Bejeweled

Alright, I hope you guys are prepared for some serious soul-baring this morning.

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I don’t usually wear jewel tones.

(I know, just calm down – I’ll keep things nice and light for the next couple of days.)

Seriously, though: I don’t. I think it’s partially because I feel like emerald, ruby and sapphire hues are the domain of those in possession of a degree of polish and sophistication that ordinarily escapes me. (And maybe a tan, which has fled my skin for the time being, and presumably for the next six or seven months).

But I also think it’s because…well, here’s the thing. Just as a black t-shirt and jeans suggests indifference, wearing things like bold colors and striking cuts alludes to the opposite: it lets people know that you tried, that you care. And something about making the fact that I care (when of course I do) apparent leaves me a little nervous; I really prefer living in the realm of “oh, this old thing?”

Because that way if you screw up – and approximately 99% of the time when I try to look polished what I end up looking like is a little girl who was playing dress up and now has a ponytail sticking out of the side of her head, lipstick on her cheek, and a stain down the front of her dress – you can brush it off, because come on, you weren’t really trying anyway.

But autumn, to me, has always felt less like an end than like a new beginning (new school year, new pencils, new books and possibilities and world), and this autumn – more than most – is going to be hovering way over there on the strange scale, what with the recent upheavals in…well…everything.

I have this picture in my head of the woman I’d really like to be one day, and she’s pulled-together, calm, poised. Able to handle public speaking, roast chickens and jewel tone blouses with equal panache…or at least an approximation of it. If her lipstick is weird and her tailored suit has wrinkles, she calls it a “look” and gets on with her day. Awesomely.

She knows it’s okay to care.

It’s okay to look like you care.

And it’s also okay to end up with a ponytail sticking out the side of your head if that’s what happens.

So if a wine-hued blouse that matches the leaves carpeting my backyard – the leaves that tell me we’re headed into our second year in this brand-new life we’ve started to build – makes me feel a little more like that woman I’d like to be, just for the moment, just because the winter is headed our way and there are so many big unknowns right around the corner that a little bejeweling makes me feel good, prepared, even (dare I say it?) poised…

So be it.