Everything Must Go

The Christmas music doesn’t match the yellow and black, “ALL SALES FINAL,” and “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS” signs in Sears. I don’t think there should be jingle bells playing through the speakers of the store. This seems like a somber moment when we’re all taking what’s left because soon there’ll be nothing to offer. It doesn’t seem like a jolly scene.

It’s not that I love Sears. It’s not like when Marshall Fields turned itself over to Macy’s, or the one on Harlem and Lake that just disappeared and there were no more promises of Frango Mints my mom would buy us from the candy shop in the basement. We’d get one, wrapped in green foil and it tasted like butter and I would do my best to make it last our entire jaunt through the department store.

It’s not like that, but I hate to see a store’s closing. I shouldn’t love malls. I shouldn’t love shopping, but I do. I find pieces of myself in malls: at the Clinique counter in Water Tower, when the lady gave me a tube of Black Honey lipstick. “It looks great on everyone,” she said, twisting the silver stick to reveal a red so dark surely only Eve would dare to try it on.

I was a weekend away from student teaching and I bought it. My first morning walking down Michigan Avenue to pick up my assignment, I bought a cup of coffee just to be like everyone else and also to see if the color rubbed off on the coffee lid. It did, and I was thrilled. I was now an adult walking around downtown with my coffee and leaving my mark in the world.

Or the time my brother asked me to be his best man in his wedding, and I needed a dress but still carried so much baby weight and the last thing I wanted to do was see myself in every possible angle revealed in a three-way mirror.

“What are you looking for?” the lady in Nordstrom asked.

“A dress,” I mumbled looking at the floor.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked, and she was sweet. I remember she had kind eyes, so I told her.

“I’m in my brother’s wedding,” I said, and then, because I was so proud to be in his wedding, and I hoped saying it would show on the outside how I felt on the inside, I straightened my shoulders, looked her in the eye and said, “I’m my brother’s best man.”

“Oh, darling” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder and one on her chest. “I will take care of everything.”

And she did. She escorted me to a fitting room fit for a princess – perfect lighting, mirrors that must’ve been magic because I didn’t think I looked as tired as I felt, and a platform to stand on so a seamstress could take note of alterations.  To me it felt like a mini stage and I was about to be in a fashion show.

She brought in armloads of dresses, and I happily played dress up until we found the one, and a serious joy settled on us.

“I’ll find you shoes,” she said, and she said it like she was giving me the Doxology. “And a shawl,” she added, and I looked at her like she was nuts. “A shawl?” I asked. “Like a knit shawl? You sell those? I thought those were only made in churches.”

“No, no,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

I don’t know how many shoes she came back with, but it was the stiletto, black-patent leather peep toes I slipped on and it was as though they were made only for me. They were the Frango mints of shoes.

The shaw was a silk, drapey thing the lady wrapped around my shoulders. “You never know what the weather in June will be like in Chicago,”she said.

“No,” I whispered shifting from side to side and staring at myself in the mirror. “Anything could happen.”

And so we’re in Sears – me, Hadley, and Jesse, and maybe it’s because of the Christmas music that’s playing in a store that’s closing or maybe it’s because my daughter is in desperate need of clothes and will only pick out grey sweatpants and grey sweatshirts and refuses to even consider anything that remotely resembles a color other than the 80th day of March, but I’m grumpy and I hate being grumpy in the mall.

We’re here for black pants and a white top that is a button down and doesn’t have a Nike swoosh on it. Hadley needs them for her band concert, but since we are here, and most of Hadley’s shirts go up to her elbows, we suggest – strongly – she pick out something else as well. Hadley looks at the two of us as though we’ve told her she’ll never play soccer again.

She pulls garments off their hangers and stomps into the dressing room while I mumble something about someone being a pain in the buttocks.

Jesse rolls his eyes and tells me to calm down.

I lean against a wall with toddler onesies, jumpers, and patterned leggings. I run my hand down a red jumper with white snowflakes on it, and say, “I just keep trying to remind myself that the only thing I would wear in 6th grade was a yellow men’s surf t-shirt that read, ‘Cement Mixer’ on it, and my yellow sweatpants.”

