Gs are for spelling

It makes all the difference. Everyone who has been to a proper fitting will tell you it is life changing. I ignored the endorsements for the longest time -turned off by the dollar signs I knew a bra from a place that does proper sizing would demand. I was also repelled by the fear that a tiny measuring tape-wielding woman would tell me that my breasts were even bigger than I imagined. Silly of course, being in denial about their size doesn’t make them any smaller. Side and top boob escaping from each double D cup assured me of that.

Sigh.

 

I finally ventured to Nordstrom’s, resigned to the need for a bra that would fit, and skeptical that it would make much of a difference. Karma came along for support (actually, truthfully, she came for her own amusement).

I wandered around for a little bit, looked at price tags and tried to hide my shock and dismay at the expense of so little material. I’d paid less for jeans and dresses than the price of these whimsical fragments of fabric and wire. Of course, the larger the cup size the more fabric and wire it involved, but only so much…even my breasts weren’t bigger than legs or butt – mine or anyone else’s.

A smiling salesperson approached me and asked how she could be of service. “I need to be sized,” I gestured toward my chest and she smiled warmly, as accustomed to such a request as if i'd asked for the bathroom, and assured me that Sue would be able to help me. 

Sue asked me what size bra I wore and then gazed mildly at my chest for a few moments, then she led me into a spacious changing room with an arm full of black bras and a measuring tape. It turns out, asking my size is more about getting an idea – understanding that the idea is most assuredly wrong. Her tools were there to drive that point home.

I stood a little defensively in the soft light of the dressing room. It was the size of a small bedroom. Space enough for me, Sue, and Karma. Karma, staked out in the corner leaning against the wall, smirked at my reflection in the mirror. 

Sue went to work, wrapping the measuring tape around my waist- just below my breasts, just over them.  Then, as instructed, I stripped to the waist and she pulled out three bras from the menagerie of bras hooked across her arm. She chirped pleasantly, white noise in the background of my brain screaming against this seeming indignity.

“We use these bras as fitting bras, they tend to be accurate in terms of the other bras. Once we get you sized here we can try on different types and see what you like.”

This is the part of the story where my boobs illustrated their sense of humor. My boobs didn’t really fit any of those bras. Too big in one size they were too small in the size below. Even Sue was perplexed. Her hands on her tiny hips and her head cocked to the side, she reached back into the myriad of bras she’d carried in and studied them carefully as if discerning a foreign language or forgotten song. 

“Hmmm,” she seemed to both breathe and sigh. 

“I’m sorry…” I offered reluctantly, an apology felt appropriate, as if my breasts were misbehaving and I should have trained them better. 

Sue smiled brightly and seemed to settle on an idea in her head. “I think we can start with Gs and Hs.” I didn’t really hear anything after that. I think she promised to be back with some selections but really I barely noticed she wasn’t there anymore.

What the hell was this willow wisp of a woman talking about? Gs and Hs were letters of the alphabet that should never be associated with breasts. Other than my sisters pregnancy boobs – filled with milk – I’d never heard of such a size. DD had seemed obscene a few years back and now here we were flying past the Ds, riding fast and loose with letters I usually only spell with. 

Sue reemerged, bright as ever, her arms loaded with an array of colors and styles of bras that I had never seen in my size…ever. Stylish and beautiful bras were always for the tiny or pert set. The bras with the little bows and thin straps. A friend with less than a handful of breasts once handed me a cute little bra with thin little straps to try on, and I lost it. “What? Do you want me to cut my arms off with these thin little straps?” For her, bras were more decoration than utility. She had no idea how heavy they can be, how cruel on your back it can be to hold them aloft. It was the last time I went bra shopping with anyone under a D cup. 

Back in the dressing room, Sue helped me into and out of a series of bras. She adjusted my straps and the breasts nestled inside each cup to get the proper look and to see if it was an actual fit. Sue was nothing if not thorough. 

A handful of bras waiting for my final decision, Sue turned her attention to Karma who maintained she was a B cup. Sue assured her she was not. Fifteen minutes later and she was nestling Karma’s breasts into beautiful bras. Turns out she was a D cup and the variety of D cups was pretty extensive. Beautiful and artistic looking bras that were utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing.

In my corner, watching Karma beam, I lamented, “oh great, you have cute pert boobs and I have stripper boobs- I look like I should be on a pole.”

Sue looked up from Karma’s fitting and shook her head as vehemently as she could manage on her tiny little frame, “you COULD you could,” she assured me with too much enthusiasm, “people pay for those, you could be a stripper!” She smiled brightly and Karma, dastardly friend that he is, almost fell to the flor laughing hysterically. Sue seemed unable to grasp why that was neither comforting nor anything close to what I was aspiring to. A few minutes in, Karma heaved herself upright and tried to catch her breath but when she made eye contact with my disgruntled face in the mirror she dissolved into another set of hysterical giggles.

Less certain of what was going on now, Sue excused herself from the room, leaving behind a panoply of bras for us to decide exactly what we wanted to buy and to allow us to finish laughing at what? I’m sure she wasn’t sure. 

