Free High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver

friend, one of the people who loves me best in the world, replied: “Barbara, you’re not eccentric, you’re an anachronism,” and marched me down to an exclusive clothing shop.
    It was a very small store; I nearly hyperventilated. “You could liquidate the stock here and feed an African nation for a year,” I whispered. But under pressure I bought a suit, and wore it to the important author function. For three hours of my life I was precisely in vogue.
    Since then it has reigned over my closet from its dry-cleaner bag, feeling unhappy and out of place, I am sure, a silk ambassador assigned to a flannel republic. Even if I go to a chichi restaurant, the suit stays home. I’m always afraid I’ll spill something on it; I’d be too nervous to enjoy myself. It turns out I would rather converse than make a statement.
    Now, there is fashion, and there is style . The latter, I’ve found, will serve, and costs less. Style is mostly a matter of acting as if you know very well what you look like, thanks, and are just delighted about it. It also requires consistency. A friend of mine wears buckskin moccasins every day of her life. She has daytime and evening moccasins. This works fine in Arizona, but when my friend fell in love with a Tasmanian geologist and prepared to move to a rain forest, I worried. Moccasins instantaneously decompose in wet weather. But I should have known, my friend has sense. She bought clear plastic galoshes to button over her moccasins, and writes me that she’s happy.
    I favor cowboy boots. I don’t do high heels, because you never know when you might actually have to get somewhere, and most other entries in the ladies-shoes category look to me like Ol’ Dixie and Ol’ Dobbin trying to sneak into the Derby, trailing their plow. Cowboy boots aren’t trying. They say, “I’m no pump, and furthermore, so what?” That characterizes my whole uniform, in fact: oversized flannel shirts, jeans or cotton leggings, and cowboy boots when weather permits. In summer I lean toward dresses that make contact with the body (if at all) only on the shiatsu acupressure points; maybe also a Panama hat; and sneakers. I am happy.
    I’m also a parent, which of course calls into question every decision one ever believes one has made for the last time. Can I raise my daughter as a raiment renegade? At present she couldn’t care less. Maybe obsessions skip a generation. She was blessed with two older cousins whose sturdy hand-me-downs she has worn from birth, with relish. If she wasn’t entirely a fashion plate, she also escaped being typecast. For her first two years she had no appreciable hair, to which parents can clamp those plastic barrettes that are gender dead giveaways. So when I took her to thepark in cousin Ashley’s dresses, strangers commented on her blue eyes and lovely complexion; when she wore Andrew’s playsuits emblazoned with trucks and airplanes (why is it we only decorate our boys with modes of transportation?), people always commented on how strong and alert my child was—and what’s his name?
    This interests me. I also know it can’t last. She’s in school now, and I’m very quickly remembering what school is about: two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind? She still rejects stereotypes, with extraordinary good humor. She has a dress-up collection to die for, gleaned from Goodwill and her grandparents’ world travels, and likely as not will show up to dinner wearing harem pants, bunny ears, a glitter-bra over her T-shirt, wooden shoes, and a fez. But underneath it all, she’s only human. I have a feeling the day might come when my daughter will beg to be a slave of conventional fashion.
    I’m inclined to resist, if it happens. To press on her the larger truths I finally absorbed from my own wise parents: that she can find her own path. That she will