It doesn’t matter what you wear

I love how my life has about five themes and that they get repeated oh so often because of my sometimes dense reception. 

From this week’s It doesn’t matter what you wear, just what’s in your heart file:

If all goes well, I will have completed a signing in Columbia, South Carolina on Monday night.  Columbia is my hometown (great little city) and I haven’t spent much time there since I left for college.  Sure, I go to see my family a good bit but while I am there, I stay at Casa Molinary for the entirety of my visit.  Since I am a late Facebook user (and not totally immersed), I had only kept up with a handful of friends from childhood and high school over the years. 

Then came the publication of Beautiful You, a Facebook page, and a booksigning event in Columbia for December 13th.  Excited to see old friends, I was also aware that this would be the first time all those old friends had seen me in just as long a time.  So I decided to buy a dress for the occassion because sometimes dressing up is just a fun thing to do.  I ordered the dress in November and as of December 13th, it still had not arrived.  As it turns out, the dress is coming from London, and it must have taken the slow boat.  Anyway, aware that the dress wasn’t going to arrive, I went to buy a dress (to a mall, in Charlotte– two things I don’t do much: malls or Charlotte).  Except for I hate shopping and everyone in Charlotte was Christmas shopping and so I allowed myself to go to exactly one store and bought exactly one dress that I mostly loved except for its flamenco sleeves.  Flamenco sleeves, you ask?  Well, think of a flamenco dress’s skirts, the tiers of lace?  Well, that is what these sleeves look like.  But I bought the dress anyway because my mom is a master seamstress, and I knew she could take the extra layers of lace off while I visited with my parents before the signing. 

And, then, life got serious, and reminded me of what mattered.  Late Sunday night, my dad suffered a critical set-back and had to return to the hospital.  And just like that, the desire to look cute for old high school friends was out the window.  Now, it was going to be a feat if I made it to the book signing in something other than my baggy jeans, clogs, tank, and cardigan.  I knew that if I got the opportunity to see my old friends- all that would matter to me wasn’t whether or not they loved my dress but that they had loved me enough to come catch up.  Um, didn’t I just write a book on that and all?  Yeah.  Got it.

And bet you bucks that the dress that I ordered in November arrives today.  Because that is how much my life taunts me. 

As for my beloved Papito (seriously the most important part of this post), he has developed five very large blood clots and is in the hospital for at least a week while his body tries to break down the clots.   We’re so fortunate that he got to the hospital in time, that he is as stable as he is, and that he has great medical care.  I was with him yesterday and he is in wonderful spirits (when a nurse remarked that he had five blood clots, he said with his customary perverse humor, ‘the more the merrier’).  I’ll keep you posted.