how to dress for the apocalypse

We had glorious weather last week in the maritime Pacific Northwest—sunshine, a slight breeze, birdsong. I worked several hours in the garden every day. Monday, I turned over the cover crop I planted last fall, cleared infinity weeds, moved rock. Hard work. Good exercise. Satisfying.

At one point, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the window. Hot damn, I thought, chuckling right aloud. I look fabulous. All that mortal peril swelling and weight gain is coming off, and I can wear my ordinary clothes again. I even needed a belt to keep my pants up. More importantly, I’m strong and flexible. No more strategic planning required to get up and down from the ground.

It was strange and terrible to live in the body of a stranger—especially when no one seemed to see that I was not right, not whole. Now, though, I recognize myself as myself again. A miracle of time and sweat and patience.

That glimpse in the window reminded me of an interview I’d read when I was in my twenties—with a famous gardener, a woman who was in her eighties and still working. The only place I have ever read magazine articles is in the doctor’s office, and I vaguely remember the glossy pages. A fish tank. But I vividly recall her photograph. She wore a wide-brimmed sunhat, and her braids shone silvery white against her black turtleneck.

This woman must have been asked about her attire in the interview, because that, of course, is what we ask women. She always wore a turtleneck, she said, and never went out except fully covered. She mentioned thorns, crawling around under shrubs, and protecting herself from injury.

This should not have been a radical, life-changing moment for me. But it was. The idea that women might look sassy—she totally did—and dress for work, to protect their own bodies rather than display them…. This notion was so shocking that I quietly turned it over in my mind for years.

I don’t remember this woman’s name or her famous garden or where she lived or anything else about the interview. But that gardener, that artist, likely long dead, gave me a gift.

Twenty-some years later I have my own gardening “uniform.” I don’t wear a turtleneck, but I do cover the back of my neck with one of my son’s old dress shirts, collar turned up. My favorite wool cardigan, a gift from my friend Lily, gardener extraordinaire, is riddled with holes and paint smudges. But the apple green is cheery and delights me.

And I always wear long pants, even when it is hot. Because one summer when I was wearing a skort, I stepped into a bed to yank one tall weed. I was on my way to the grocery store, the kids clambering into the van, and I paused for only a sec to get that bugger. I still have the scar from the enormous gash up my right shin.

Naturally, I also have quite a selection of sun hats.

(Once, on a walk, a random asshole, enormously tall and physically intimidating, told me I shouldn’t “hide” under my hat. When I laughed and said something about mitigating sun damage, he scolded me. Displaying my “beautiful smile,” apparently, was more important than preventing melanoma. Fucker.)

(Also, why do people not understand how sexy hats are?)

(I digress.)

Yes, I dress practically, but I also feel, well, smashingly adorable. If I may say so.

How we dress communicates something essential about who we are. So the question in time of quarantine is this: Does it matter what we wear if no one will see?

On social media, amongst friends, this question is ubiquitous: To dress or not to dress.

One pal lamented that her supply of sweat pants was insufficient for this situation.

Another friend shared that she had vowed to wear PJs all day, but found that she was feeling depressed. She rallied mid-afternoon, showered, pulled herself together.

And two weeks ago, I had what will likely turn out to be my final meeting with my students. They are all struggling to cope with the shift to online classes and the collapse of normalcy.

“Do you know how hard STEM classes are when your professor has had like ten minutes to get the class online? Labs—I don’t want to talk about it. I ‘take’ my classes in my pajamas in bed. I try to concentrate. I take notes. But it’s depressing.”

Yes. So much unknown. It is depressing.

In the face of all this uncertainty, fashion maven The Directrice, delightfully urges us “to start as we intend to go on,” an expression I’d never heard. She suggests ACTION SLACKS instead of sweats.

These conversations, the pajama dilemma, reminded me that during the first year of each of my son’s lives, my primary goal each day was to be showered and dressed by 10am. Everything else fell into place if I could manage to rally.

Probably a good rule for the Apocalypse, too, the 10am thing. But it’s been a non-issue, since I’m usually suiting up for the garden early every day.

Basically, I’m living the dream—for the first time in twenty years I am not working overtime from spring break to commencement. Springtime outside, it turns out, even during the plague, is so much less gloomy than the sound booth.

I have only been hunkering down for a few weeks, and already, what with the concert and class cancellations and hours a day in the garden, my resting heart rate has hit and remained at an all-time low. Which is good. But when I saw my reflection that day in the garden, it struck me that here I am, in all my healthy fabulousness, and no one will see me.

It sounds like vanity, but it was not, that day, reveling in the sunshine. It was something else. Deeper. A flavor of loneliness. An unsettling realization that when this is over, when we can gather again, we will be changed. Sure, my garden will be amazing—a beautiful, redemptive transformation, after years of neglect.

The truth is, we will all come out of our respective confinements and quarantines changed—physically and otherwise. The world will be irrevocably changed.

Sweats or PJs? Will our clothes still fit? Safe questions, and for some of us, distractions from the more profoundly unnerving:

Will we recognize each other? Will we still know each other? Will we recognize ourselves?

I don’t know.

But I’m holding on to the idea that this work on my little rectangle of Earth will pay off, that my garden will be welcoming. And welcome assumes visitors.

2 thoughts on “how to dress for the apocalypse”

  1. I don’t know about The Directrice, but the one I know is “Begin as you mean to go on… ” from Charles H. Spurgeon. Very Victorian.

    I love that you are feeling well and comfortable in your body again. And that you are working in the garden, nurturing life and beauty!

    I always wear pants unless I’m to sick to get out of bed. And a bra. Mascara is probably closer to the thing that defines whether I am “face the world” ready or not. And I haven’t put that on in over two weeks now.

  2. I love this, and thank you for introducing me to The Directrice. I notice that all the clothing companies are sending notices to my email box about sales. It must be that a lot of people are not getting out of their pj’s and into new spring clothes.

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