Sue and the ridiculous wad I spent on bras and underwear are seared into my brain. But at least I have been assured by a tiny little woman who can wear cute little bras with thin cutting straps, that if I ever need to buy more bras I can spend a little time on a pole and possibly earn the cash I need.

Sparklebright

She had the brightest smile. Bright like whites in the summer sun. Bright like kittens purring against your hand. Bright like nothing bad had ever happened. 

It has been so many years I can’t tell you how we started talking, or what mental or physical state I was in when we did. It was after my accident. My head was bandaged but I don’t know how far into the AZT I was. I don’t remember how sick I might have been. Only that when I remember it now, through the gauzy haze of nostalgia and toppled into the memory pit of a time, I can see her smiling as bright as anything, laughing as lightly as dandelion fluff. 

My trauma was obvious. Written all over my face with bandages, spiky stitches, and the constant nausea for my post exposure prophylaxis (a precaution against the unknown origin of the hospital needles). And if it were later, and the stitches were already gone, then my trauma was still obvious, with a raw jagged line running through a patch of shaved scalp. 

Her ailment was her secret to tell. 

We sat on a bench I think, waiting for appointments? Lingering after appointments? Sharing the same bed and breakfast? I can’t recall details; only that we talked and shared and laughed.

I have a memory of her joyful description of her house in Malawi. Her washing clothes in the doorway. Even talking about the mundane chores of rural Peace Corps life seemed pleasant with her, not in the obnoxious way where you want to shove a sponge in someone’s face, but in the…hmmm, I should try it her way, kind of way.

We talked about her travels. About making friends and keeping in touch. We talked about the difficulties of having no shared language. This was before google translate or babblefish. This was us sitting in a country whose internet, I was sure, was run by a lone hamster dying of thirst on a rusted out wheel.

I don’t remember exchanging addresses. How could I remember that when I can’t remember where she fits between the first time I threw up (from the smell of dinner -it didn’t matter that I was starving -my body heaved in revolt and I remained famished) and lying on the floor of my assistant Peace Corps Director’s office, under the air conditioning for 8 hours at a stretch for the sake of cooling my nausea. She is in there somewhere- a shining beacon, a moment when maybe I wasn’t fixated on sickness or pain.

I returned to my village a moth after my accident. Thinner. Weaker. Skittish of loud noises and sudden stops. I made my rounds in my village. Reacquainted people with me, attempted to find my place in the now strangely foreign place that until weeks before, had been my home. 

Sometime later – in my head it is February but that isn’t right because I’d been home barely a week by that point- I got a package in the mail. Inside were bath salts “for my bucket bath” …sweet smelling reminders of home. Beneath those envelopes wrapped in plastic bags, was a bag of marshmallows. 

Sitting in the Peace Corps doctor’s office, comparing Malawi to South Africa, sharing the yearnings of youngish people so far from home tangled in with adventures and lamentations…she remembered. She remembered what I said I longed for so far away from familiarity and the comforts of home. 

Through the mail, across the miles, her so removed from the sub-Saharan life we had discussed and shared…she remembered me. She remembered me and mailed me a piece of home.

Fifteen years later, the thought of her still makes me attempt a smile as bright as hers.

Plant Murder?

If its yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.

Scoff if you will, but I’m living in the midst of a drought. My car remains unwashed (I finally have a valid reason for that!) and my showers and tooth washing and clothes washing are all responsibly done. But until today, just now, it stopped there. 

I have houseplants. A lot of houseplants. If they were cats I would be “that” person. There wouldn’t be a reason to call the ASPCA but you’d wonder about me. Of course, the good thing about houseplants is that no one really notices them the way you most assuredly notice cats. No one really cares. 

Plants are my compromise. They are a way for me to care for something without having to worry too much about taking a trip, or moving abruptly. If necessary, I can give them away. No one considers you a bad person for abandoning a succulent. When vacationing, I can usually count on a friend to water them; once in a three week period is usually reasonable for both plants and helpful friends. 

Plants seems like such benign things. Only, just tonight, my orchid was dry, which prompted me to make the rounds to the other eight plants in my house, and I realized that I’m wasting water. Sort of.

All over California, debates are raging and folks are making lifestyle changes (or being judged for not making lifestyle changes). People are pulling up their grass and replacing it with a fake substitute or, less strange, with indigenous plants that require less water. 

Meanwhile, in my house, plants abound and most aren’t indigenous and easy on their water intake. My apartment has little direct sunlight, despite my many windows, and succulents don’t really thrive in here. So, instead of a terrarium full of glossy plump leaves that fancy desert-like environments, I have a hodge podge of gifted and purchased plants that I water weekly or so. 

I can’t even eat any of them. 

Struck by the idea that I’m wasting water, I quickly searched the internet. Google has an answer to every other question, why not this? While I found all kinds of interesting information (which plants clean the air the best and how to use graywater) nothing stated whether I should murder my plants and turn them to compost.

I’ve decided to let them live. Newly inspired to use my shower runoff in a number of ways, my guilt is sated for the moment.