I just dodged a major bullet

Why do I always wait until the very last minute to pack my suitcase?  What do I think is going to happen?  A fantastic outfit is going to magically spring out of my anaemic closet, gorgeous and fully formed?  It hasn’t happened in 47 years so why would my closet start spewing out nice ensembles now?  And that’s another thing.  After each disaster narrowly averted, I always promise myself that the next time I have to stand up in front of a crowd of people and talk, I will figure out what I’m going to wear, have a back up in case there is a spill, and if I can’t find something decent then I’ll force myself to go...shudder...shopping and buy something.  But does this happen?  No. 

Like tonight for instance.  I know I have to hop in my car at 9 am to pick my friend Dawna up at the ferry terminal and then hightail it across the border to the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Conference.  The invitation arrived sometime this summer.  I was thrilled.  I was going to get to meet a ton of Booksellers and talk about my new novel, Porcupine.  How lucky was that!  Plenty of time to put together an nice outfit right?  Wrong.  I wait until 8:30 at night when all the stores have closed to start scrounging around my closet.  There is so no possibility of an emergency race to the shops bail out.  The longer I dig, the more worried I get.  How do other women do it?  Always looking like they stepped of the pages of a fashion magazine?  It was fine when I was an actress, because at the end of the movies I’d just buy the wardrobe I wore in the film.  It would fit me and the outfits were coordinated.  Then once I quit the movies my sister Jenny took over, dragging me into the shops with the bribe of a nice lunch when we were done and she would heap arm loads of clothes into my change room and wouldn’t let me come out until I found something.  But now she’s flying around the world kicking poker butt and starring in movies in her down time and I’m living in Canada.  And yes, I have those outfits from years back, but I have gained that middle age spread.  So unless I want to do that old pregnancy trick and sew a band of elastic on to the waistband with a slit for the button, which would be well and fine if I just had to stand around and talk, but at this thing I have to sit and eat and the jacket strategically covering the flap of elastic would gap open and everyone would be able to see that I’d gained weight and couldn’t get my pants done up.

Well, I was lucky tonight.  I found a pair of pants Jenny gave me when I was in LA for The Violence Intervention Program this spring, and a jacket from Jenny’s closet clean-out maybe five years ago.  I also found a lovely blouse in a subdued brown that said, “sheer understated elegance.” The blouse was a tiny bit wrinkly so I trotted it over to the ironing board, but then I thought.  “Wait!  Maybe this blouse needs washing?  When did I wear it last?  Yes, I’d better wash it.  I’ll do it in the sink because the fabric probably couldn’t take the vigor of the washing machine.” Well...it couldn’t take the vigor of a sink washing either.  When I finished washing it, rolling it in a bath towel and hopping on it to get the extra moisture out, the lovely elegant blouse had shrivelled up to about half it’s original size!  Fine if I was twenty with nice tight abs, not so fine for a forty-seven year old woman who has given birth to three children and not exercised since July.  Panic ensued.  I dug to the very bowels of my closet and the Gods were with me, because there at the very back was an old suitcase that I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking.  I opened it up and it was like a treasure trove of clothes!  Jenny and I had spent a week up at a spa around a year ago and she had brought two huge suitcases of clothes and left with one.  When I got home I had unpacked half of the suitcase and something must have called me away and then I’d thought I’d unpacked the whole thing, but I hadn’t!  Anyway, I found a lovely top that goes well under the jacket and so I shall have a sort of put together casual look, courtesy of my generous sister Jenny.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 in Chewing the Fat

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