In the midst of cooking Easter dinner, and having rather overbought strawberries (I put them in the salad, my daughter put them in the cake she made for dessert), I rediscovered, in the butler's pantry, this set of four little green glass dishes that used to belong to one of my grandmothers. They're actually bowls, shaped like water-lily blooms, set on leaf-shaped plates, and I have never known what exactly they were supposed to be for. Until recently, too, at holidays we've had more than four people at table, so anything in a set of four – unless I had something else in the same size and general flavor to mix with it – has not done me much good. In the past I have used these as candle holders with tea lights down the middle of my long, narrow table, but mostly they've sat in the cupboard unused.
Until now. There were, as it happens, four of us at table for Easter dinner. And we had all these strawberries.
On Saturday night we went to the Easter Vigil at Belmont Abbey.
It was a gorgeous starlit night, and I'm sorry I didn't get any stars in my photo of the basilica, but being all lit up itself, it rather washed out the stars. I also wish I'd gotten shots of Brother Tobiah tending the Easter fire, and of the Abbot emerging with miter and crozier, looking like Saint Patrick about to confer with some druids regarding the mystery of the Trinity.
It was also pretty cold, so I wound up wearing my boots with my Easter dress and not being sorry that I had done so.
This is a vintage 1990s Liz Claiborne linen dress, bought on Ebay – size 10, so I had to take it in a bit under the arms (and might actually continue my little seam down a little farther, to reduce the small pucker that's left in the bodice). It's sleeveless and rather sheer, so that even in hot weather I'll need to wear it with a full slip or a cami and half-slip. We'll see whether that translates to wearing it less in really hot weather or not. I love the duck-egg blue of this thrifted Loft cardigan with the tender pink of the dress – have been looking forward to wearing these colors through all the long weeks of wearing purple. Though obviously I can wear this dress with sandals, it looks nice with boots as well, so will be a good all-season piece.
My bangs were wonky, but these are my colors.
After the Vigil we came home, drank champagne, ate eclairs, and went to bed around 2 a.m.
Easter Day scenes from around the house:
Early-morning breakfast table. My husband had already carried away his goodies.
This year I filled empty egg cartons with Lindt truffles and other candy.
I had spent Saturday afternoon setting the dining-room table for Easter dinner and doing some small decorating.
More views of the dining room, a room I have come to love for its peacefulness, though when everybody is here, as at Christmas, it gets pretty rowdy. One day I will repace the polyurethene indoor-outdoor rug I bought twelve years ago on Overstock.com because we had little kids and a big dog, but today is not that day.
Our table feels a little empty, set for only four, but there's plenty of room to spread the food out on either side, so it does work.
The southeast-facing side of our double front parlor in early-morning light:
The northwest-facing living-room side, with the mantel dressed in anticipation:
The Paschal Lamb, on a bed of mint and rosemary:
EASTER MONDAY
Challenge of the day: being a 4-driver 2-car family, when one car is in the shop and everybody has plans.
It's supposed to be 75F today, and here's what I'm wearing:
Thrifted J.Jill tee from my outing last Sunday, old Target drawstring-waist wide-leg crop trousers, fake Birks.
How delicious it is not to be wearing purple, not that you can tell by my facial expressions how much I'm enjoying myself.
TUESDAY
A view of the backyard from the patio where I'm sitting in the beautiful spring weather:
We had to go out earlier today, to a church-dress kind of occasion.
Thrifted navy Talbots fit-and-flare dress, fast-fashion blue duster cardigan bought in January, thrifted fisherman-sandal clogs.
Came home, took off the cardigan, traded the heels for (Ebay/thrifted) Birks. Not nearly as classy, but I was too tired to change my whole outfit, which is otherwise cool and comfortable, and my feet are a lot happier.
Also: dandelion wine, bottled but still fermenting hard for the next six weeks:
I put the lids over to keep bacteria out, but didn't seal them, while I went to buy balloons. Why balloons? Just see for yourself. Here's a shot right after I'd pricked the balloons and put them over the bottle mouths:
And here's about ten minutes later:
I used a silicone lid on the small jar that caught what wouldn't fit in the bottles – I pricked the balloons and the silicone lid with a pin so that excess gases can escape. Once the balloons go limp and stay that way, I'll know it's time to seal the bottles.
Again, I used this recipe. I started a second batch on Holy Saturday, too, in which I substituted raw honey for the sugar in the recipe, hoping for more of a mead-like outcome. Here's how it looked on Holy Saturday:
And on Monday:
I'll bottle it sometime in the middle of next week, as I've done with the previous batch this week.
