I’ve been frustrated when in my closet lately. Yes, mostly it’s because of my most recent pregnancy, and many of my clothes not fitting. Or the ones that do are out of style (have I been pregnant for THAT long?), or they have stains on them (can you say spit-up? Or paint? Or juice? Or just about anything with any staining power?). But no matter – in a pinch, I always have a plain old scrubby T-shirt to fall back on, right?

No. I don’t. Not anymore.

For all my life, T-Shirts have been plentiful. They come in and out of my life with ease, and my closet [usually] overfloweth. I had so many T-Shirts growing up, that my mom was able to sneak my favorite ones out of my closet after a while without me even noticing. She saved them all and made me a T-Shirt quilt for graduation. And it’s a HUGE quilt.

But lately, I’ve started to feel like I was running short. The ones I have are all starting to look ratty, with paint spatters or holes, and I’m not getting any replacements. Weird. But it dawned on me that all my life I have been… well… involved. Involved in theater, sports, girl scouts, clubs, leadership, student government, charity walks… you name it. Generally, each activity included a new T-Shirt as a representation of involvement. I never really gave it much thought, because it’s just what I did, and it was all easily available to me throughout my (too many) years in school. I mean, my Master’s degree is pretty much just a continuation of the “involvement addiction”. I majored in “extracurricular activities”. (For more information on Student Development Administration and what the heck it is, visit Seattle University.)

So T-Shirts have always flowed into my life, with new ones constantly replacing the old worn-out ones. I never had to worry about having plenty to use for whatever means I wanted. When I realized what was causing the shortage, I became a little despondent. What happened to the “me” that was involved? I enjoyed that person. And if I wasn’t involved and getting T-Shirts to represent it, how was I going to make a T-Shirt quilt as a symbol of my next 20 years? I had a small mourning period.

But that lasted about 5 minutes, until Mylie came knocking on the closet door calling “Mom, hey, look!” I don’t remember what she wanted me to look at, but I remember what I saw. I saw my T-Shirt, personified. I won’t have a T-Shirt quilt to represent my next 20 years. But that’s because it’s not about me, anymore. And I’m good with that. My symbol, and the thing that’s going to be my lasting impression on this world looks like this:

And that’s worth more than any old quilt.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.