Constant Indications

Nick Carraway said about Jay Gatsby, "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life..."

Of course there was. They're what make us up, those gestures. How Fitzgerald nailed that so incredibly, I don't know, but I would have tried my whole life to have been able to say it like that.

My mother used to love to go to this department store - I think it was a Montgomery Ward in some strip mall - and browse through the myriad racks and rounds of clothing. Blouses, slacks, dresses, skirts, all tangled up and crammed together like a miserable herd of animals.

Imprisoned in that nervous-making setting on these compulsory trips, I would wander among the legions. One day I found a dress fighting for air; it was Annie Hall-style, grey, vested and pinstriped, with red accents. I wanted that dress really badly. My dad was recently gone and with his departure my body had grown in an attempt to replace him. My mother was wholly unappreciative and rather disgusted with my sudden ballooning, so I just knew that when she saw that dress on me, how perfect it would fit and how pretty it would make me look, she would offer to buy it, insist even.

I brought it quietly, lest I ruin the surprise, to the dressing room, took off my own clothes, and put it on. It was so tight I could scarcely force it around me. Breath held against the crushing press of seams, I walked out onto the floor to look for my mother. "Take that off," she scowled when she saw me. "It looks ridiculous."

My successful gesture. One of a zillion. It did not prove fruitful, that one. It was misinterpreted, misread, though still my very own.

I have not conquered the urge to scratch the winter itchy spots on my legs which my doctor says are not eczema, but may as well be, what the heck? The cakes that used to cone out of my oven fluffy and moist now come out flat and dry, an accidental pancake. So many, many gestures day to day to day, unbroken, successful. Failed, lucky, noteworthy, or not, they are all mine and yours are all yours.