TUESDAY
Back to work on poems and on the anthology project. Still ecstatic not to be wearing purple. Today's outfit: J.Jill jersey summer dress, bought on clearance several years ago, worn as a jumper over my thrifted green Gap tee from Palm Sunday's Goodwill expedition, with thrifted Birkenstock Floridas.
I have really worn this dress hard in the several years I've had it, though it's only been relatively recently that I've thought of wearing shirts under it. By itself, it's very much a beachy shift dress, comfortable and definitely casual. It hasn't been as adaptable for year-round wear as I had hoped it would be when I bought it, but I did give it a run with tee, cardigan, and boots last fall, and liked it:
Sometime I'd like to try dressing it up a bit with my new thrifted heels (worn yesterday).
Trying to get a shot of my hair, which is wild and wonky today. I washed it Monday night and put it up in a bun on top of my head, then took it down, spritzed it with water, and let it air dry yesterday. Misted it with water again today to revive it after sleeping on it down.
Weird hair, weird shot. Really kind of missing my longer side-swept bangs. Think I'll keep those next time. Meanwhile, back to work.
THURSDAY
My kids went to get their first COVID shots at the Abbey – hooray! My first one is Saturday, in uptown Charlotte. Give me all the microchips. Bill Gates, get in my bloodstream. Etc.
Today's work included some gardening, plus another essay for the anthology. I'm up from one a week to two so far. Maybe I can knock out a third tomorrow!
What I wore today: this jumpsuit I bought on sale from Old Navy last fall. A fast-fashion item, but gosh, I love it. It was one of the things I most missed wearing during Lent, since rose-brown doesn't go with any shade of purple.
It's a quick-dry fabric, so will be nice for the long, sweaty summer, and insanely soft. I removed the elastic in the waistband, because I didn't like how bunchy the jumpsuit was around my hips originally. Now it's shapeless, which I guess is hardly flattering, either, but it seems better to me than the original fit. Here it is on its own, with my thrifted Florida Birks:
And here it is as I've worn it all day, with my thrifted 9West denim band-collared shirt, tied at the waist:
Another view of the same:
I had wanted a jumpsuit for a long time before I found this one, but it was hard to find anything that wasn't black. My older daughter had a really cute black one (probably also from Old Navy, though I'm not sure about that) that was linen, more tailored and fitted, and just darling on her, as indeed is pretty much anything she wears. She later handed it down to her younger sister, on whom it was also darling, because see previous sentence. But I don't wear black . . . and by the time I started looking, I couldn't find anything remotely like it . . . and truly, the fitted, tailored line would not have flattered me as it flattered both of them, with which thought I consoled myself as I scrolled through endless online pages of jumpsuits I didn't like the look of.
Anyway, I like this one. I'm excited to wear it and figure out more things to wear with it, to dress it up or down. Also, I like the tied-at-the-waist look, which feels better than the original elastic waist. Originally the bodice kind of bloused, and then there was a lot of fullness right at my hips, and it made me look about ten times more pear-shaped than I already am. It does look better with some kind of defined waist, but without the blousiness.
FRIDAY
Today's forecast: cloudy, high of 81F. Tomorrow we're supposed to have storms.
I was supposed to be having a gallbladder scan today, but the four-driver/two-car situation for the day suggested that I might do better to cancel and reschedule. It's good, at any rate, to look forward to a relatively uninterrupted work day.
In wardrobe news:
I'm trying not to wear the same things over and over, as has always been my default mode, but to be purposeful about choosing items out of my closet that I haven't worn, and wearing them. Now that Lent is over, and I'm free to roam among my wardrobe at will, I'm trying to pay attention to the items I don't ever pull out, so that I can consign them to the outbox. I still haven't made final decisions about anything currently residing in said outbox, and I think I will go back over the winter sweaters, now that I won't be wearing them for a while, and make some hard choices there. My goal is to winnow things down, then fill in any gaps, to have an all-season wardrobe of items that I can wear every day, and that I can dress up or down as the occasion requires.
I will keep some special-occasion pieces – not going to purge my mother-of-the-bride dresses just yet, for example. I also have a pink lace kimono thing that I bought on clearance at Ross two years ago and have been waiting for an occasion to wear – but theoretically I could wear it over just about anything, from a dress to jeans to shorts, even, to dress the other elements up more. It has possibilities, and I think I'd regret it if I got rid of it, so I will let it take up some space for now. Otherwise, I can look back over my style diary for the last six months and decide whether things are really flattering enough to keep (thinking about that white pullover sweater I keep putting in the outbox and then reclaiming – do I really want it? or do I want to make a space for something better?).
I can belt it or not – the belt does add some possibly-needed definition.
