Falling into the Gap and Crewing with J

Probably the people who can best connect with this topic are Kendall, Chris, Whitman, and Spence.

Thirty years ago, I was still regularly finding things that I liked at the Gap.  Amazingly enough, back then, they still had a lot of clothes available in black, or at least darker colors.  I found a pair of houndstooth (German word - Hahnentritt, if you are interested) pants that I absolutely loved.  In fact, I wore them quite often over the next ten years, including to a job interview in the UK in the late 90s.  The pants just continued to wear really well.

I will concede that those pants still hang in my closet, but I really stopped wearing them when I arrrived in Germany, partly because of the style, and partly because they no longer quite had the look of pants that were appropriate to wear outside the house.

For me, it was all about quality back then, and most everything I bought at the Gap really lasted a long time.  In later years, perhaps the last fifteen years or so, I have not found this to be the case; the quality is no longer made to survive washings/dry cleanings for more than a year or two.  Now, about this time, I was not really shopping that much, and very rarely in the Gap.  The styles no longer interested me, and what shopping I was doing for clothes tended to be done in Europe.  The stuff I was finding in Europe (particularly at one or two shops in Spain) was much better suited for me, and tended also to impress with their longevity.

Thanks for skipping over the point about my fashion style, which, as most of us know, is pretty basic but arguably a classic style.  At least, classic Bryan.

As I entered into college, I started doing a little more mail order shopping through a place called J. Crew.  My grandmother has always been a big shopper, and she has always greatly enjoyed giving my sister and me clothes as gifts; birthdays, Christmas, etc.  She did this quite a bit more during our college years, and just about every time I visited her, she would bring out the J.Crew catalog and ask me to pick something out.  There was some really good stuff on offer back in those days, and I found that I quite liked some of their sweaters.  True, I also bought one or two suits from them, along with various jersey type shirts.  Again, the quality tended to be rather high.  In fairness, those clothes were not cheap, so I fully expected to get some real wear out of them.

Funnily enough, several friends of mine were also in similar situations where they had loving grandparents or just an overall fondness for J.Crew apparel.  I can remember sitting in the kitchen one night with a buddy from college, gathered around the table chatting with my mother, perusing the catalog.  The descriptions of the articles were so great.  One had the feeling that wearing the collarless rugby shirt with stitched cuffs was just going to be the best thing, and particularly since it came in a cool color called heather lakeview or darkest indigo.  Um, blue, right?

Another friend of mine and I would constantly use J.Crew adjectives in our conversations, which made for some interesting and humorous evenings sitting in a coffee shop making jack-asses of ourselves.   It was particularly great if we were able to use butter, burl, and waffle all in the same sentence.  OK, maybe "butter" sounds better than "pale yellow" when describing the color of a sweater, but then again, I am not one of those guys that is ever going to be wearing yellow in the first place, regardless of how you want to call the color.

In one of my last years of college, I did find an absolutely fantastic triple button black wool coat.  It was more or less a blazer, but was just that extra bit bigger to sort of serve as a really good top coat.  I loved it.  The quality was great, and I ended up wearing that blazer to my job interview in the UK, along with the cool Gap pants.  Clothes that basically were almost 10 years old looked more than suitable for a formal job interview.  It was incredible.

The jacket stayed with me over the next many years, and I wore it often.  Upon my arrival in Germany, it really became my top coat; it wore well over layers of sweaters, and the winters here are quite different than those in Dallas.

Eventually, the lining of my jacket kind of disintegrated, but I kept right on wearing the jacket.  I did start looking for a suitable replacement in Spain, Germany, and even in the US, but could not find anything worthy of being the TRUE replacement. One day, Nadja finally kind of said, "Hey, the coat is nice, but it is time to stop wearing it."

She was right.  Despite regular compliments I received about the coat, it was starting to look like it had been really really used.  By this, I will briefly reflect on all the concerts and places I have been where one might get a beer or two spilled on them, among other things.

It was tough, but I put the coat in my closet, and started using some of the other coats I had purchased over the years in my attempts to find a replacement.  I could not quite bring myself to throw it out, since it had been such a good friend to me nigh on 20 some odd years.

As a bit of an aside, I did come across a coat in an online catalog of a department store just before Christmas, and I made the mistake of telling my Grandmother about it.  She immediately wanted to give it to me for Christmas, and I had to tell her that I would certainly welcome the gift, but first I actually wanted to try the garment on.  When I got to the department store in Dallas last December, I found that the item was only available online, and since I could not actually try it, I elected to skip it.
Later, I actually looked again at the item online, and realized that I probably was not going to like the coat after all.  It was not because the color of the coat was olive (in fairness, it was a really BLACK olive), but because it was just not quite what I was after.  (one last note - I see now that it has been reduced in price by about 30% of what they were trying to sell it for a few months ago)

Anyway, over the years, as my tastes have varied from shades of black, I have still hung on to one wool sweater from J.Crew.  Again, I got this sweater in the late 80s, and, even though I may not have had reason to wear a sweater so frequently in Dallas, I did wear it often when I lived in Boston, and I certainly have put it to good use here in Germany.

Sadly, last Saturday morning as I was putting on some casual clothes as I got ready to go watch a match at the pub, I noticed that my black sweater had a little hole in the elbow; created over time and maybe a few washes in a not so gentle cycle.  I realized that I probably should retire the sweater, but I have elected to use it only for "at home" attire.  After all, I don't care about the hole in the sleeve.

