Summer Stripes

The day was blisteringly hot.  My commute to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was steamy.  The inside of my car registered 104 degrees Fahrenheit when I fetched it from the subway parking lot at the end of the day.  But I was as cool as a cucumber in my blue and white horizontally striped silk two-piece dress by Stephanie, a gift from a colleague in Dallas, Texas, way back in the 1990s who couldn't wear it anymore.  Lucky me!

I don't remember much about the woman I got the dress from.  I recall that she was a lovely, graceful, tallish woman who worked for a short time in our deposition-scheduling department.  She didn't work for our firm very long.  Indeed, I reviewed company yearbooks from four different time periods during my 18-year tenure with my employer and didn't see her photo in any of them, so she must have worked for us between the publications of yearbook editions.   

Nevertheless, I do vividly recall being surprised and elated when she approached me one day and said that she had an outfit she thought would look very good on me that she couldn't wear anymore. She brought it in the next day and I took it home and tried it on.  The outfit fit me perfectly. I loved the nautical look and thanked her profusely the next day.  Then, just like that, she was gone from the firm and I never saw her again.

Today, I cinched the waist with a stretchy, dark blue belt I've also had since the 1990s, added a gold chain necklace from the 1960s that belonged to my grandmother, and some gold-colored bead earrings I bought at Cost Plus World Market last weekend.  I strapped some cork-heeled white sandals by City Streets for JCPenney to my feet and declared myself ready to take on the day, no matter how hot -- in cool summer stripes!
Cheers,
Lynell