It's funny – this dress isn't as short as some of my tee-shirt dresses, yet it feels short. Maybe it's the more structured line, I don't know. I almost didn't buy the dress, because I tend not to feel comfortable in tailored shapes, but I do like it, and the color is good for me. I've worn it with boots and tights in the winter, but it feels right with Birkenstocks in the warm weather. I could dress it up more, but probably wouldn't go for heels – I think that would feel like a little too much leg on obvious display. Not my comfort zone.
Now, note that I do not in the slightest (as you might have noticed) subscribe to the kind of purity-culture what-would-Mary-wear dress-code nonsense that seems to have infiltrated Catholicism from a particular vein of evangelicalism. Of course evangelicals don't ask what Mary would wear; that just happens to be how some Catholic conversational spheres spin clothing-and-body shaming for girls and women so that it's not so obviously an import from certain evangelical conversational spheres, although that is exactly what it is. Anyway, I do not subscribe to all that, and I do not micromanage my children's clothing choices, either, thank you very much.
In our moral theology, intent matters – WHY you chose the clothes you chose is far more important, in terms of your culpability for anything, than what they might happen to signal to other people, which is something you really can't control. I could be wearing a long skirt, and you could find it sexy and have thoughts about me, and that would be your problem, not mine. For that matter, I could be wearing a dress above my knees, as I am today – a dress that frankly, in the larger visual language of our culture, really doesn't say anything out of the ordinary. Or I could be Joan Didion in 1971, wearing a bikini to the grocery store, and having my shopping cart rammed repeatedly by a hostile woman who doesn't like what I'm wearing. As Didion points out, in whatever essay it is that includes this incident, wearing a bikini to the grocery store in her LA neighborhood is hardly extraordinary. She's not, in her context, being provocative; the woman has just chosen to be provoked, and to follow her around the store ramming her cart into Didion's. In my neighborhood, mind you, a bikini in the grocery store might well be provocative. It would not be at all an ordinary thing to wear, and if I chose to wear one in that setting, I'd have to want to make a statement. I'd have to want to say, "Look, everybody! Look at my body! This here is way more body than you were expecting to see at the Bi-Lo! Check it out before it checks out!" Habitually, however, I don't choose my clothes with the intent to provoke anybody – which is to say that I don't choose anything so far out of the cultural norm that you'd be forced to stop and look – but simply to feel good in my own skin. In this case, the thoughts that you might have about me are your problem, not mine.
In short, if I have meant to be provocative, then that involves me in some culpability. But if I've just tried to look nice, by flattering my coloring and my body shape and not hiding myself under some bushel-shaped garment for fear of what others might think, and my behavior is such that I am fairly obviously not throwing myself at you or flashing you or whatever, then the thoughts you have, which I did not intend and could not anticipate and can't control, are not my fault. It's not intrinsically bad for human beings to want to look attractive. We're not birds. We don't fluff out our plumage and sing our song for the sole reason of enticing someone to have sex with us. Human beings are a lot more complex than that, and our gratitude for and pleasure in our physical being is, at heart, a rejoicing in our createdness. Attractive, for the human person, means something more than intended to attract for procreative purposes. If we read someone's attempt to be attractive in that light only – essentially blaming the person for meaning to reveal him or herself as some kind of sexual display – then we sin against charity, which is as bad as having an impure thought.
Now, whether I myself actually do look attractive is another (completely subjective) question for another day. But I like this dress. It's as much a part of my range of looks as is the maxi dress I wore to the Easter Vigil. I intend to enjoy wearing it today. But not with heels, because even given all of the above, I have my limits.
BUT with a hat, later, now that the sun has come out:
Meanwhile, scenes from the garden:
The back walk, edged with blooming wood sorrel.
Wood sorrel up close and personal:
Treasures in the lawn (Star of Bethlehem and violet):
It is apple-blossom time.
And bluebell time as well:
End-of-week note:
I wrote three essays for the anthology project, a new record, and if I keep this pace up, I can see the end of the tunnel. Feeling VERY good about myself at the mo.
SATURDAY
Got vaccinated at a Mass Walkup Event. Then we drove around and went and had dinner with beer. Not a bad day.
Wore my thrifted cropped duck-egg-blue jeans, my old (as in at least eight years old) top from the Belk Juniors Department, my thrifted jean jacket, and what my husband maintains are my aptly named "Sexi" Croc sandals from two summers ago.
I think I prefer my bangs just styled into the rest of my hair. Have not been loving them down on my forehead.
Meanwhile: learning to love this body, man. It's not perfect as our culture accounts perfection. But it's a body I'm trying to take care of and have kind feelings toward, without making it a god. We're getting along all right, my body and I.
And tomorrow is Divine Mercy Sunday. Stay tuned for another week.
