COBWEBS IN MY CLOSET

In running socks, yoga pants, and a black hoodie with dog hair all over it, I stand in front of my closet of cocktail dresses, silk blazers and palazzo pants, and run my hand through my greasy hair.  My closet smells faintly of Jo Malone, a lingering scent of lime-basil perfume left over from pre-pandemic evenings out with my husband.

I dust off the faux-suede black purse with a gold-plated-link chain that was my nightly briefcase until a month ago. Inside it is my leftover ammunition: a lipstick, a pen, a place card setting with my husband’s last name calligraphed next to mine, and my business card with the icon of a typewriter at its center underneath my blog name.

Visiting my closet now during our shelter-at-home in San Francisco is like opening a door to a museum whose art display was abruptly shut down overnight. For the most part, I have worn close to nothing in this closet over the past month. It has become a shrine to my former life. The outfits inside it are costumes from the past.

Last Friday, Mayor London Breed announced that San Francisco will enter its second month of shelter-at-home until the end of May. Gradually, small businesses will begin to reopen, small gatherings will assemble. But, our outfits will not change — the athletileisure-wear we all don on Zoom these days is The Look.

Before all this, my husband and I rarely had a night free. He was out for events sometimes five times a week. Although I joined him for many of them, our rhythm was such that I was often as cranky from fatigue as my kids the next morning when I served them breakfast.

Now, we look at our calendar, and there is not one single event on it. My kids, my husband and I shuffle around our apartment in slippers, sharing work spaces according to where the wifi picks up best, taking turns pushing the Swiffer over the hallway’s fur balls of our dog’s spring coat. We spend countless hours in the kitchen, snacking out of boredom, cooking out of creativity, while watching episodes at night of The Office as if quarantined next to Michael Scott’s copy machine. My introvert self is in heaven.

As I stare at my closet, each article of clothing displays a different Me, the various personas I choose to wear at certain times of the day, in certain periods of my life. Now I wonder how much of my closet I’ll ever wear again.

There is the lumberjack, red plaid shirt with pearl-snaps that makes me feel creative and edgy whenever I try to work on the book of essays that I might actually now have time to complete. I used to always wear boots and jeans with it when working out of a coffee shop that baked homemade sourdough bread along with bitter java beans served by hipsters. I often accessorized it with a gold necklace with “California” written in script as it connected my collarbone to the place where I have finally come into my own as a writer, and mustered the courage to read my work at San Francisco’s beloved literary hub, The Book Passage.

Next to the lumberjack-look dangles a silk Roberto Cavalli blouse, with an orange and white floral pattern, with swoopy arms that make it impossible to eat hors-d’oeuvres without dipping its material into the dip. Several years ago, I was expected at the designer’s welcome evening cocktail reception at the Italian Embassy in Israel. I had then been hired by Vogue Italia to cover Tel Aviv’s fashion week, in addition to attending as the wife of a diplomat posted in Israel. I wore the blouse with pleather black pants designed by a young female designer in Tel Aviv who knew how to make a woman of two small children feeling dumpy in her thirties feel fashionable as if in her twenties. My legs swooshed next to each other like ski pants whenever I walked in them; I was flammable next to the chain-smoking supermodels who were also guests at the reception.

Then, there’s the sensible, navy pantsuit, my recent uniform as moderator of a panel of two Italian tech-icons of Silicon Valley. I knew little about their field but enough about their Italian heritage, language and culture to convince an audience that I might one day enjoy being a talk-show host. I laugh thinking about trying on the professional look in Zara’s dressing room, where I ran into a mom from school also on her lunch-break from work. We both confessed to trying to feel younger in outfits from a store that was only starting to make us feel older. Without her, I would have walked out in a David Byrne box-suit. I gasped loudly when I popped a button off the pants that I was convinced were my “regular” size as I tried to squeeze into them next to her dressing-room cabin. We laughed until she ripped a zipper when she modeled a Thanksgiving dress that we both agreed made her resemble a turkey.

Then, there’s the formal black dress I wore with pearls, heels and a thin belt to greet the President of Italy this past October, when I stood next to my husband at the airport in San Francisco and giggled thinking it was a long way from the skating rink on Rome’s Pincio where we met almost twenty years ago.

And, finally, there’s my bomber jacket. Its cuffs are black-and-white striped, almost like Adidas wristbands, and it is stitched with hand-sewn tree branches of antique rose, spearmint leaves and red sparrows perched among the foliage. Whenever I slip into its silky sleeves, I am ready to sip an Aperol spritz with friends.

Then, there are the shoes: heels, flats, sandals, boots, all gathering dust. Next to our front doormat is a showcase of Nike, Adidas and Superga sneakers, the only shoes we wear these days.

Sadly, J.Crew filed for bankruptcy yesterday. I plan to dive into their sales to find a post-hibernation outfit to commemorate the American, preppy-with-a-twist company that I’ve dressed in for years. Naturally, I’ll splash it with something Italian to honor the country I love as they reopen their own closets.

How will I dress once I can go out again? Who will I choose to be? In what costume?

“Just be yourself,” my kids tell me. At least they listen to something I tell them.

As the wise researcher-storyteller Brene’ Brown has said in recent weeks:

“We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”