That afternoon at the pub, I got to talking to a couple of friends, one of which is Norwegian.  He is rather fashionable and turned up wearing (literally) blue suede shoes, along with a smart pants and sweater outfit.  At another time in my life, I might have made a comment about guys who get so perked up on trendy fashion, but I have wisely (and proudly) reminded myself that it is OK to be punk and still wear nice clothes.  We actually got on the topic of fashion (how exactly, I don't know) during the second match of the afternoon, and we had all had several beers by this point.  I held up my sleeve to show them what had happened to one of my favorite sweaters, only slightly alarmed that the hole was growing with each movement I was making.

I then went on to praise the quality of such a great garment from the shop where I bought it oh so many years ago.  I think it was fitting that my sweater got to have one last little public hurrah.

In the past week, it has gotten really cold again, to the point where I am wearing a scarf.  Yes, it is black and wool.  And comes from the Gap, circa 1988.  Basic, and classic.

I actually had lost the scarf at some point over the past 30 years, but during a visit from my parents a few years back, I noticed my mom wearing a black scarf, which was a little strange, as she always tended to be on the more colorful side of things.  When I asked her about the scarf, she said she had found it in the hallway closet at home, down with all the other winter stocking caps, scarves, etc that get piled in there and used only once in awhile when the weather in Dallas required.  Which was seldom.

At any rate, I examined the scarf a little more closely, and realized it was my Gap scarf from many years back, and I acknowledged that I had misplaced it.  Certainly, I had since replaced it, but I was tugged by the nostalgia.  At the end of their visit, my mom hung the scarf on my hallway coat rack and said, "Now the scarf is back where it belongs."

For a few days afterwards, I felt a little bad.  In a way, Mom finding my scarf was a little bit of a "finders keepers" deal, and had she simply said, "I am going to keep wearing it," that would have been OK.  However, I was kind of glad that it now stays at my house.

These past days as I have been wearing the scarf, I think of that story.  Happy mom thoughts certainly help keep me warm.

Cheers to the Gap, and cheers to the Crew.

see you out there
bryan

Routine Thoughts and the Smiles

So, it has been just over a month since my mother died.  I was curious as to how I would get through the first month, and I am glad to say that I did better than simply to "get through" the month.  I talked about my mother with a lot of folks and I am glad that they took the time to listen.  I mentioned in the last post that I knew I had support from my friends in Germany, and it really has helped me.

I continue to celebrate Mom and as I walked around my neighborhood going about my normal life, I frequently thought about her and looked at things from her perspective.  She always noticed the little things, and I concentrated on those things myself:  how people behave in the grocery store when it is crowded, how excited the children get when they buy an ice cream on a sunny (but cold) day in January, I could go on and on...

Tears still come, and I welcome them.  But smiles come more often, and I welcome those just as much.  I am just finishing a quick business trip to Porto, and while I was walking through the shopping mall next door to my hotel, I saw a little boy walking with his mother. I was just a little bit behind them, and was just sort of ambling along myself, but I realized that the boy was trying to jump from the dark colored floor tiles, having to hop over the light colored tiles.  He was doing pretty good, but he was still holding his mother's hand so it was a wee bit awkward.  However, she was just as patient as could be.  Then, they passed by a little store that had a life sized stuffed bear at each entrance.  The shop was on a corner inside the mall, and when the boy saw the first bear, he ran over and gave it a hug.   A second later, as we rounded the corner, he repeated a hug on the second bear.

I love seeing things like that, and I know my mom always did, too.

As I continued walking back to my hotel with a smile on my face, I thought back to last week when I was walking down my own neighborhood street.  Outside of the ice cream cafe close to my flat, there is a rather large plastic statue of an ice cream cone.  It is about the same height as an average four year old, and right as I passed by, I saw a child giving a big hug to the ice cream cone and as well, a pretend lick.  His parents were right there with him and I got the idea that this was just a normal thing that happened every time they walked past the shop, which was probably every day.

These kinds of things are when I most often think of my mother, and likewise my own childhood.  Yes, I have been known to hug stuffed bears (and ice cream cones, as it were) myself, and believe it to be just about the most natural thing in the world, simply because I was encouraged to explore, express, and enjoy things. 

Often over the past month, I have had a moment to myself, standing on my balcony, or outside the pub on a quiet night.  I use this time to talk to my mother, and tell her about the little things that I have seen just as I go through my day.  I like sharing the stories, and especially like telling her why I wanted to share with her.   Usually this is when the tears and the smiles happen simultaneously, but it always gives me a good feeling.

I have been in regular contact with my father, who gives me the impression that he is getting along pretty well.  We talk about mom a lot, but we also talk about the regular happenings in our lives: my nephew's basketball games, my dad's golf outings, trips to the gym, etc.

This has been comforting to be in more frequent contact with him, and likewise, I am always in close contact with my sister.  And of course, she is in close contact with my father.  We are all in this together.  Last weekend, when she and I caught up for a couple of hours, she told me about how my father talks to mom daily, telling her about his day, about upcoming plans, and who he is seeing.

This really did not come as any surprise to me to hear that he does this.  Furthermore, I am quite sure that he gets the same good feeling that I do when I speak to her.

I have not yet spoken to him about this yet, and am not quite sure if I will.  Perhaps I will wait to see if he tells me himself.  Maybe there is a reason he only shared that with my sister.  The important point for me is that we share a similar inclination.  Again, this is really no surprise, as we always tend to approach situations very similarly.   But, I like the feeling.  It makes me feel closer to my father. 

In our last skype call, my father told me he is already getting the ball rolling for his next visit to Germany, and I am so looking forward to his visit in the next few months. 

It is a good time to keep on being B. 

see you out there.
bryan