Wear The Hell Out Of It

My friend Jenny is not what I expected to find in my blogging journeys. When we met several years ago for the first time I watched her demeanor change as a woman approached her and began gushing about how wonderful and awesome Jenny was. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Jenny became quite uncomfortable in the situation. I saw in Jenny an anxiety disorder that I recognized in two of my children. To lighten the mood, I made a silly joke and then she looked me in the eye and asked, “Would you like to go to the bathroom and share this airplane booze with me?”

“Yes.”

It was sort of a ridiculous situation but there was something amazing in it. At least for me there was. You don’t come back from those easily nor do you want to come back when you meet special people.

My friend Karen is also not what I expected to find in my blogging journeys. The first time we met we bonded over people wanting to touch our hair as if we were pet store animals to be petted. Last year when she sent me her published book, The Beauty of Different, there was a chapter in it that included Jenny and I used that book to talk to my female students about their worth and value and the importance of being different. It has become a sort of workbook for me as I use it to start conversations with adolescent girls about fitting in and accepting ourselves the way we are. A lesson that, truthfully, I must learn as well as teach.

I guess I didn’t expect a whole lot of what blogging has been for me.

When Jenny bought herself this red dress and wrote about what it meant for her I was struck by meaning of it all. The part of Jenny’s post on The Traveling Red Dress that got to me the most was this:

“I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies. I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be. And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”.”

Here is the thing about being so far from normal: that eccentric and different part of who you are looks at the ‘normal’ people in life and thinks they have it easier. What a terrible lie we tell ourselves in that. Rather, that’s a terrible lie I tell myself. Sometimes I believe it. Sometimes I pretend to be normal. It’s an ongoing internal struggle. I have faked normal most of my life because I don’t want anyone to see my weaknesses. In doing this, I come off as strong-willed and confident and sometimes I am just that.

Why did I need this red dress?

Earlier this decade all I could do was think about how exhausted I was. My life was just so tiring. It has always been challenging. Not much comes to me easily and I wasn’t always this person that far too many folks think has it all together. But I did assume, falsely, that if I worked hard and followed all the rules that I was previously breaking that things would get easier. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that my American Dream isn’t shaping up to be how I want. People I trusted let me down, people I once loved stole lots of money from me, and people took as much as they could take from me. All the while I have maintained a semblance of normalcy and get-it-togetherness in a strangely ridiculous life.

It’s more than that.

I want things. I want a sense of normal. I want these things that I kept seeing everybody else having and I can’t master it. I want to fit in somewhere that isn’t a place of my own making.

How silly is that? I have this perfectly ridiculous life and I want ‘normal’.

But Jenny is right. The reason I am so attracted to the philosophical idea of the red dress is because it is a “shockingly inappropriate or overindulgent thing that we long for all our lives but deny ourselves because it’s not sensible”. I don’t always think so, but I suppose I am shockingly inappropriate. Not so on the overindulgent, because that is something I cannot afford. Inappropriate because of the path my life has taken. I am ultimately responsible for that because, at any time, I could have gotten off that path and created a new one, but I think I really do like this one. Having babies when I was in high school, placing one for adoption only to find her 21 years later, walking out on a failing, crumbling marriage while trying to finish grad school and get a new job, going into educational administration in the midst of creating a writing career – these aren’t things I know to be appropriate or whatever the opposite of overindulgence is. Underindulgent? Normal?

But I’m not normal. If my title walks in the room before I do then people don’t know what to expect. Whatever it is that’s expected, it is certainly not the me I know and like. You know what I like? I like being an assistant principal that doesn’t look or act like the majority of them out there. I like that my students grow up and stay in touch with me and come over for dinner. I like that my students know where I live and ring the doorbell just to say hi or meet me at a coffeeshop to talk books and life. I like that I have stories and share them here.

Lately, that’s been another struggle. The Me who I like gets challenged on telling stories. Either I hear “write more about your school experiences” or “write less about your school experiences”. I hear “write more about race” or “write less about race”. Too often, I stop myself from writing freely because if you knew the real struggles and that didn’t fit with accepted norms from an assistant principal then…well, I don’t know what would happen. We writers, we start blogs to explore our core beliefs and experiences in writing and that makes us feel less alone. As time goes on we realize just who is reading and then, at least for me this is true, pull back from it all.

