The functional face of love

www.childrensplace.com

Simon came from a family of four boys. It was a functional but undemonstrative family, and a family that didn't share its feelings.  The closest thing my mother in law got to sentimentality was to recall how at the start of each school year there were four sets of clean school shoes laid out (by her) on the bottom step. Yes, she did  a great job. She raised four polite and ostensibly functional boys.

George was also one of four boys, from a military family, sent off  boarding school with,  I imagine, a similar crisp sense of proper grooming and behaviour. Like Simon's family one or other of them have suffered with mental health issues from time to time.

Despite the intimacies George and I shared online the reality of him was one of functional, polite, respectful base-covering kindness with really no personal connection whatsoever, and it suited him to keep it that way. "I've left a bottle of cold wine in the fridge", "Stay as long as you like".

Somehow I see a common root in these two men with whom I tried to get close. A perhaps peculiarly English need to not show emotion and to soldier on. Both men are quite patently vulnerable inside but bury it so deep as to deny its existence. Further  they chose to somehow shut down when I show my own vulnerabilities. Even to the point of mocking me for the (to them) weakness of showing my feelings.  I first thought of this post back in August, but I was reminded somewhat of the sentiment again by Alain de Botton on "How to be warm".  A lesson they could perhaps both take.

Have me and hold me some more!

Oh I just need to say some more about my Jaeger Suit, it seems I am not alone in my admiration for it. Admiration which borders on obsession.

So comforting to hear a Guardian editor opine that you could probably be buried in a jaeger suit and it would survive your coffin. She's right of course, I fully expect to pre-decease my Jaeger suit.

She was actually commenting on the re-birth of Jaeger from the slightly stuffy don't-frighten-the-horses style (the spirit of which lives on in my suit) to new hip style for the over 40s.

But wait, there's more, it would appear that donning of a Jaeger suit is an important mother-daughter sacrament, a rite of passage which remains aflame in the hearts of many powerful and successful women...

Angela Patterson 37 year old recruitment hot shot "borrowed" her mother's Jaeger suit and nikked off to London to launch her enviable career at the age of 19.

Frances Lynn accomplished author, doubtless writes from experience when she tells the story of a young girl whose mother gave her a "nice Jaeger suit" for her birthday.

and my favourite Stacey Tasker whose mother sent her off for her first interview after university in a Jaeger suit exclaiming "Don't be silly, how can anyone turn you down in that beautiful Jaeger suit?' " She went on to be the first women governor of wealston prison at the age of 39.

Oh Jaeger suit! you are, for me, the embodiment of a life well lived.

To have and to hold

I've just been over at Proper Prophet
who seems to have come up with seven reasons not to clear out your wardrobe, which gave me an idea for a new post. My Jaeger suit. It fits all of her seven reasons...

It was very expensive, it has sentimental value, my mother gave it to me (for my 21st birthday), I'm sure I'll fit it again one day..

And some of my own

• I think it may very well have come back into fashion,
• it is a classic (oh you can see past those 80s shoulder pads),
• it is pure new wool (although that lamb popped its cork many years ago) ,
• it was Made in Great Britain - Look see the label, can you beleive that whichever designer shops get their stuff made in "Great" Britain these days???
• and my favorite, it outlasted my marriage

Now come on girls I know some of you have wardrobe issues, and hold onto things longer than you should, but this suit has been with me since I was 21 which is nearly half my life. It deserves a medal.

In My Shoes

I am finding the handovers on Simon's weekends are a bit easier these days, and perhaps more so the being apart. I used to feel physical pain at being separated from my wee boy when he was only 2 but now I can stand it.

One feature of handovers that still makes me sick to the core is seeing my ex's shoes laid out near the door with his new girlfriends' and my childs'. I have always had a low grade foot fetish (how else to describe it) and because of this, the line of shoes is a domestic metaphor that I just cannot handle.

I remember in my uni days coming back from a trip taking trains around Europe to find my long term college boyfriend had not only left me, but moved in with someone else and negleted to tell me ( a very bad moment in my life). I went round to catch up with him, saw the evidence, but because I loved him, and needed to be near him, agreed to stay for coffee (she was not there). Man that coffee stung my throat, but it was the line of shoes that brought on a wave a nausea. I had never met the woman, but her shoes were like small birds, all tiny intricate and brightly coloured. There was no ignoring her presence in is life. I fled and cried for two years.