2020 Sunday — Me!

We were out in the front yard when Mr. Fun captured this photo of me late this afternoon. I am wearing my “Berlin” shirt. I affectionately named it that because I was wearing it years ago when I was with my girlfriend Peggy on a cruise vacation of the “Gems of the Baltic” or maybe it was “Capitals of the Baltic.”

Both of our husbands were too busy that summer to vacation and Peg is a professor of geography in Orange County, so traveling is important to her teaching career. We were on a Holland-America ship that started and ended in Amsterdam.

Our first stop was in the country of Estonia. So it was my first experience of touring a foreign country with a tour guide. We walked about the city with him and then he gave us “free time” to look or shop. At the end of our free time, the two of us were lost and after several panicked moments we finally found him and returned safely to the ship. The same thing happened in St. Petersburg. The term panic doesn’t even begin to explain the terror we felt during the moments we were lost. Eventually we located our group and the guide.

The day we were in Berlin, which was a 2-hour train ride from the ship, our group made a stop at a city park and our male guide took us to a restroom. I was not wanting another “lost” moment for a souvenir so as Peg and I stepped into the ladies room, I told the guide not to leave the area until he saw my shirt again and he knew that we had rejoined his group. Peg thought that was hilarious. So from that moment on we named it my “Berlin Shirt.”

My closet is filled with clothes and lots of them are drenched in memories and that makes cleaning out my closet a chore that I avoid. I wonder about the fabric of some of those clothes being made into a quilt or something.

Good night from SoCal,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka
and Chloe and Mitzi

P.S. My post was sparked by hearing MARY Chapin Carpenter’s song “This Shirt” — here are the words, but I encourage you to listen to it on YouTube.

This shirt is old and faded
All the color's washed away
I've had it now for more damn years
Than I can count anyway
I wear it beneath my jacket
With the collar turned up high
So old I should replace it
But I'm not about to try
This shirt's got silver buttons
And a place upon the sleeve
Where I used to set my heart up
Right there anyone could see
This shirt is the one I wore to every boring high school dance
Where the boys ignored the girls
And we all pretended to like the band
This shirt was a pillow for my head
On a train through Italy
This shirt was a blanket beneath the love
We made in Argeles
This shirt was lost for three whole days
In a town near Buffalo
'Till I found the locker key
In a downtown Trailways bus depot
This shirt was the one I lent you
And when you gave it back
There was a rip inside the sleeve
Where you rolled your cigarettes
It was the place I put my heart
Now look at where you put a tear
I forgave your thoughtlessness
But not the boy who put it there
This shirt was the place your cat
Decided to give birth to five
And we stayed up all night watching
And we wept when the last one died
This shirt is just an old faded piece of cotton
Shining like the memories
Inside those silver buttons
This shirt is a grand old relic
With a grand old history
I wear it now for Sunday chores
Cleaning house and raking leaves
I wear it beneath my jacket
With the collar turned up high
So old I should replace it
But I'm not about to try