AMERICANA

It’s that sweaty feeling you get, when you realize you’re wearing the wrong outfit.

Image by Amy Thompson.

In summer 2008, we were smarting from the banks, but we were also getting excited about the Obamas. So like most things in life, it was a mixed bag.

I arrived to New York City with my own mixed bag—an almost-useful liberal arts degree from an almost-Ivy-League-university, along with a collection of the quintessential young professional’s ruffle-necked blouse. What I definitely didn’t have was any kind of plan of trying my hand at “adulting,” so I was thankful to have a mid-summer Manhattan marketing internship just off Park down by Union Square thanks to a friend.

I had something like three color variations of this $29.99 ruffled synthetic fiber Express blouse, but it was the off-white with black polka-dots that I wore the most. I sweated my way through the summer in a spandex black tank top underneath, and my signature 6-7 layers of gold-fill necklaces stacked on top.

On paper, it looked alright. The marketing internship, the adulting, the useful friend network, but something about the neck ruffle was wrong—I didn’t like how I sweat every day into the ruffles, and worried quickly that my young professional’s outfit was turning me into someone I didn’t exactly want to be—the kind of young person so new to adulting, yet already so resigned to the sweat trickling down through the ruffles and pooling in the shelf of the tank top’s not-so-useful built-in bra. Every day on my lunch break, a listless hand (mine) poked my insipid iceberg lettuce salad in its plastic container with my lifeless plastic fork.

And it wasn’t just the mid-summer sweat-soaked-ruffles lunch hour that was so underwhelming. It was the entire order of operations with my ruffle blouse throughout the entire day that just wasn’t adding up. Each day started with a morning shower in my air conditioned Hoboken apartment, followed by an 11-or-so-block sprint to the PATH train. Instant sweat. I’d arrive to my air-conditioned cubicle with sweat soaked armpits and pull on the cardigan I kept draped over the back of my chair until lunch time. (You’ve had one of these cardigans; you know which one I’m talking about, right?) During the morning hours the cardigan smashed the ruffles flat. And then it was back out into the summer sun to sweat into my now-smashed ruffles some more.

Each day at 11:30am I'd click-click-click out the lobby in my Aldo stilettos and take a short-strided walk in my Banana Republic pencil skirt over to Hale & Hearty. Then I'd march with my daily salad to Union Square where I did the East Coast office worker thing—I'd shove salad down my gullet sweating through my otherwise stunning $29.99 ruffle neck blouse in the searing summer Manhattan sun.

By Day 2 I called over the top of the cubicle to my supervisor at the next desk (something more polite than this)—This is the job, huh?

To which she simply nodded, without looking up…this is the job.

***

I lasted through the vapid 8-week stint, and did an OK enough job for them to start pulling together offers for the interns who hadn’t stunk. When the time came to decide if I was staying or going, I traded my Express ruffle-neck office shirt for a different kind of ruffles entirely.

This time, I opted for the kind of ruffle-necked prairie dress that looks perfect with cowgirl boots that have turquoise lightning bolts down the sides with silver studs. I was Beth Dutton before Beth was Beth Dutton. Or, at the very least, I got to live 256 days of her exciting big sky, fresh air, set-your-soul-on-fire romance-filled kind of life.

So it was—I threw those cowgirl boots along with everything I owned (not much, and certainly not those ruffle blouses) into the back of Shane’s pickup truck, and, just like the opening pages of every great American road trip saga, we looked at each other and said, Let’s head west.

***

That’s about as far as this story let’s me tell it, at least up to now. I’ve tried telling this story many times, but it hasn’t really come out. Well, it comes out, but not quite right.

Because I just can’t seem to write down—

How a big sky smells.

How sunshine tastes.

And how getting lost is the only place I’ve ever felt truly, really safe.

Alright here I go, I’ll try here again.

Come along and comb rain through your hair, bathe sun on your skin.

There it is! Here it comes. Now I feel it…at least for today, it’s beckoning its way through my tender heart again, right now.

Come sit in my circle. I’ll tell you my tale,

of cowgirls and rattlesnakes and a love—my love!—with a story beyond compare.

More soon.

Until then,

Sending love,

⭐️ M