Of Snowmen and Knickers

Tweet

I took my story down from Niume and then discovered the edited version didn't save to my computer. I worked on it all day and want someone to read it. More chance of that here, I think! Here is the original version. The snowmen don’t look great. Over the years the fabric they are made of has collected dust, making them grey and one has lost its shovel. When I bought them they were identical and they both carried shovels with the inscription, “Jesus loves you snow much.” Their purple hats and checked scarves remain intact despite the handling of a grandchild and the indignity of lying in a box for months during several moves. I have kept them because they remind me of the time when my life began again. It’s like someone took my life, erased the first half and inserted a new story and a new me with a few of the props from the old. Divorce is never easy and I bought those snowmen in a Christian bookshop in November in Nashville. They are symbols of transition and at the time, I needed the encouragement. Nashville is one of the places I visited in that strange time after the Decree Nisi. I binned it almost the moment it arrived. If life was to begin again I didn’t want even the memory of the past (apart of course, of times with my much loved children,) to sully my new beginning. Even paper holding a memory was too painful to keep. No, I lie. I still have wedding photos and a book given to me by J in the days when we were still in love and two albums of our travels and a diary and OH! Now I know how hard I found it to let go even while claiming otherwise. Anyway, I digress. Back to the story of the snowmen and Nashville. You have to understand how strange the place was to me, an Englishwoman. It was weird. Like I walked into the stereotypes of a Nation. I honestly saw fat man in shorts with a shirt with palm trees on and people who had backsides the size of buses. Just to add to the confusion, every other guy in town seemed to be dressed in a check shirt and blue jeans and look like my ex. I was staying with a friend who disapproved of my knickers. I remember the conversation well. I had washed my underwear. One has to if one stays anywhere for a length of time, and I was enjoying the holiday in what I suppose was a real hill-billy house. We were sitting on the veranda and drinking coffee when Rani, my friend squealed, shocked. “WHO WEARS THOSE?” Apparently, good Christian women in Nashville do not wear sexy knickers. The knicker episode threw me. There was a reason for my underwear and it was that I wanted to feel young, sexy, available, attractive and even if being a good Christian woman myself, I would never have let any guy see them, I felt better wearing the wretched things. I still don’t get what the problem was. They were not on show and merely made me feel good. But then, a lot of the time I found America more prudish than the UK. It felt, espescially in Nashville, like I had walked into an early 1960’s film set or wait, maybe even 1950’s because there were all these retro diners we ate in. The journey to the bookshop was the same day as the “Knicker Conversation.” That is probably why I remember it so well. I can still feel how six of us squashed into an old four wheel drive and drove to what I suppose, was some kind of Mall. We ate burgers in a crowded forecourt. Great big burgers twice the size of any you would get here in the Uk and with four times the taste and I tried not to eat a mountain of fries and refused soda longing for an English cup of tea. The conversation about the knickers had left me feeling self-conscious. I kept thinking all those men in check shirts were looking at me with X – ray eyes and could see what I was wearing beneath a long floral skirt. I knew it was irrational and actually, by English standards, my underwear was tame, but still, I felt uncomfortable. I was glad when we moved on to find the Christian bookshop. I love bookshops of any kind, but my budget was a tight one and I was more interested really, in getting presents I could give at Christmas than any kind of spiritual book to edify me. I also wanted to make a point that God was not worried about my underwear the way people in Nashville seemed to be. The snowmen were in a basket, heavily reduced. I think they were a dollar each and I bought them not because I liked them, but because they had the word “Jesus” on and I wanted to make a point. Sort of. I was as holy and acceptable to God as any woman without sexy knickers in Nashville. I know that sounds stupid, illogical and really, now I think of it, rather silly, but at the time it was the best I could do. I wish I could say there had been a romance or the guy who sold me those snowmen was my type of something, but I can’t. I was only ready to form a relationship with two friendly snow guys who sit conveniently on the window sill and remind me of a conversation that worried me back then, but now makes me smile.