Middlebury Magazine

  • Recent Stories
  • Menu
    • Features
    • Pursuits
    • Q&A
    • Editor’s Note
    • Old Chapel
    • Road Taken
    • Review
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • How Did You Get Here Series
    • About
    • Advertising
    • Contact
    • Support
    • Writers’ Guidelines
  • Search

Winter 2021 Road Taken

What to Wear Now

Through accrued life experiences, a writer discovers that a common question has become a statement of identity.

By Samantha Hubbard Shanley ’99
Illustration by Naomi Clarke
March 11, 2021
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • Email icon

Four years ago, on the day my husband and I filed for divorce, dueling lawnmowers flung the scent of cut grass up and down the block; my neighbors were preparing happily for the prize of autumn as the structure of the school year pulled in.

But for me, everything was in flux. The thick spire of my married, together life had finally uncoiled into loops and compromises. With these threads, my husband and I would begin stitching together the next, crisp phase of our separate lives.

I stood naked in the bedroom that now belonged to me alone. I poked through my closet, a lineup of tattered remains, each one a bodiless wretch—limp and dangling from a wire hanger as if its soul had slipped out in the night. To the left, my husband had once arranged his things like hardware, by function, size, and color.

Along my clothing rack, each familiar piece was a scrap of my identity: the linen halter top I’d worn to our first housewarming barbecue; the lightweight cardigan I had treasured during my three pregnancies, its long flanks unfurled to the floor like eagle wings.

Everything I owned had been acquired during a phase of my life that was now over. With the years ahead looking hazy, I sank into thick, withering despair: What would I wear now?

Lately, I’ve been asking myself the same thing, and often. But I’ve been here before.

I had always used clothing to project whatever I wanted to be, whether or not I had completed the deeper work required to actually get there. My clothes were a hopeful thing—a fast track to the selfhood I envisioned for the future. But after ending my marriage, I faced a deep sense of loss. It wasn’t the partnership so much as it was the flickering image of me. Who was I now?

In 1987, when I was 10 years old, I fashioned a peplum top using my mother’s sewing scraps. My hand-stitched prototype would never see the light of day; instead, I wore it at home, glancing at myself as I passed by the mirror, strutting from one end of my bedroom to the other, belting out the words to Joe Cocker’s “Delta Lady.” Back then, I expected that I would develop into a woman who wore whatever she wanted, whenever.

And I did.

When my older brothers left for college, I raided their discard piles for varsity sweatshirts and grungy button-downs. Even as I prepared to leave home for Middlebury, I continued scrounging around for things that had been worked and worn before. I took a crumpled, moth-eaten sweater from my father’s closet and slipped it over my head like a cocoon. I squeezed into my mother’s old cowboy boots, though they were a full size too small. I buttoned her navy, double-breasted, 1970s-era peacoat around my ribcage. Once, I wrapped a gauze curtain panel around my torso, tied it into a stiff knot beneath my shoulder blades, and sauntered off to an Ani DiFranco show. I scored a buckskin jacket with the fringe sliced off from the Salvation Army. I took a pair of used Levi’s, split the seams open, and added triangles of mango-colored calico—custom bell bottoms.

Four years later, when my grandparents gave me a sewing machine for graduation, I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful they knew me well or spitting mad that the gift was some obscene expectation for a future of domesticity.

If the wardrobe of my youth was free-spirited and a little lost, that’s because I was those things, too.

But as a 39-year-old mother of three who had ended her marriage with no further plans, I worried that nothing had changed. At that stage in life, winging it wasn’t fun—it was terrifying. Wasn’t I supposed to have everything figured out already?

As I pieced myself back together, I thought often of the younger, more hopeful me.

During my second year at Middlebury, before many of us scattered abroad, I visited a thrift store near Burlington with Emily Voorhees ’99, a close friend from Hepburn, our first-year dorm. The dressing rooms were cordoned off by purple velvet drapes tied back with gold roping—I imagined these had been salvaged from Janice Joplin’s backstage lounge.

I tried on a sweater, vintage corduroys, and probably a pair of white go-go boots.

“What do you think?” I asked Emily. “Does this make me look confident? Or a little strung out?”

She looked at me with her signature smile, a veneer for deep wisdom I so admired.

“Well, Simi,” she asked, using my family nickname, “do you like it?”

