Mind Body Mama: Divine Discontent and Longing

A few days after I wrote "Brighting Out," I went to Macy’s and bought a black dress coat.

The irony did not escape me. I had just completed a meditation on the transformation of my wardrobe from all black to a riot of color, and there I was in the ladies’ coat department purchasing a new black coat.

I shopped for this coat for nearly a year. I knew as soon as I put my hand on it that it was the one I would bring home. It’s a handsome car coat that’s butch enough to wear with jeans and formal enough to wear over a fancy dress. The fabric is a cashmere/wool blend that feels light and springy and very soft. I look very grown up, very serious, in this coat.

I didn’t even consider buying the red one because it was nasty, ketchup colored red. Though the plum was tempting, I know that purple is this year’s “it” color and by next year, it will look tired to my eyes.

Furthermore, the way things are going there is a very good chance that I’ll need to wear this coat to a funeral. Because I buy a new dress coat every fifteen years or so. And as Dusty points out, either one dies young or one spends the balance of their days mourning the loss of others. That’s the condition of this mortal coil.

So I bought the black coat and I felt pretty good about it. But when I went to put it on last weekend, I felt that I’d like to have something to brighten it. I went searching for a scarf that I could wear near my face to break up all that black.

I pawed through the scarf collection I haven’t accessed since I left my office job eight years ago: silk and rayon squares in conservative colors and prints to accessorize the navy and grey and black suits I used to wear. My hand fell upon a piece of silk at the back of the closet. I could tell it was a quality piece of fabric so I tugged it out.

And then I held in my hand something that I’ve always wanted. It’s something that I’ve always had.

It’s a giant square of Indian silk paisley in flaming shades of dark red and orange. I have had this scarf for over twenty years. I think it belonged to my mother’s grandfather, but I’m not sure how or when it came to be mine.

I have always loved this stunning scarf and I have never worn it. From time to time I would look at it and think, “It’s gorgeous, but I don’t wear things like that.” Somehow I thought it didn’t suit me, or my idea of me. I would fold it up wistfully and put it carefully into the back of a drawer thinking, “What would I do with something like that?”

I kept it because I loved it but I didn’t know how to make it fit into my life.

Pulling it out now I thought, “This looks exactly like me!” The dark red matches the gorgeous winter scarf my mother knit me last year (for the second time—some lucky gym member absconded with the first one she knit and she generously replaced it.) The orange matches my groovy windbreaker and my new wool sweater. These are my colors; I wear these colors all the time.

This scarf that I have loved and neglected for two decades exactly matches who I am now.

I am in a phase of “divine discontent and longing,” as Kenneth Grahame’s Mole would put it. I am searching for something in my life and I don’t know what it is. I’m trusting that desire and instinct—blind, insistent, incomprehensible, drawing me forward like a divining rod—will lead me where I need to be. But the wait is anxious and confused and I wonder, “What should I do?” and “Who should I be?” constantly.

What if what I’m looking for is already in my possession, folded lovingly but tucked into a dark corner of the closet?

What if I look upon it with confusion now and then thinking, “I love it, but what am I going to do with something like that?”

How will I ever find it, with my eyes thus clouded?