That’s why I needed the red dress. I needed a moment of the abnormal, a celebration of the irrational. I needed the absolute crazy idea of getting a red ball gown in the mail and going out in the middle of the woods to take pictures in it. I needed to be something that maybe you wouldn’t expect from the person at your child’s school. I mean, really, can you see this person as the trusted individual whose office you might need to go to when your child gets in trouble or is in need of help?

photo credit: Matt Penning Photography

Nothing about my own personal journey with the red dress was normal. First, it came in a box that looked like the post office used it for a game of volleyball. It was crushed on one side and I had honestly forgotten about expecting it in the mail so I had no idea what this mangled box was on my porch last week. I wanted to put it on right away but I was afraid it wouldn’t fit. I took it up to my bedroom and prayed that the physical difference between Jenny and I wouldn’t be so great that it wouldn’t even get up over my hips. But I’ve lost enough weight lately that it slipped right on and the beauty was that I didn’t lose weight for this purpose.

After I realized that it fit, I contacted photographer Matt Penning whom I had previously never met. Our paths crossed online and I knew his work from seeing his photographs in our local newspaper. He offered to take my picture a few months ago but I asked that he wait until the dress came. Luckily, his schedule allowed for us to meet yesterday when it was a bizarrely gorgeous 70 degrees so I set into motion all the things it would take to meet him and his wife, Karen Sue, at Sugar Grove Covered Bridge, a place he suggested. First, I needed some help getting into the dress but Mallory was busy and The Cuban was, too. Since it’s in public I couldn’t very well change clothes once I got there. I knew I had to put on the dress before I left the house. But I needed to make a stop first.

I remembered that I didn’t have much gasoline and that I needed to stop for some before our photo shoot. In true Kelly fashion, I got to the gas station and couldn’t open my gas cap so I had to find this older gentleman to help me as I professed to being an idiot about such things.

I’m so glad I wasn’t wearing the red dress at that moment.

As I walked in to pay, I saw a truck driving slowly with a woman in the front seat yelling, “Aaaaashley! Aaaaashley!” out of the passenger window. Four women, standing by the side of the gas station entrance, walked up to the car giggling as they were clearly having a good time. Aaaaashley and her friends got into the car and, since the windows were down as I passed by them, I noticed that Aaaaashley was very drunk and having trouble getting her leg to swing up high enough to get into the truck. It looked like they were part of a bachelorette party and in need of a ride. I walked up to the driver who was smiling and I said, “Whatever it is that you ladies are doing it looks like you’re having a fantastic time.” All the ladies in the truck laughed when I said, “And, um, Aaaaashley? Can you even get in the car?” Now, this situation? It would have been made more incredible if I were wearing the red dress.

I’m so sorry I wasn’t wearing the red dress at that moment.

Our photography session was anything but common. A reunion, an auction, a live band, and several other people were there taking advantage of the weather. Matt suggested we meet at sunset to capture the very best light and his suggestion didn’t disappoint. His photos are incredible and he is a generous photographer who shared the photos with me as he took them. When he really likes one he’s just snapped he is altogether giddy and smug because he knows what he’s doing. Matt made a sound like a little stifled laugh before making his way over to me to show me what he just took. I have to admit that his laughs are properly placed because boy, did he ever capture the light. I assured him that I normally don’t look that creamy or glow-y in photographs but he kept proving different. He made magic for me. Then, he called me sassy. Matt is a keeper. So is his wife, Karen Sue. You should see his photoblog and read how he talks about that woman.

Since the area was full of people I stood out even more when I emerged from my car in a poofy red dress. There was a family taking photos about 20 feet from us with a little girl who looked to be around 2 years old. She was mesmerized by the dress and took off, her mom running after her, to come stand next to our shoot. I tried to coax her into getting in the picture with me but she just stood close to the dress and stared at this grown woman dressed up in a princess dress with cowgirl boots on. Throughout the evening lots of people walked by and said, “Nice dress” as they passed by. Sometimes I gave them the short version: I have this friend who sends this dress all around the country for women to wear. It’s a traveling red dress. Another family was leaving the covered bridge and I heard the little girl whisper, “I like her dress” to which her mom whispered back, “I like her boots.” The whole thing was quite an experience.

This uncommon, unconventional, capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent, silly, sassy and nonsensical life has to be worn I suppose. It doesn’t come in the form of a dress. It is an outfit that I cannot take off when I tire of it. Maybe none of us is the ‘normal’ I keep thinking I need to be and we’re all like this. Tell me we are so I don’t feel so alone about that. If not, tell me you’re normal and you still want a red dress in your life. Whatever it is that you’re wearing, just go ahead and wear it already. These are reminders as much for me as for anyone and that red dress came just at the right time.

Red dresses are transformative. Red dresses are necessary. Red dresses have the power to resurrect.

Red dresses are the best kind of ridiculous. Thank you, Jenny, for reminding me of that.