How Now, Brown Coat?

 Many years ago, Vivian and Jerry came to visit us and we went to an REI Garage Sale. There was the usual assortment of returned tents and bicycle pumps, and a lot of healthy-looking people milling around looking at stuff. We examined the box of Smartwool socks and thought about whether we needed a gently used camp stove, and then, almost incidentally, I glanced at a brown coat hanging alone on a rack. It looked warm, probably too warm for me in Atlanta. But Vivian had just moved to New Hampshire so I called her over. The coat had been marked down significantly, maybe $400 to $75 or so, which seemed exciting. Still, Viv wasn't too sure. "I wasn't planning on actually spending any money here," she said. "Just put it on," I said.

The coat was warm. Really warm. 

"This coat is really warm," said Viv. "New Hampshire is really cold."

"Just get it," I said. And she did.

After that I would get occasional messages from the frozen north. A couple of times each winter I would hear from Vivian specifically about the coat. "Thanks for making me get this coat," she would say. Or, "that brown coat might have actually saved my life today." I felt vaguely happy to have given good advice but didn't think about it too much. Until...

Until.

We moved to Colorado about the same time that Vivian moved to San Diego, and one day I got a package in the mail with a note that said, "You need this more than I do now." Inside was the coat, looking just as placidly brown as ever. I laughed and hung it in the closet. It wasn't winter yet. In fact, we hadn't had a winter in years as we'd just been living in Thailand, so I'd almost forgotten what cold was like. But eventually it did get cold. Really cold, like sub-zero, try not to breathe while you stomp through the snow to break the ice on the chicken's water dish sort of cold. I learned to use a scarf to seal up the space between my neck and my jacket. I learned to take my metal earrings out, and not to touch anything without gloves. And I remembered the coat. On one particularly cold day I reached past the other jackets into the wayback of the closet, pulled out the brown coat, and put it on.

The world shifted just a little bit. Suddenly, I felt...different. I felt SAFE. I felt like the gods of winter no longer had any power over me. I thought that Vivian had just given me a coat. What she really gave me was a superpower.

The brown coat is magic. It is a forcefield. It is a space heater in the Arctic. It is warm clothes out of the dryer. It is a black cat sleeping in the sunshine. It is almost as good as having a sister walk into the room. It takes a world that is trying to kill you and makes it...fine. You can walk out the door into the meanest cold imaginable wearing the brown coat and after awhile you think, hey, why are my ankles a little chilly?  I wear the brown coat every winter, and each time I do it brings me joy. It makes me think of Vivian. It makes me happy to have been right so many years ago. Somehow it makes me feel like a better person, the kind of person who could go outside and do stuff. It makes me feel like going on an adventure, like I could do anything. Cold is nothing to me. I am invincible.

So thanks for the coat, Vivian. You wove a spell of love, down filling, and possibility and cast it over me. I'm forever grateful.