Before I moved from New York to LA, I made a point of ridding my closet of the majority of my black. I kept some basics: pants, a cardigan, a mini skirt, a cami, and I left a handful of black long sleeve shirts and sweaters in a bin at my parents’ house in Boston, because I figured I’d be back for enough visits between Thanksgiving and the holidays to want to bust those out for family and work gatherings - less to pack for longer trips - but otherwise my goal was to go bright. I stocked up on linens, white peasant blouses, turquoise and salmon tank tops, some nautical looking sweaters and neon work out garb. When I walked in to my walk-in closet in Woodland Hills - I had a walk in closet for the first time in my life for the first year I spent out west! - I wanted to see and feel lighter and brighter than I’d ever been able to donning my New York uniform of black on black on black.
If over the holidays I received gifts that were reminiscent of my east coast attire, I simply added to the collection in that bin at my parents’. They’d be staples of my “home visiting” wardrobe… hats, scarves, turtlenecks, fleece-lined cold weather running gear.
My Nanny Janny (my mother’s mother) is infamous for the Christmas bags she doles out as gifts each year. They typically contain an assortment of soaps from Marshalls, flannel pajama pants from Building 19 1/2, fuzzy socks from the Hallmark store sale section, and bright colored zip up fleeces from Ocean State Job Lot. The fleeces were new to the lineup the first Christmas after I’d moved to LA, and the one that graced my gift bag was a putrid pink. Just shy of neon that could have been considered trendy, too dark to be soft and becoming, close to the shade of magenta you can imagine being a kindergartener’s favorite crayola color, and sort of like a step sister of Pepto Bismol’s it was the kind of thing no New Yorker or Angelino would dare to be caught dead in.
And yet… it found its way back in to the suitcase I packed to go home to Los Angeles with that Christmas, and it’s come back with me to Boston since I moved east again last summer. It’s warm and it’s relentless in its ugliness. I’ve worn it around the house more often than I am keen to admit. Whenever the temperature has dropped below 60. Pretty much any and every day I don’t have somewhere to be - any morning I’m waiting for my hair to dry or only running out to the drive through Starbucks a town over. And every once in a while when I’m dropping by my parents’ where the bin no longer resides but my grandparents have moved in to an in-law apartment. Whenever Nanny sees me in it, she beams.
