Gold Down Coat and Vest

Day 241: Gold Down Coat and Vest
Emma Jane went off to college with my sedate black down coat in her suitcase, leaving me with the much a much flashier (albeit warmer) gold coat and vest. We bought the gold coat for her when she was attending that bastion of misery, middle school. Metallic down coats were in then. Gold, silver or bronze.

Being in - fitting in - is paramount when you are thirteen years old.

Gold coats fell out of fashion much more quickly than down coats wear out, so when she was in ninth grade, she began wearing my black coat, and I began wearing the gold. We never spoke about it. Somehow, it just happened. That was in the days of hefty private school tuition and cautious spending. I tried to tone the gold coat down with dark brown RIT, but the repellant metallic fabric wouldn't absorb the dye. Sadly, the middle school stains and spots accepted the die very well, rendering the coat totally inappropriate for a professional setting. Still, I kept wearing it. Except for the stains, it was in perfectly good shape, and a new down coat would have been a luxury.

Now Emma is off to college, and thanks to my parents' generosity and our own consistent savings plan, college proves to be much more affordable than private high school. And now I have two jobs, one of which involves dressing professionally. (When I took the job at the botanical gardens & arboretum nine years ago, I celebrated by burning my suits. Just kidding: I actually took them all to the Salvation Army.) So I've spent a lot of time shopping these past few weeks, and truly, it hasn't been all bad. It's fun to have all "new" stuff, especially things like the mustard-colored wool felt Ann Taylor jacket from Value World, or the gray angora boucle sweater from the Thrift Shop, or the coral velour Talbot's jacket that Lisa passed on.

When I put on the stained gold coat this morning, I realized suddenly that I had the means and the time to replace it with exactly, precisely, specifically, entirely what I wanted. And not only could I get the exact right down coat: I could also get myself a warm wool dress coat.

It may be cheating to say that I'm getting rid of something today, when I'm actually at net zero, but it just felt so awesome to go to the mall and buy myself exactly what I wanted, without worrying about the price. To get rid of the stained not-quite-right thing I've been making do with for years.

Writing the last Greenhills tuition payment last April felt great. I loved going to the car dealer and buying myself my own brand-new zero miles car. It's been such a joy to buy myself lattes and Jimmy Johns and happy hour cocktails without a moment's worry. And I haven't gone to the mall and bought myself nice clothes without worrying about the price tag since I was a yuppie in San Francisco, dressing the management consultant part.

When Sam says that he wants to be rich someday, I always say that money doesn't make you happy. I actually believe it's true. Poverty - hunger, cold, danger, insecurity - certainly contributes to unhappiness, but I believe that having enough to meet your basic needs makes a person virtually as happy as vast riches. I have a suspicion, in fact, that people with great wealth may be less happy than people with just enough.

But to be able to treat yourself to two new coats without worrying about the price: what a gift. Today I didn't shop for the kids or the price or the holidays. It was pure selfishness, and boy, was it fun.

Despite all that, I can't say I love the mall. The fake Christmas trees, the perfumed air, the excessive mirrors, the crowds: it all totals far more stimulation than I enjoy, except once in blue moon. With this morning's success, I'm pretty sure I won't have to go to the mall again for a long, long, long time.