First Word: Tracy Grant: Top

Top With Troubling Bottom
 
I like the top of my body better than the bottom.  Such a dilemma
being “two-in-one”.
    When I was a teen, Twiggy was the model-of-the-moment.  Her figure was
one size from her shoulders down.  In my innocence, I thought that was my goal.
Sadly, I never was able to prune myself down to her image unless I imagined the
possibility of cutting myself in half.
        When the short summers of upstate New York arrived, I went shopping
for the season’s two-piece bathing suit.  Since my top was one size and my
bottom another, loose flapping material hung from my shoulders while my
bottom was tightly encased in matching material.
    Once, I purchased a two-piece bathing suit with a perfectly fitted top, but
the bottom didn’t fit at all.  I promised myself that I could get into the bottom if
I exercised enough.  But that bathing suit still languishes in the bottom of the
drawer, taunting me to try again.  I wear the top with cut-off blue jeans as I work
in the garden, far from any blonde, sandy beach.
    I was well past childbearing when department stores began to sell two-
piece suits with separate sizes – one for tops and another for bottoms.  Practical
me, I started to worry about how the merchandise was sorted out at the end of
the season.  Silly me.  I took the plunge and found two designs I admired, held
them up, and fearful of the dressing room mirrors, purchased them.
    They are in the same drawer as the taunting fantasy suit, but they are
on top.  I grab them often, put them on, sneak out in the pitch-dark night and
immerse myself in the hot tub, water up to my neck, alone in the under the
walnut tree’s umbrella branches.  On full moon nights, I wear a one-piece.