Just Telling You

Recently, winter bearing down upon the land, I happened on a few photos from back when the yard was still green.

Maybe May? June? My sis-in-law and I had been talking on the phone about this thing of bunching the front of your shirt inside your pants or skirt and letting the back hang out sloppily. Which I guess I’d not known was a style. I went out on the porch and took some pictures of me trying it and sent her one.

Probably this one, as the others I have here don’t delude the eye enough. In those, my belly puffs out.

The pudginess is normal, I know, and nobody ever scolds me for it. Still, it’s one more cringey thing. I always mean to suck it up—in—but the effort is too wearing. I forget and end up going around jiggling. I suppose not eating would also work, but I want too much to live.

As photos don’t tell you everything, especially when they’re curated, let’s move on to the skirt itself. It’s long and languid, with pockets, and draggy on behind, so I prefer to wear it backwards. Well, I think backwards, as the tags are long gone. This allows for more belly room. The seams are so frayed I’ve had to buttress them with mending tape. I also tunneled fresh elastic inside the waistband. The skirt was getting too close to falling down.

The fabric itself is troubling. The tags when they existed said rayon, but there’s a polyester feel mixed in. Sultry summertime makes me long for airy airy, as much as possible, and I so much want the swingy spriggy springiness of my skirt, yet I falter at putting it on. I’ll have to put up with the polyfiber touch of it. That’s the only thing, really, that rubs me wrong.

Lady, you say, get pants. You’ve dead grass, now, in your backyard. You’ve cold winds. Think. Think.

Well of course. I have got pants to pour my belly into, soft and warm and long legged. I wear them, too. And nobody’s complaining. Nobody’s scolding. I’m only saying. It’s just how it is. In this season of frosted-over lawns and bitter gales and loaded cookie plates, let’s not over consume ourselves with stomachs.