THE GIFTIE GIE US

Many of you know Catbird's Little Sister is getting married this month, in Jamaica. As a friend posted under a Facebook photo that included Little Sister, "Jesus, girl, don't you have any ugly friends?"  Yes, Little Sister is a beauty.  Little Sister is also 16 years younger than Catbird, and maybe because of that age difference, Catbird has never felt sibling rivalry with Little Sister, just pleasure in her company and happiness for good things that come her way.


But this wedding does prompt Catbird to stand up straight and try to do the best she can with what she's got.  Older sisters MJ, and WildbyNature will be at the wedding, too.   Now Catbird has more in common with WBN, but MJ is the sister closest in age and the one Catbird spent her childhood out-weighing and being (at least internally) unfavorably compared to.  We've made peace with that (50+ years will give you the opportunity, if you take it), but still, Catbird wants to look good for this wedding.

Which will take place on a beach.  

The 16-month engagement (AKA the what to wear phase) filled the Yahoo in-boxes of MJ and WBN with what do you think of this emails.  Little Sister picked a dress almost immediately, but MJ, WBN and Catbird were more challenged.  A group shopping expedition of all four sisters (interesting to accomplish since Catbird lives 1000 miles from the others) finally yielded Catbird at least one good dress possibility, along with a lot of laughs and renewed joy in the loving bond of these fine women.
 
On her own, Catbird has garnered for this wedding a sun hat, a special pair of bifocal sunglasses (if she could just find them), a non-orthopedic pair of sandals, and that wonder of engineering: a maximum support strapless bra.  But still no appropriate bathing suit.  Catbird has spent enough on shipping and returning charges to purchase three or four expensive swimsuits.  If only she could find one.

We've also spent the year working on hair and make-up options: perms, short, medium and bobbed, brushed back, layered, with and without wispy bangs. New  bottles of Clinique, Peter Thomas Roth, and Clarins of Paris crowd her gift-with-purchase make up bag, and--like an acolyte--Catbird has tried every eye-shadow and lipstick color recommended by What Not to Wear make up guru Carmindy. 

And then, a photograph arrived this week that smacked Catbird in the face and told her to get a grip!  In the photo, she stands next to her grandson, the Amazing Ki-O and his cousin MMac, watching them pour ingredients into the mixing bowl to make cookies.  These two 2-year-olds are beautiful, excited, focused on their task.  And, though Catbird remembers enjoying this adventure, she doesn't look happy in the picture; she just looks O-L-D.

Her hair is gray.  Not sprinkled with gray or threaded with silver; it is fucking gray.  Worse, her face, well, it sags, especially around the neck and the eyes. Her skin is textured.  There are several chins.  Several.  Stacked sloppily, one on the other. 

All Catbird's vanity, slapped silly by a photograph, brought to mind this infamous snatch of poem by Robert Burns:

from To A Louse

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion! 

...sigh.  As Lyle Lovett says in his song Good Intentions, "[life] is a process of learning to excess all of those things that you already know."  Catbird is learning to excess a profound aha moment she experienced when she first fell for her physicist: movies use beautiful people for love interests to show you on the outside what love makes you feel on the inside.   

Not to be an after-school special about it, but it really is what's on the inside the counts.  And under all that wedding-prep vanity is an abiding love for Little Sister and a desire give her the best we can. (And okay, yeah, it must be confessed: the desire not to be the one in the photos about whom others say "Oh, my God, what happened to her?")

So, Little Sister, while much high fashion is no longer an option for Catbird, she will do the best she can not to embarrass anyone at your wedding.  And even if she does end up in a mamaw bathing-suit and sensible shoes, she hopes Little Sister will remember, time may be a brutal banffwhacker to our outsides, but the love abides.


Still nowhere near free from vanity, Catbird feels compelled to include this picture from trendier times and add:  she did once have beautiful legs.

Catbird, c. 1970