I am standing in my closet, preparing for a night of dinner and a play at the Hart Theater, here in the little town of Waynesville, North Carolina. It is warm outside, so I settle on white jeans, a sinuous blouse, and high-heeled sandals. The clothes settle around my body with a sigh, but this is not what brings a smile of pleasure.
The joy comes when I slide the golden dancer’s cap over my boy-short hair. The finely-wrought, crocheted dancer’s cap fits snugly, and boasts sparkled discs placed here and there. Someone made this cap unknowing of the woman who would wear it, unknowing of the joy it would bring. Or perhaps its creator did know, perhaps she had a dancer’s cap of her own and imagined her creations adorning the head of a woman just like me. The discs catch the light as I look this way and that into the mirror. Bits of my dark hair peek out, and I laugh at one tuft that stubbornly sticks out in the back; I decide to leave the tuft there, why not? I place rings on my fingers, around my neck the silver wolf-head necklace I received as a gift from my husband on my fifty-first birthday, and last, a silver bracelet. Done. Silver and gold. Yes.
How differently I dress here in Western North Carolina than I did in South Louisiana. It is not just the climate change, but much more than that. What I never would have thought to wear, even if I had found one there, was a golden sparkled dancer’s cap.
I was born in West Virginia, but my father was a restless man and moved his family about quite frequently. When I was ten years old, we settled for a time in Baton Rouge, and there I would stay until my husband and I moved to the mountains. Thirty-eight years in Baton Rouge. That is long enough for identities to be heaped upon a person, both true and perceived. There is the girl identity with bare feet and pedal pushers; the junior high then high school garb that tries to look like everyone else, even when nonconformist all the nonconformists look alike; and then comes work and first marriages and a child and that marriage is very bad and heavy heavy cloaks are draped to hide the fine mess I am in. There is a divorce and whispers and then the shedding away of that cloak, and the pulling on of sexy attire to show the world an almost forty-year-old woman is still attractive, still has something to offer, the tottering around in high high very-high heels, short skirts—look at me! Look at me! There is the meeting of a man and the second marriage that comes of it, and the dressing to keep his eye attached to my curves—I am worthy of your attention and love, my clothing tightly and scantily stated.
In the last years of my life in Louisiana before my move to the mountains, I adopted a strangling style to my dress. I was sick of sexilicious. Why should I boast my cleavage? Why should I slither into too-tight clothing that restricted my breathing and made me feel as if I were on display, “For Sale, Woman, Cheap.” I enrolled at Louisiana State University, and I wore flip-flops, trendy jeans, and t-shirts. For my job at the university, prim heels and suits or structured pants and tops were my costumes. As a personal trainer, I wore tennis shoes and yoga clothes and said, “Give me one more rep…now two more!” Elsewhere, I threw on funky quirky clothes that hailed from the 60s and 70s. This is who I am, my clothing choices said. I am no One person; I am a multitude of women. It didn’t occur to me that I was still dressing to hide from the world the woman I was becoming as I approached my late forties—independent, strong, outspoken, more than a body to drape clothes upon in an effort to create my definition. The clothes filling my closet and dresser drawers were a schizophrenic muddled mess.
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When Roger and I moved to our beautiful mountain, I stayed reclused in our log house for months. I wore flannel shirts and baggy jeans. I hid the curves. No one would ever have to know. I was androgynous. I worked on my essays, short stories, and my novel for long hours, huddled inside my loose comfortable new skin. I took long walks on the mountain in chunky boots and down vests. Off to the hardware store, or off to the grocery store I’d go—my only ventures out—and I’d not bother to change into anything pleasing to anyone, sometimes not even pleasing to me. The feeling was one of freedom. No one knew who I was. No one would judge. I could be anyone at all! Anyone. Or, rather: No one. I disappeared.
One afternoon when I felt particularly restless, I took off down the mountain to Seven Silver Seas—here in Maggie Valley—a bright purple building with whimsical decorations and bright flowers and wind socks and chimes, a veritable wickedly grinning crook’d finger of delight that had been begging me for months to step inside its doors and be charmed. And it was while there, when that feeling of fading away was most acute, that I stopped, reached out my hand, grabbed that dancer’s cap off the Styrofoam skull, took it to the cash register, and handed it to the owner of Seven Silver Seas.
She smiled, and said, “This is perfect for you.”
I answered, “Yes. Yes it is.”
“This color will look good with your dark hair, too.”
Again, I reached out and touched the cap. “It’s beautiful.”
“I have one of my own. I feel like a princess when I wear it.”
“Maybe I’ll feel like a dancer. I’ve always wanted to be a dancer.”
She folded the cap, gently placed it in tissue, then in a lavender bag. I handed over my money, which didn’t seem very much for such a fine work of art. The exchange done, I left the store. But, back in my car, I looked down at myself. Would a woman who wears a Golden Sparkled Dancer’s Cap wear droopy, saggy clothes with it?
And that day, I bought jeans, boots, fuzzy sweaters, sinuous blouses, high-heels. But, oh! that cap. That golden sparked cap! And atop my head it sits, proud, beautiful. Me. Am I a dancer? Well, no; but no matter, the dancer’s cap tells me I can be one if I want to, and if I don’t want to, I can wear it anyway, simply because I like it.
I twirl about my living room, my husband smiling at me, my dogs looking at me as if I’m a bit daft. I twirl and laugh and think, I can start again.
Do the clothes make the woman? Or does the woman make the clothing? Who cares? I have a golden sparkled dancer’s cap and I’m dancing.
