Dancing Robes

Yesterday I worked a few hours at our Co-op.  I usually run the register, something I have experience with.  I started cashiering in High School after working in an office and well, hating it. I’ve never really been very good with the money part, but I talking to and meeting people.

A few months ago, while working at the Co-op, I met   Tiina, who just moved to Cambridge from Idaho.   The conversation between us was so easy that when she came back in the next time I was working, a month later, I remembered her (not something I’m always good at)  and she remembered me.

So we had tea together and we became friends.   It surprises me to write that, because it sounds so simple, but actually it was.  Tiina is a photographer, so we have art in common, which helps  (I can always talk art).   But as we get to know each other, we finding more and more things that we’re both interested in.  I think part of it is that we’re both curious and not afraid to look at ourselves and we want to make the most of our lives.

Not surprisingly, Tiina used to buy and sell Vintage Clothing.  She still has some of her collection and last week gave me a box of men’s robes and some women’s dresses.  They look like they’re from the 1940’s or 50’s.  The fabric shimmery and silky.   They’re not in good enough shape to sell, so Tiina had them in a box marked ” Fabric For Quilts”.

They’d been packed away for a long time, so I washed them and today, since it’s warm and windy I decided to air them out on the clothes line.

As I watched the robes and dresses dance on the line, I thought they must be feeling pretty good, after all that time folded in the box.  Getting puffed up with wind, swinging this way and that, holding hands or wrapping themselves around each other.    Then, when the wind stops and they hang there, all stretched out, like sleeping bats.