May, 2026
Yesterday I dug out a skirt from my closet that I haven’t worn in years. I bought it approximately 30 years ago.
I used to wear it to work once in a while, in my mind nicknaming it “the magic skirt,” because I always got “the look” from men, or compliments from coworkers, whenever I wore it. I felt extra confident in it as a result, so I likely carried myself as a taller, much more attractive person. And that’s half the battle – the self-carrying, that is.
I found it at the Ann Taylor Factory Store in Ocean City, Maryland, on clearance, for about $10. It has diagonal multicolored stripes in muted tones (on a cream background) pointing in a triangle to the waistline, hitting above my knees. The elasticated waistband has held up over the years, somehow. Most elastics crackle and ruin over time. The rayon/poly blend (I believe) never needs pressing or steaming and has never pilled. It goes with just about everything and has accommodated all my varying weights over the years, I suppose with the one exception of the later stages of my pregnancy. Not that I would’ve tried.
Half of my wardrobe in the late 90s came from that store, and the other came from Banana Republic, just edgy enough to not make me want to die in my clothes while working at the White House, almost directly for the president. I used to be such a VIP shopper at BR that they’d send me gifts around the holidays every year. But I digress.
Ocean City was a place my ex-husband and I used to visit often. We’d get a bed and breakfast, usually a quaint one with different country décor in each room and some sort of homemade biscuit or muffin in the morning, and creaky floorboards. I loved them and used to imagine running one myself and the would-be delight of selecting themes and guestbooks for each room. After we checked in, or sometimes before, we’d hit the outlets, and hit the seafood buffets, and head over to Chincoteague and Assateague to check out the wild horses. We’d go to antique stores and yard sales whenever possible, too. It was a lot of shopping and eating fattening things dripping with fake butter, and not much hanging out on the beach. Which is odd, because when I’ve since visited with my husband of 18 years, I could hardly be pried away from the foaming surf. Sure, we ate plenty of blue claw crabs, too, but what is a beachside vacation without the beach? (I guess the answer is: an Ann Taylor Factory Store and a lot of saturated fat.)
We were at one of those B & Bs on the day that Princess Diana died in the car accident in Paris. I felt bloated and sad, and Ben just wanted to rent porn. None of that experience was good, but the room was cute. On the visits since, these types of establishments aren’t prevalent as they once were, taken over by hotels or converted to AirBnBs, which seem to me, as a whole, much less intrusive. Old school B&Bs used to be all like, “Hey, let’s sit down together and eat.” Yeah, no. I just knew someone at breakfast was going to mention the debate we’d had about the porn thing.
During COVID, Ocean City was one of those places that didn’t acknowledge the virus, and hardly anyone wore masks; in fact, you risked being insulted or punched if you did. We visited in May of 2020 and ate outdoors or in our room (where everything smelled faintly of the gallons of Lysol I’d sprayed), but at one point, walking along the boardwalk to the game and ride area, a swarm of people came up out of nowhere, like gnats, and I grabbed Aidan and Mike and turned swiftly around. Nope, the frozen custard wasn’t worth it.
The beach was lovely on that trip, as was the seafood. It had been good to briefly socially distance on a rooftop in Virginia with old friends from Rome, where I met K’s boyfriend for the first time and told him to watch himself. “I was born in Jersey and grew up in the South,” is my standard line. So don’t mess with me, in other words. All things considered, I was nice to him and happy for their newfound love.
The books by Marguerite Henry about the wild horses of Chincoteague – I read them from the public library in Mt. View, Arkansas under the watchful eye of Edith Lowe — they were the original reason why I began visiting the area. Horses swimming? Horses unencumbered by saddles and bridles and bits, running free? Horses curious enough to walk up to your car and peak in, like the giraffes on the safari at Great Adventure? It seemed downright…magical. Plus, it was a relatively easy trip straight out Route 50 from our garden apartment in Arlington, Virginia. To go West, you’d hit farms and vineyards. Beautiful country, too, but we liked to go East through the Chesapeake and stop in cute little towns along the way. Once I did a poetry reading in one of them, at an art gallery. It was lovely. (The man I read with, just this week, has accepted four of my poems into the next and final two issues of his long-running literary journal. Perhaps it is the magic skirt at work.)
We always tried to hit Phillips’ Seafood Buffet as early as possible during the weekend, usually the first night as soon as we got there if we had a coupon and didn’t have to wait for the early bird special (though that was generally the best time to hope for Dungeness crabs included in the buffet) – and then waddle back to our room barely able to breathe, our hands smelling of lemons and shellfish. Understandably, I was a bit round in those days, and lumpy in bathing suits, which is probably a reason why I avoided the beach. My skin, too, was unseasoned as an ill Victorian, back in the days before I lived in Rome and learned how to build a tan.
Fast forward to wearing the skirt again. It’s been staring at me in the closet since our last move six years ago, and I thought, sure, why not? I was heading to rehearsal and figured I might once again benefit from its magic. I paired it with a Guns N’ Roses tee I’d strategically chopped (as mentioned, it goes with everything) and some vaguely character-shoe-like heels I thrifted. I looked exactly like an aging rocker/actress who used to work at the White House. Imagine that.
And rehearsal went, well, magically. Now if I could only wear the darn skirt on opening night.
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