I pull at a buffalo plaid pair of overalls with a white ruffled shirt underneath. “Look at how well I turned out,” I say.

Hadley steps outside of the dressing room, and she looks stunning in clothes that fit her. She is my beautiful blue-eyed baby girl and her own person all at once and I want to tell her that but she wraps her arms around herself and with one look dares me to open my mouth and so much as say, “That’ll do,” so I turn to Jesse.

“I like it,” he tells her.

“K,” she says, turns, and slams the dressing room door.

We stand in line behind a family of four with children that look to be about one and three years old. The three year old is crying, and the one year old, a little girl, is looking at, and smiling and Hadley. There is a woman behind us who is narrating the entire scene.

“Oh, he is so sad,” she laughs at the joke she thinks she’s telling. “Must be nap time,” she chuckles again. She’s holding about five pairs of pajama pants that have polar bears holding pints of beer on them. The one year old giggles at Hadley, and the woman says, “You found a friend! She’s a big girl!” The lady’s talking so loudly and so closely I can feel her breath on my shoulder.

The three year old keeps crying. He’s pointing to all sorts of things he thinks he wants, or maybe wants to climb on, or throw. Who knows, but he isn’t happy. “Yes, yes,” the woman holding the drinking polar bear pants says, “I remember those days.”

Don’t say enjoy it, lady, I think. Don’t tell these parents it’ll go fast. Hadley unwraps her arms from her waist and for the first time that afternoon she smiles. “Hi,” she says to the one year old, and the two girls light up looking at each other.

“Mama,” the little girl says, pointing to her mother. It is all she knows, and it is all she wants to share with Hadley.

“Yeah,” Hadley coos, “that’s your mommy.”

The mother, who looks to be smack in the middle of the ages of Hadley and myself, looks at Hadley and smiles. Her smiles tells me everything I’ve been trying and failing to tell Hadley: You are good. I am glad you are here. I hope Hadley sees and understand this, too.

“I bet you never caused trouble in a mall,” the mother says. Hadley and I look at each other and laugh.

“Never,” we say in unison.

The husband of the woman who is buying the polar bear beer pants walks up and stands next to his wife.

“Didja find something?” he asks.

“These pajama bottoms,” she says, holding them up so he can appreciate the humor. He chuckles and pats her on the shoulder.

She wonders out loud if she’s purchasing enough pajama pants. She wants all her children and their significant others in on the drunken bear parade, but maybe they won’t think it’s funny. Maybe they’ll be offended. And then, she continues, there’s her children without a home. Will they think polar bear beer pants are funny?

I fiddle with a pair of grey leggings and a navy blue tunic with a sparkly snowflake on it, and eye Hadley, who eyes the clothes. She will wear them about a week from today, in church when she reads from Revelation 1:4-8 – the verses that proclaim Jesus is coming and every eye will see him, even those of us who’ve pierced him. I will listen to her read and remember a time, years ago, when Hadley sat in a Children’s Moment at church and the pastor told her that Jesus always sees us. The rest of the day, Hadley asked, “How about now? Can he see me now?” I told the pastor I felt like I was in a never-ending AT&T commercial.

“Tell her yes,” he said. “Jesus can see her.” And tell her he loves her very much.”

I will remember this, and I will think that to see someone is to love them, too. Even those that we pierce.

Hadley will finish reading and the pastor will preach on the idea that God is everywhere, and that all ground is holy ground: the basketball court, the math classroom, the filthy kitchen floor, the incredibly unorganized library, the mall. Hadley will stand with the three pastors at the end of the service and I will swell with pride at her willingness to be a part of all that she does not know.

Anything can happen, on all these holy grounds, I think, and then I pray that Hadley feels at home no matter where she is and what she’s attempting to do. I ask this even when I see that my daughter who is standing at the head of the church listening to the Doxology, has paired her sparkly snowflake tunic, and her grey leggings with a pair of socks her Uncle Geoff gave her that have penguins playing soccer on them.

They’d probably go well with beer drinking polar bear pajama pants.

Amen.