Solomon's Wardrobe

    I am not a fashion horse. I try to look neat. Wrinkles and dirt just seem to find me. And then there’s coffee which sometimes just seems to find its way onto my clothes. Every now and then I find a particular shirt and slacks, the Woody Wood Pecker hair cooperates and I might feel cute. If I’m feeling particularly mischievous a certain twinkle in my eye will guarantee a lighter step in my walk and an inner feeling that I am cute. That is, until I drink my coffee and laugh. Alas, but even that is cute.
     I remember my Dad coming to visit me in Arkansas for my college graduation. My mother had passed away two years earlier. He wanted me to have something nice to wear for graduation – Mama would have wanted that. Now imagine a father who never shopped for clothes, standing in the women’s clothes department with his daughter in her jeans and sweatshirt looking for ‘nice.’
     Apparently our ‘lostness’ was not lost on the clerk, an older woman, who asked if she could help. We both looked at her with that blank stare that says ‘we haven’t a clue.’ She studied my wardrobe and off she went. I still remember her magic talent of finding that perfect outfit where a tom boy daughter and her old style southern Daddy would both smile and say ‘That’ll do.” I wonder if at supper that night she told her family, “you wouldn’t believe what I had to do today…..”
     We have comfy clothes, dress up clothes, work clothes, yard work clothes, beach clothes and fun clothes. When we put them on they create a feeling in both our brain and our body. The magic of the fibers and how we define them changes our attitude, our walk, what we will and will not do. Basically we become the definition we’ve given the clothes. The definition differs for everyone.
     There are days and nights, however, when appearances take on an entirely different meaning and feel. I find I am wearing the naked vulnerability of my soul, unshielded and without mask. That primitive vulnerability dares to say “as I am, as I wish I were, as I hope to be, this is me and for that I give thanks.” And the magic of life’s threads and connecting fibers whispers back, “I love you.”
     Solomon’s fields could not compare with that beauty or that wardrobe. And as I whisper back, “I am loved” another voice inside says “I’m cute.