Mother Mary is visiting, and you know what that means. More Scottoline family hijinks, most recently in the clothes department. The change in climate from Miami to Philly has caused major wardrobe drama, and at all times, we have much discussion about what my mother should wear that day. Turtlenecks strangle her. Wool scratches her. Silk snags. Acrylic is perfect but only in cardigans. Layers are too bunchy. Given how picky my mother is, imagine my surprise when she came down for breakfast one morning wearing a white lab coat over her clothes.
My daughter and I exchanged glances.
Mind you, Mother Mary is 4′11″ tall and about a hundred pounds. Her hair is white and cut close to her head, and with her brown eyes behind round glasses and her nose curved like a beak, she looks like a baby snow owl. But in the lab coat, she could have been Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppet Show.
Why she was wearing a lab coat, I had no idea. I didn’t even know she had gone to medical school.
“Ma, is the doctor in?” I asked, setting a mug of coffee in front of her.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you wearing a lab coat?”
“I’m eighty-three. Can’t I wear what I want?”
“But where’d you get a lab coat?”
“What’s the difference?”
“I’m just curious. Don’t you think it’s a little strange?”
“Why?”
I gave up. Answering a question with a question is my mother’s favorite thing, and if she wanted to play Dr. Mom, it was fine with me. Plus I had noticed that some older people get tired of dressing normal and start wearing strange outfits. Not all older people, but some. I’m not naming names. They’ve been getting dressed nice for a long time, and at some point, some of them they just stop bothering. For example, under her lab coat, my mother had on cotton pants and a Miami Vice T-shirt she’s worn since Don Johnson was hot.
Who can blame her?
Not me, not really.
At her age, I’ll probably be the same way. In fact, I’m the same way already. When I’m in first-draft hibernation, I wear the same fisherman’s sweater every day, which I bought for twenty dollars from a street vendor in New York. It smells like the subway and guarantees I’ll be single forever. It’s the comfort food of clothes, and since it harms no one, who cares?
I started frying eggs when daughter Francesca said, “I like the lab coat. Wouldn’t it be funny if we all wore uniforms instead of clothes?”
“It might.” I decided to play along. “What uniform would you wear?”
“A trashman jumpsuit.”
“Why?”
“It would be so easy, and if you got trash on it, it wouldn’t matter.”
My mother nodded. “See, that’s why I like my white coat. It’s so easy.”
Wrong. Chico’s is easy. Lab coats are crazy.
It got me thinking about uniforms. I remembered with fondness my sash from the Columbus Day parade, but that’s not the same thing. A mail lady uniform would be cool, because you can carry dog biscuits in the big pockets. The UPS guy gets to wear knee socks, which are way easier than pantyhose, but who wears pantyhose anyway? I wouldn’t mind a chef’s uniform, because I could gain three hundred pounds and still fit into those checkered pants.
Then I knew. “I’d go with a motorcycle cop uniform. I like the boots.”
“And the gun,” my mother added.
Francesca looked over.
Half the time, we get in a wardrobe rut that might as well be a uniform, right? For example, when I’m in second draft, which lasts three months, I switch to the sweater-jeans-Danskos trifecta common to suburban moms and English majors. At book signings, I pair a pretentious jacket with pretentious jeans, because they match. And the little black dress is my uniform for the night shift.
Maybe it’s not the worst thing. Uniforms make our life easy. What we wear reflects the way we see ourselves and sends a clear message about us.
My mother was saying, “My sister had quite an outfit. After she lost all that weight, she used to go down the Navy Yard in shorts and high heels, with whoopee socks.”
“What are whoopee socks?” my daughter asked, and my mother lifted a thin, white eyebrow.
“You know.”
But maybe not all messages need to be so clear.