seems like mental-health progress, but also seems like a nice dress/jacket combination.
I was almost certainly the only woman in the restaurant wearing a spangly dress – it's one of those upscale-ish mountain restaurants where attire is mostly upscale-outdoorsy. But I LIKED my spangly dress, and we had a good time, so there.
THURSDAY
Today's Style Spark Challenge: Wear a Dress or Skirt.
In the normal way of things, I wear dresses and skirts a lot, though having recently spent five straight days in purple skinny jeans, it doesn't feel that way to me at the moment. This is a thrifted Target dress from several years ago which used to be navy blue, until I spilled bleach on it, as one does. There is a directly proportional relationship between how much I love an item of clothing and the likelihood of my destroying it somehow. I couldn't quite bring myself to get rid of my bleach-stained dress, so it hung about unworn for at least a year. Then the idea came to me: I could bleach-dye it. I was already not wearing it, so if the dye job turned out a disaster, I wouldn't really have lost anything. If it turned out well, on the other hand, I would have a favorite dress back in my wardrobe.
As things turned out, I did regain a favorite dress. I love the watercolor effect of the bleach-dyeing – and the unintended consequence of its now having some purple spots, and purplish trim. The first time I wore it, post-bleach-dyeing, was back in Advent:
Now I'm wearing it in Lent. It's a great all-season dress. I started out the day without the purple leggings, but then my legs got cold, so I pulled them on, to remove again later if it warms up more.
Even after an evening of relatively heavy eating and drinking, to celebrate 31 years of marriage, I feel fairly crisp today. Or if I don't feel all that crisp, I can at least put on a good face:
I love this color combination. Didn't really appreciate how pretty the cardigan is against the dress (I've never worn them together before, as far as I can recall) until I took this headshot.
FRIDAY
Today's Style Spark Challenge: Wear Something You Haven't Worn in Months
I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn this thrifted blue Talbots dress. Weeks, if not months. I haven't worn it that often since acquiring it last fall, mostly because despite being a petite medium, which you'd think would be a perfect fit (especially for a fit-and-flare dress, with pear-shape forgiveness built into the skirt), it's a bit big and gappy at the top, and the v-neck exposes more than I'm comfortable exposing. In January, when I was buying clothes, one thing I bought was a cheap, thin navy sleeveless crop top to wear underneath. Here I'm wearing the crop top backwards, for even more coverage.
I know I haven't worn this thrifted Pierre Cardin cardigan in months, though it's been a great favorite in the several years I've had it. I've always considered it to be part of my Advent-Lent Purple Arsenal, though compared with the purples I've been wearing, it looks a lot more blue to me now. But it still falls into periwinkle category, so I'm counting it. I did include some less-ambiguous purple in my earrings.
Tan sandals to for some contrast. Looking forward to a day in the high 70s (F), and an evening hearing our youngest daughter play bass in a combo that includes her guitar teachers, for some kind of art-show opening (details were vague, but I guess we'll find out more when we get there). She had been set to do this a year ago, when COVID stopped everything. Now we take masks and distancing for granted . . . and gradually, gradually, some glimpses of the old normal are starting to return.
SATURDAY
No style challenge. No style? Actually I feel pretty good in my sage-green skinny jeans, which I haven't worn in at least two weeks, and this blue duster-length cardigan which is one of the batch of fast-fashion items I bought in January (this came from some Amazon seller and cost about $8). I really don't want to keep doing that, but I also really don't regret this purchase, as I've worn this cardigan a LOT. It's made fewer appearances in Lent, because purple, but it's a really nice year-round layer in a color I like. I wasn't sure what top I was going to wear, but this one from earlier in the week came out of the wash today, and I put it on.
I like the soft color-blocking, the drape of both the cardigan and the tee, the fact that it's warm enough (just) to wear sandals . . . I would dress like this all the time without a second thought.
Going for a walk to pray my rosary. A whole chicken, marinated in balsamic vinegar, mustard, and garlic, reposes in the crockpot for dinner. I might throw in some cranberries, because I still have them in the freezer, and if we're going to have a remotely fall/winter meal, now is pretty much the time.
And that's the week. Tomorrow begins another – an hour earlier, thanks to daylight savings time. I do look forward to the long light evenings, but not the dark mornings. Still . . . it'll be Laetare Sunday, turning the Lenten corner, which is a reason to rejoice.