I wasn’t sure. I was desperate for whatever I wore to convey all that I wanted to be, not just how I felt in one bony slip of time.

Decades later, when I became a divorced, single mother, Emily’s wisdom was still on my mind. With it, I descended into a period of habitual shedding, discarding clothing that no longer seemed applicable. So much of what I owned reflected a person who had kept herself small.

But I wasn’t small. I had lived abroad several times over, learned four languages, advocated for survivors of domestic violence, and become a mother. All the while, I had thought of myself in limited terms. I want to be a writer. I am, effectively, a housewife. I had been devoted to others—understanding who they were and what they needed. But I was no help to the world if I perceived myself as some wispy, insignificant part of it.

When I began assembling a new wardrobe, I converted Emily’s question into edict. Well, Simi, do you like it? If the answer was yes, then whatever it was became mine. Gradually, my things began to reflect the person I had always wanted to see. Take my new, beloved collection of boots, for example. Each pair granted me the gospel of power, the agency to become whole, advancing my new American dream, over which I alone was sovereign.

It turns out that we cannot take on that hopeful mantle of our future selves unless we first determine who we are right now.

Months after my divorce was final, I texted Emily from another dressing room.

I was trying on a gray, fitted sheath made from swaths of cotton that stretched around my hips like a cyclone.

“I love this!” I wrote, snapping a picture of myself and sending it to her.

“Buy that dress immediately,” she replied, and so I did.

In the transition from early to evolved self, there lies a span of emptiness, a grieving period of sorts. But heartache and joy can be woven from the same strand—the craft of being human is ever complicated.

Now, at home, when I wonder if I should bother with anything other than loungewear, I stop. I no longer allow myself to shrink, regardless of circumstance. The question I ask then is not “What do I wear?” but “Who am I, really?” In some sense, I’m relieved that the world and everyone in it is sequestered away with space in heart and mind to contemplate the pace of true progress. I may be alone much of the time right now, but I feel less so knowing that we are all preparing ourselves to march across this bridge and into subsequent rhythm, whenever that may be.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent Stories

Features

Reverberations

A transcontinental move, a career discovered, a landmark speech studied and translated—and an identity reshaped.

By Clara Clymer, MA Translation '22
Illustration by Anna Gusella
April 2, 2022

The Road(s)

A little over a year ago, a writing student headed south to Florida for no other reason than J-Term was forced to go remote. She soon found herself reporting on an environmental justice battle that was roiling the state.

By Alexandra Burns '21.5
Illustrations by Yevgenia Nayberg
March 2, 2022

Cult Fiction

With absurdist, yet endearing dramedies dominating popular culture, a couple of recent Midd grads have added a new title to the canon with the wonderful Youtube series The Deli People.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photographs courtesy of L.T. Stenello Productions
February 4, 2022
Abstract illustration of a person with correspondence letters floating in the wind surrounding them.

Dear Friends . . .

On writing through grief.

By Bianca Giaever ’12.5
Illustration by Nicole Xu. Photographs by Paul Dahm
May 11, 2021

Dispatches

It’s a New Day at the Museum of Art

Reimagining what an art museum can and should be.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Art courtesy of the Middlebury College Museum of Art
June 30, 2022

First Aid

Their projects span the globe—from Kenya to Haiti to the United States. As the 2021-22 academic year came to a close, a cohort of students gathered to discuss what having a social impact really means.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Illustration by Brian Stauffer
June 28, 2022

The Case of the Purloined Onions

Onions have been disappearing from Middlebury's garden. Now, a team of undergraduate sleuths are honing in on a lineup of suspects.

By Andrew Cassel
Illustration by Naomi Ann Clarke
June 21, 2022

Sonic Art

What began as an attempt by Matthew Evan Taylor to collaborate with fellow musicians during the isolation of the pandemic ended up being a yearlong project that culminated in an evening performance at the Met.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph by Josiah Bania
April 15, 2022

Poetry, In Exile

After fleeing civil unrest in her native Venezuela, a Middlebury Institute graduate student turned to poetry to help make sense of it all.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Illustrations by Anonymous
January 21, 2022

Inside the Ant Chamber

A visit to a Bi Hall lab affords an up-close encounter with an extremely social cohort of insects.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Clint Penick
November 12, 2021

Twenty Minutes, Twenty Years

Reflections on 9/11 as a New Yorker and Muslim American.

