Feeling Comfortable in Your Clothes and in your Everyday Life

I’m wearing my husband’s old flannel shirt. The brushed cotton in deep olive-green and black squares is soft and loose on my body. I found it cleaning out the closet today. It’s an iteration of his favorite shirt.

I also found a pair of jeans that my son wore in high school. I don’t know how they ended up in my closet. For years I’ve kept a stack of old jeans. I have a decent sized collection of old 100% ragged denim cotton jeans that, no longer suitable for wearing or giving away, are still silky soft and sturdy. Denim is lasting.

Over time I’ve cut the denim up to make a patchwork throw that is in various stages of progress (along with so many other creative projects…). I’ve carried this pile of denim around with me for years. The denim throw has been a pending project. 

For the longest time I wanted a denim quilt to drape over my leather sofa in the living room. It was a tobacco sofa with straight lines made in Italian leather. The problem with that sofa was that I actually didn’t own. It lived in my mind as an idea. It was a plan. A plan to buy a leather sofa.

Walking through furniture stores I’d see versions of this sofa, none of which I could afford. For years I saved money to buy a leather sofa. I was looking for a statement piece, an anchor to the room, a solid but soft landing place to curl up with a book. I eventually did get a leather sofa, and it was much nicer than the sofa I had visualized in my mind. It had cleaner lines. It crinkled softly under one’s weight, little creases of time. Once I was living with it I couldn’t envision the denim quilt slung over the back anymore. It wasn’t a good match. 

I haven’t given up on the denim patchwork project though. I love old denim. Maybe, like the leather sofa, that project will materialize into something else. Maybe I’m not making a denim quilt at all but something else. 

For now I have a pile of old jeans. A pile of potential. A pile of dreams. A pile of memories.

I pull my son’s old pair on and they fit perfectly. Down to the length. The denim is worn soft and my knee pokes out of bare threads. It’s a straight-leg cut and I look very 80s in them. It’s a familiar look to me. And that’s probably why I feel so comfortable in them. All through college and until I had my son I wore Levi’s 501s. They were my uniform. Jeans and sweatshirts, jeans and silk, jeans and blazers.

Maybe I’m just looking for the familiar. In flannel and denim, leather and hope, maybe it’s just the everyday that I want to be wrapped in, comfortable and cozy with the staples of life: dreams and memories.