Because you're thirty-eight:

The seesaw rests, balanced, it seems, though you feel the equilibrium slipping. You don't crave youth, but you wonder if it's up you're going, or down. You try on clothes at the Goodwill. You try them on over your regular clothes in front of a mirror you've propped against the wall. You don't care what anyone thinks. You used to care a great deal what others thought. Then you turned thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Sometimes you find just the right piece with shoulder pads for days. The best are dresses with tags in that 80s font. Brands like "Dating" or "That's It!" or "You're Fabulous." Your body has a shape. When you wear shoulder pads that shape becomes more profound. The older you get, the less concerned you are with the profundity of your shape, and the more concerned you are with the profundity of life. You look in the Goodwill mirror, pleased that the dress fits snug as it does over jeans, a sweater, underwear. In truth, you have always been concerned with the profundity of life. Occasionally, you are shocked by the sight of your face. Isn't everyone? Occasionally you are shocked by the sight of your face in pictures from your early 20s, your teens. To wear the clothes of the deceased, does this age you up, or down? Last night, your high school ex-boyfriend's best friend held you in a dream, and it wasn't sexual, it was comforting. Are you at the point in life where you ought to know where the remaining comfort will come from? You'd need a good level to know which way the seesaw's tilted. Even then, who stands up straight? In your teens you went for the T-shirts organized by color, a gorgeous rainbow at the local Village Thrift. You stood shyly with your best friend shielding one another as you tried on the tees in the aisles, unsure of your bodies, building the personas to carry you forward. Now, you can't wait to wear the rest of your life half-full. In the Goodwill, you try on a blazer, a bedazzled Hawaiian shirt, a brocaded top that zips up the back. When you were younger, you didn't know what was coming, and now that you're thirty-eight, you don't know what's coming. In truth, you are forever concerned with your shape. You've had trouble having thoughts lately because they're all thoughts you've had before in more profound ways. Half of what you feel is secondhand. Does it matter? Forget the remaining comfort, what about yearning? The point of a seesaw is its motion, of course. You hope that the weight of being old is as challenging as the weight of being young—how else to know you're alive? You are the wrinkles and you are the the smoothness beneath. How wonderful to spend our lives with ourselves.

That dress over there—she's the one.



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