Everything Happened | vol. 197
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
The Christmas that I was full-term with Jane, Nick got me a present that is unlikely to ever be topped: second-row seats to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s short NYC run of her one-woman show “Fleabag” at SoHo Playhouse.
Yes she could have spit in my mouth from the stage and yes I would have let her.
Parents of young children know how much admin is required to spend a weekend away, even though in this case we brought our newborn along. The Airbnb in Crown Heights that kind of scammed us , arranging for Nick’s brother and sister-in-law to care for our then-three-year-old, the bus tickets to New York, arranging for my friend Jon and his now-wife Kaylie on the Upper West Side to watch tiny baby Jane during the play.
All of that administrative front-loading felt well worth the headache as we raced from the Houston stop to the theatre, giggling, feeling free, even if falsely so.
The admin was no trouble. What confounded me about this trip was deciding how to dress myself for the occasion of this play. I was two months out from baby #2, and I had gained something like 60 lbs during that pregnancy.
I’m not scared of weight gain; like most women, I cycled through weight fluctuations through my adolescence and twenties before I was ever someone’s mother. I recognized myself at different sizes, it’s that my proportions made no sense. I was a woman who could once eyeball thrift store jeans with the tag ripped out and know if they would fit perfectly, and now I could not pick my own body out of a lineup.
Beyond that, I just didn’t know how formally to dress for this theatre I had never been to. I feared overdressing and looking like a hayseed. I feared underdressing and looking like a hayseed. We were broke and could hardly afford the trip to begin with, I wasn’t really in a position to send a bunch of fast-fashion garbage to the house via e-commerce as a hedge and hope that I had the executive function someday to post the returns.
I ended up wearing a green ponte dress with a surplice neckline that I had once bought for work. It was fine. The zipper did not seem in danger of breaking. I felt neither underdressed nor overdressed. I felt like I was in costume as myself: a rural small town mom of two on prison furlough to the city to enjoy one (1) culture. Which is to say, a little bit like a hayseed but who cares when you’re freeeeeeeeeee
(Later that night, I would throw the Spanx I had worn under my dress into the trash can of our Airbnb and vow to never wear Spanx again. I have very easily, lol, kept this covenant.)
The weekend now feels like a beautiful dream — walking around a sunny Prospect Park with little sighing Jane in the Lillebaby, spotting the actor Greta Lee pushing a stroller and getting in one of my famous hypoglycemic fights with Nick, this time about whether it was ever ok to go up and talk to celebrities in public, brunch at MeMe’s (RIP). The only bad thing about that weekend was that everyone was wearing big cropped pants, they looked cool as hell, and I felt sorry for myself because I was going to spend however long they were in style looking a little bad.
Maybe you can read between the lines that I am one of many millennials overreacting, quite Boomerishly, to a TikTok meme about my generation’s old person tells: the side-parted hair, unrepentent use of the 😂 emoji, and clinging to skinny jeans.
Millennials can’t believe that young people have noticed we are old-ass moms (mom being a category not restricted to people with children.)
we
are
not
owned
I was at the gym last night (this is the part where I disclaim to you that it is me and two other women in a literal warehouse with the loading dock open to the endless winter night, turning our nipples to early Stone Age tools, and yes we choke on our double masks the whole time.) One of the other women brought up the meme and she laughed, saying, “It’s funny to me that they think we care. That’s what great about being in your thirties! You don’t care any more!”
Wheezing through my burpee, I gasped, “I care! I care so much!”
They laughed. I was not joking. I was the old woman at the end of the Titanic holding the Heart of the Ocean. It wasn’t over for me yet.
After the workout, I sat in my parked car and tried to find non-skinny jeans that might look good on me.
Not because I was owned. Definitely not. For science.
Everlane and Madewell helpfully provided models in my size to show me how the big pants would look on me, which was roughly like a pastor’s wife named Charlene. I mean no disrespect to Charlene who is no doubt a godly woman whose treasures are in heaven. Charlene has no illusions about being cool. But I do.
I sent screenshots of the big pants on the normal person model to my friends. They volleyed them back. The woman who owns the gym finally turned the lights off, beeped her keyless entry, and startled to see me still there, worshipping my phone in the dark. She waved, looking confused. How long had I been parked there, being angry about jeans? I got an email notification reminding me to sign up to bring snacks to the daycare Valentine’s Day party. The Charlenes of the world will need to remind me two more times still.
I started my station wagon to drive home, cover my two-year-old’s entire body in occlusive ointment, read two chapters of my son’s book to him, and pace the entire house stooped over picking up matchbox cars and wet broccoli bits while listening to my pop culture podcasts with corded headphones because Bluetooth “stresses me out.”
I threw the Heart of the Ocean overboard. I was owned. I was free.
yr mate,
Evie
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OMG the caption 😂