By Daleelah Saleh '23
Illustration by Davide Bonazzi
September 23, 2021

It’s in the Wash

Moyara Ruehsen separates fact from creative fiction in the world of criminal finance.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Elena Zhukova
September 9, 2021

From Stage to Screen

Doug Anderson has plenty of experience directing opera. But with his latest production, he faced new and unusual challenges.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph by Erica Furgiuele
September 2, 2021
View All

Pursuits

Public Defender

On becoming one of the country's foremost cybersecurity experts.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Illustration by Neil Webb
April 14, 2022

Q&A

The Making of a Teacher

Hebrew Professor Michal Strier reflects on her life an education—in Israel and the States—a journey that led the Language School instructor to the undergraduate College for the first time this year.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Paul Dahm
May 19, 2022

Editor’s Note

A Brilliant Fogg

Saying goodbye to a dear colleague and friend.

By Matt Jennings
Illustration by Jody Hewgill
February 25, 2020

Old Chapel

Wired for Service

Examining the myriad ways Middlebury students and alumni continue to engage in an enduring tradition: giving back to others.

By Laurie L. Patton
Illustration by Montse Bernal
November 11, 2021

Road Taken

What to Wear Now

Through accrued life experiences, a writer discovers that a common question has become a statement of identity.

By Samantha Hubbard Shanley ’99
Illustration by Naomi Clarke
March 11, 2021

Quotation

A summer immersed in a language can do wonders, as veterans of Middlebury College’s famous language-learning program can attest. The lockdown is clearly going to amount to the equivalent of about two summers, and there are mini-Middleburys happening in millions of houses worldwide.”

—John McWhorter, writing “The Coronavirus Generation Will Use Language Differently” in the Atlantic.

Podcasts

Alone Together, Ep. 9 with Jessica St. Clair ’98 and Dan O’Brien ’96

Dan O'Brien ’96, a playwright and poet, and Jessica St. Clair ’98, a comedian and writer, join President Patton for our final check in with the community during COVID-19 self-isolation. Dan and Jessica are a true power couple in the arts that met in a Middlebury improv group. They discuss Dan's magazine essay "Life Shrinks: Lessons from Chemo Quarantine," how reopening the country feels a lot like remission, and how their art is evolving to reflect the pandemic.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
June 15, 2020

Alone Together, Ep. 8 with Dick Clay, Covid-19 Survivor

In this episode, Dick Clay, a student at the Bread Loaf School of English, shares his story of recovering from COVID-19. Dick discusses when the seriousness of the virus hit him, the "wilderness path to recovery," and how he will process this experience through writing.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
June 8, 2020

Alone Together, Ep. 7 with Jodie Keith and Jacque Bergevin, Essential Workers

In this episode, we hear from Jodie Keith and Jacque Bergevin, who have been working with custodial services to keep our Vermont campus safe and clean. Jodie and Jacque share what campus has been like since the students left: what it's like to schedule hourly sanitation of buildings, how every day feels like an empty Saturday morning, and that the infamous Middlebury squirrels have lost a bit of weight.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
Photography by Bob Handelman
June 1, 2020

Review

One Life’s Journey

Accomplished poet Robert Pack reflects on his life in his new book of poetry.

By Susan Fritsch Hunter ’71
Photography from Event Horizon Telescope: Hotaka Shiokawa
June 2, 2022

How Did You Get Here?

Megan Job

By Alexandra Burns '21
February 15, 2021

Leif Taranta

By Alexandra Burns '21
February 15, 2021

Mikayla Haefele

By Alexandra Burns '21
February 15, 2021

Videos

Pomp and Unusual Circumstances

As viewed from above.

By Chris Spencer
June 1, 2021

Davis the Owl Returns Home

Having recovered from life-threatening injuries, a beautiful winged creature is released to its natural habitat.

By Andrew Cassell
April 22, 2021

In the Blink of an Eye

Gone in less than a minute—the middle of June 2019 to the middle of June 2020, as viewed from the rooftop of the Mittelman Observatory.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
Video by Jonathan Kemp/Mittelman Observatory
June 10, 2020
Middlebury College
  • Alumni
  • Newsroom
  • Contact Us
  • icon-instagram

The views presented are not necessarily those of the editors or the official policies of the College.

© 2022 Middlebury College Publications.