Haute Couture

I spent my birthday in a graveyard. My husband and daughter and I had a sushi/mimosa picnic beside the pond at Park Hill, while two jet contrails crossed high above us and the peepers chorused steadily from the cattails.

There's something about cemeteries. Acres of meticulously-maintained green spaces with nobody in them. Nobody above-ground, that is. Since I was a kid, I've loved hanging out in cemeteries, wandering among the gravestones, reading names and dates, imagining life stories. I'm especially drawn to those crumbling old markers topped with lambs or angels. Am I weird? I once read where Jessica Lange said the first place she checks out whenever she goes on location is the local boneyard. Is she weird?

Not to mention the birds and wildlife one finds there. On my birthday we were joined by blackbirds, robins, Canada geese, mallards, kingfishers, a pair of turkey vultures and several returning warblers. In the past, in addition to the usual suspects, I've run across deer, fox, raccoons, weasels, a woodchuck and several returning bears.

This thought first crossed my mind in my twenties: When my wardrobe is finally perfected, I can die. Is this weird? In my lifelong struggle to put together The All-Inclusive Closet, it feels like I'm always one shirt short of a shutout. For instance, I'll be set for Winter Everyday, but sadly lacking in Summer Heatwave. Or say I get the June-July-August thing going, my November is a decade behind. And don't get me started on Spring.

I'm a desperate shopper. I only shop when I'm desperate. Unlike my mother, for whom shopping was an artform. There's one thing I detest worse than shopping, and that's thinking about having to shop. But I also detest the idea of schlepping through life in sweatpants. Pull-ease. Running shoes are for running, jack. So I've managed to cultivate my own eclectic, er, look over the years...I can't bring myself to use the word style...and, as we all know, looks need maintaining.

Then last week, in the lead-up to a weekend event we were attending, I had this Aha! moment: my closet is reaching critical mass! I might actually be only one or two percentage points shy of solvency in the "Ready-for-Any-Contingency" department. There I was, midnight Tuesday, lying in bed gearing up for angst-ridden-insomnia as I began contemplating an ensemble suitable for Late-April-On-The-Shore-Evening-Wedding-Reception...and I had it covered! No Shopping Necessary! I was aghast.

That realization was followed inexorably by this one: Now I Can Die.

So there I am eating sushi in a graveyard on my birthday being sung to by frogs while vultures circle overhead against an enormous X which stretches across the sky...and I'm wearing the perfect outfit for just such an occasion. Talk about a mix-and-match mindfuck. Like remembering to always wear nice underwear, just in case. My mother would be so proud.