"The Pants"

It is unbelievable. I fit into "The Pants". Those pants. The Pants have been the only 'skinny clothes' I kept from college. Each year, a few more articles of clothing would be angrily discarded. After looking at the size, I'd be disgusted that I was ever that size and tell myself to think realistically about this post-baby body. I'll never have the body I had in college and I never will again. After a baby, well, things change.

I have still hung onto The Pants. Actually, Spencer has been hanging on tooth & nail to The Pants. Whenever we go through a closet purge, they always end up in the top of the closet, tucked just out of sight.

"Why are we keeping The Pants, Spencer?"

"I like them, " he just says.

"But I don't fit them and never will again. Why keep teasing myself?"

"But you wore The Pants on our first date! And you'll fit back into them, it'll be a goal to work toward, " Mr. Eternally Positive says.

So that is how they have managed to hang on. Any time I feel like I've made some progress, like I would dare to dream of a day in The Pants, I get them out and try to shimmy my way into them. Never. In 10 years since the First Baby, never.

Until today.

I put them on.

I didn't have to prostrate myself on the bed, taking shallow breaths, angrily yanking at that zipper while it wouldn't move a millimeter. Or the usual, not being able to fit my knee in past the thigh region.

I put them on. That zipper glided right up the the top and I could swear the button smiled at me as it peeked itself through the buttonhole.

And you know what? Zippers were a lot longer when I was in college. Fashion dictated a higher waistline. They are so retro, they're not cool again. Yet. Maybe that will be the hope I hold onto for the next 10 years. Back to the top of the closet you go.



p.s.
fortunately, i have no one to take a picture of me in Them. And mine don't have those awesome pleats. Though I may have owned a pair similar to these at some point in time.